A/N: Major character death, Ibcon, general angst ahead. You've been warned!
Years ago, on most days and after school finally ended, Garry would pick me up from school and babysit me as I wandered around his apartment, did homework, and listened to him read to me, until my parents finally got off work and came to pick me up and take me home. Some nights, whenever they worked overtime together, I slept over at Garry's. My parents didn't mind him taking care of me those nights; they actually found it more convenient than anything. They worked at a high-end company together, with weird hours and high expectations that made it hard to get me home from school every afternoon. Garry didn't mind my visits, either, as he worked at home and didn't go to college at the time. In the mornings following my stays with him, I usually woke up back at home with no memory of returning, but other times I'd wake up on the same loveseat I'd always sleep on, where Garry would be sleeping right in front of me. Other times, I'd wake up in his bed, and when I managed to pull myself awake and into the den, he'd be fast asleep on the couch. I would scold him for doing so and invite him to sleep with me instead of on the couch every time, and being… well, him, he'd always reject the idea. Of course, later on in adolescence, I discovered why.
As these visits grew more and more frequent over months to come, my parents (and Garry, as well) chose to keep a few outfits and personal things of mine where Garry lived, because they knew that if I was over there on school nights, staying over occasionally, and waking up in the same apartment, I would need clothes to sleep in and new clothes for the next day. I don't know what Garry could have said or done to earn trust like that from parents like mine, but I always had a toothbrush, blankets, towels, brushes, clothes, and an array of other personal belongings on hand there. He was definitely a perfect older brother figure, too. He made sure my grades were well and if I was eating right, and if I brushed my teeth and bathed before I slept. It didn't hurt to admit, either, that he was a better parent than both of mine were combined.
There were nights when I woke up in Garry's bed with him beside me, which was odd the first few occasions. I had chronic night terrors, and would roll out of bed or cry in my sleep. Sometimes I would shout, too. Always, on those nights when we'd sleep side by side, I would start off sleeping on the couch, and Garry would sleep on the floor once he was done with business around his apartment for the evening. He told me that I would start murmuring or crying, and he'd nudge me until I was semi-conscious, move me to his room, and lay down with me, petting my hair and rocking back and forth on his side somewhat until I had calmed down. Being semi-conscious, I rarely remember him doing so, but it supposedly always got me quiet.
We grew very close in the years we were together, and when I entered eighth grade, I was surprised to find myself (and him, as well) still not minding my overnight visits. For a while, I even developed one of those "little-kid crushes" on him, which I told my parents about years later. They thought it was cute, unsurprisingly.
It became customary to wait for Garry in the school courtyard every day after I got out of class. When the days got cold, he would come to bring me "home" the minute I was out of class. On nicer days he came later to let me play and run around with the other kids.
On the first day of December in my eighth grade year, I sat on one of the grey benches in the courtyard, expecting him at any minute. There were some days when he would be late, and I would wait patiently. Never, though, was he so late that I found myself having to call him to see if he was still coming, or run off the campus to find him.
On that first, bitterly cold day of December, when he didn't come to the school after almost half an hour, I tried going back inside to call for him on his mobile, but the doors were locked from the inside. The school always closed quicker on winter afternoons when it got too cold inside the schoolhouse. The only way in was through the front doors, but that was on the completely opposite side of the school, and I didn't have time to circle all the way around the premises just to make a call. It would've been quicker just to track him down on his motorbike. He always took the same route to and from the school, so I figured I would catch him on the way.
The gate to the apartment complex was the halfway point between the school and his apartment. The complex was three times the size of my school campus, and his apartment was very nearly in the dead center of it all. It wasn't a very well-guarded complex, and you could get in just if the gate monitor recognized you from any point in time. He knew me well, and let me in without hardly even looking at me.
After not seeing Garry still as I grew nearer to his building, I knew without any doubt that something was wrong. It was as if something snapped very suddenly in my brain, and I made a dead sprint up the concrete staircase to the third floor of the building where he lived. I began crying, and tried to wipe any sign of me being in distress away. As paranoid as I was about not seeing him through the entire mile and a half of walking, I felt crying would have been stupid, especially if he was perfectly fine and somehow didn't notice the time or something.
I fumbled with my own set of keys, trying to find the one that fit his lock. My hands trembled so awfully that I nearly dropped the set twice as I shifted one by one through the ring. But when I finally managed to get the door open and I stepped inside, I discovered that it was a very, very good thing I was paranoid.
