Notes:
This is not my first fan fic, but it's definitely the first I've uploaded online before.
I am not a twilight fan girl.
The series itself, despite it's plot holes, dubious endings and generally Mary Sue like qualities of Mrs Meyers characters, I understand it's like a Mills and Boon romance novel. It's enjoyable, but you can't honestly take it seriously. It's a lolly book, it's an easy read.
But I got this fic idea, out of the blue, and I had to roll with it. I rather enjoyed writing it too.
So enjoy.
Also, I tried to write this in the style that closely resembled SM's. I generally write in third person, so it might seem a little off.
My name is Bella Swan.
I am eighteen.
I'm a senior at Forks High School.
And I am dying.
A lot slower than I would've liked. Six months had passed now, and I was putting everyone I loved through hell. Charlie was taking too much time off work caring for me, and Renée had already spent over three thousand dollars on plane tickets each time I had a major appointment with the oncologist. Jacob came to visit me every other day when he wasn't working in the garage; mostly with wild flowers he had probably found growing behind the shed.
My hair had fallen out two months previously, or at least, I had had a weird comb-over and my hair was falling out all over the place. The hair-dresser, who had gone to school with Charlie and had held me as a two-month old baby, had almost cried when she took the clippers to what was left of it.
Renée had offered to buy me a wig, but there was no point. It was a waste of money, and I'd be gone soon anyway. Jessica and Angela had rounded up some money from the other students and had bought me some pretty silk scarves to wear, which was generous of them.
They looked at me like I was going to break at any moment. Which was probably true: they had watched me deteriorate. Watched me get thinner and thinner, paler and paler, sicklier and sicklier. Watched my hair fall out, watched me leave class for chemotherapy, watched me faint.
I wasn't sure what was worse: their pity, or their horror.
But I could understand it; they had never once thought that something like cancer would happen to someone they knew. It was mystical, only happening in books and on TV.
Lauren and her cronies had become nicer to me, everyone had. They knew after they watched me start to waste away that I wasn't going to make it. Mike had taken to helping me up stairs when I was too tired, or carrying me to the nurse's office when I needed to lie down.
The teachers still acted surprised when I handed in homework; they had expected me to stop because it was a 'stress I didn't need in my condition'. But my oncologist, Dr. Sprouse, had said that I would probably live to finish my senior year. But there was still no guarantee. I was going to live like I was going to graduate, even if it killed me before the cancer did.
Charlie had said that I could stop going to school; Dr. Sprouse was willing to sign a certificate for Compassionate Leave; so I could spend my last days in the house whilst Charlie was at work. He had also offered to pay for a plane ticket back to Florida to live with Renée.
Neither he nor I took what he said seriously.
It was better I stayed in Forks, the heat wouldn't help me, and Dr. Sprouse was always on call: he lived down the road from us. Plus, Renée didn't need the stress. It wasn't good on the baby.
Renée had announced she was pregnant a few weeks after He left. She'd had another daughter called Sophia two months before I was diagnosed with stage IV Osteosarcoma. Renée had been so happy about it, so had Phil until I had to call her.
Charlie had gone to La Push with a six pack of beer and his fishing gear as soon as we had gotten back from the Hospital. He had just thought I was just insufficient in vitamins or something; he didn't expect for me to have primary bone cancer. Neither did I. It had taken me three days to call Renée. At first, she hadn't said anything, I could only hear breathing, and then she shrewdly asked what kind it was.
I think she was expecting it to be a tiny little tumor, or a small case of survivable leukemia. I could hear her Googling it, and after a few silent moments she had started to sob. Then came the denial. Her refusal to admit that it was serious; that the doctors hadn't done all of the tests so it couldn't be true, right? But I had had to stay strong to tell her.
I'd had an MRI scan, a CAT scan, a bone marrow and blood test. There was no denying it.
She had flown out to Seattle with Sophia a week later.
It wasn't fair on her. She had a baby to raise, and myriads of hobbies to find and get bored of, a life to live. Not her first baby girl dying of cancer. It had been almost too soon, especially after I had just pulled myself out of Zombie Bella. The depression of '06. That pain was still there, strong still, but the pain in my bones was almost canceling it out. Both Renée and Charlie had expected that Zombie Bella was the scariest, most painful thing they'd have to see their daughter go through.
Now they had to watch their daughter die.
A slow, excruciating death.
Dr. Sprouse had been obscenely kind and compassionate. He slipped me double prescriptions of Morphine tablets, which would soon probably turn into a Morphine drip. Unlike doctors in Florida, Dr. Sprouse knew what kind of pain I was in, and didn't spare any expense in making sure I was at least comfortable in my passing.
It seemed to be that only myself and Dr. Sprouse knew I wasn't honestly going to pull through whilst everyone else tried to convince themselves I was. He had a wheelchair waiting for me when I got too tired and in agony to walk, he had the medication ready, he had the funeral home brochures.
It was honestly morbid how I spent my time off, looking through funeral brochures. Choosing the color of my casket, the flower arrangements, the dress I was too be buried in. What song I wanted to play when they lowered me into my grave to spend the rest of eternity. Without Him.
I was never going to live forever with Him.
With my Edward. My love.
I cried a lot these days. But not even the pain in my bones was equal to the pain in my chest as I cried my heart out. If I had to pick a song to play at my funeral, it would be from the CD Edward had given me. But he had taken them with him. Sometimes, on the days I couldn't get out of bed, I remembered the sound of his voice. The color of his eyes. His scent.
Most of the time those daydreams didn't make sense because of the morphine pills. The original painkillers they had given me had made me loopy, I had forgotten what they were called, but I still had two bottles left in case I was desperate.
Charlie had started to worry about my weight, and I was too. I'd been wearing clothes from when I was fourteen, and these were starting to get too big for me now. I was starting to look like a skeleton. It was probably nasogastric tube time. Besides the chemo that made me sick, I had been dreading the feeding tube the most.
Winnie, the girl with a golf-ball sized tumor in her brain, had a nasogastric tube. I had met her in hospital whilst in Seattle, she had said it was uncomfortable. But I was having trouble eating. The smallest things made me tired. It was almost to the stage where I wanted to ask Charlie to hold the spoon for me. I had started to mostly eat cereal or soup because solid food was just too much effort.
Plus, I was trying not to make my teeth fall out. The doses of chemo they were giving me were strong enough to weaken my teeth. I didn't want to lose my teeth.
Jacob would never let me live it down.
Jacob was my only sun right now, the one who wasn't afraid to make me laugh and look at the situation with a bright side. I had to have a beer with James Dean, fist-pump Sitting Bull, and hug Ephraim, Jacob's grandfather, when I went to heaven. Jacob came over whenever he had free time, and we often didn't do much besides watch TV or talk. Sometimes we would do homework, we'd talk about school. We'd talk about my chemo. We'd talk about our childhood.
He was my sun, he was something I could still orbit around even when I had lost my moon.
He controlled my tides and my swells, he grew the flowers, and the trees and the animals. He brought warmth and light even when the days started to get colder and darker.
He was my sun.