On that first day, I learned that Garry's smoke alarms didn't function properly, and I walked in to dinner burning to nothing. Thick pillows of smoke had already begun pouring out of the oven. The heat and smoke burned my eyes, which didn't help my effort of keeping my face dry. I bolted into the apartment, looking around for any sign of Garry as I headed for the kitchen to keep any fire from starting there. I coughed as I ripped open the drawer nearest to the stove, opening the oven and receiving a blanket of heat, burning food, and smoke to the face. I fanned and retched it away, trying not to choke on the fumes as I tossed what looked like burnt bread onto the stove surface.
"Garry, are you here?!" I called out over my shoulder, still clearing out the smoke in a panic. I wasn't surprised to hear only silence as I switched on the stove fan above my head. In a fit of frustration, I threw the oven mit onto the kitchen counter, expecting the smoke to clear itself by the fan eventually. More importantly, I had to look for Garry to check on him.
My first thought was that, maybe, he had actually left to come pick me up a while ago, but was somehow stopped on the way, leaving dinner in too long and becoming unable to reach me in time. But at the time, I figured it was best to check the apartment first, just in case he was actually still there.
When I opened his bedroom door, I began to cry.
I was mature enough to call for help, because I knew that was what Garry needed. His face was completely purple, and he wouldn't respond to any stimulus.
I wasn't allowed to look at the x-rays that were taken of his neck or lungs. The doctors told me that it was what Garry had asked to be done. It was in-character enough for me to believe it, but I knew it was an excuse to keep me from seeing any information, if it was "confidential" in any way. He didn't have family that anyone knew of. The doctors and nurses looked at the x-rays themselves. My parents couldn't get off of work to come check up on Garry or me, but that didn't bother me.
Garry lived off of a metal cylinder. He told me he didn't know what he had. The doctors said the same. He coughed all the time and became so short of breath so often that he would turn blue, and I was afraid that he would never be able to live without an oxygen tank. He liked to pretend that everything was fine, and that he would be out of the hospital soon. I looked up his symptoms online for what it could have been, and cried endlessly as a result.
I asked him if he hurt. He said he didn't. He physically looked like he was in pain. I didn't say anything.
On day two, I stayed at the hospital instead of at school. I slept overnight in the waiting room as they continued to take tests. A lung biopsy at 2am couldn't decode what it was still. I wanted to talk to Garry. He was asleep, apparently. Besides the doctors, I was the first to know about the confirmation of his illness.
When I sat in the waiting room, sobbing but trying to muffle myself as the doctor told me all the details that a fourteen-year-old could comprehend, about how they still didn't know what it was and that they would try to help him any way they could, I was finally led to his room. I wiped my nose on my sleeve as the doctor opened the door for me.
The smell of antiseptic was almost too strong for me as I walked in. Garry was visibly hurting, even in his sleep. I sat down beside him in a metal chair, and I wanted to hold him. I held back; the doctor was still monitoring him and me, and Garry looked too fragile to touch anyway. It was so out-of-character for him to look so small and pale the way he did that I came to shiver as I looked at him. His eyes were sunken from what I could see where the hair covered his face.
Eventually, once the doctor left to give us whatever privacy we could've had, I gingerly scooped up Garry's hand in mine, rubbing circles into his palm with my thumb. I held back any emotion for the first minute, until the sight of him so worn out and broken became too much to bear, and I became undone.
I cried into the side rails of his hospital bed, knowing no one could hear or see me to a certain extent. I thought he couldn't either, 'till I felt his hand on the back of my neck. I jolted up, and he seemed almost surprised to see me until he flashed me a weak, dorky smile. I couldn't help but smile back through my tears. He apologized to me and wiped my face, when I realized I still had his other hand in mine. He dried my eyes as I kissed the back of his hand, half-smiling. I told him not to be sorry, that it wasn't his fault. He did burn dinner, though, I said, to which he began to laugh before he apologized again.
"None of it was your fault. Stop being sorry for everything."
"Sorry."
On day five, I began coming straight to the hospital after I left school every day. Half the time I did so that month, he wasn't there. On these days, I often was asked to return home. I knew when he was gone that the doctors were either taking tests, or he was getting oxygen therapy. They thought oxygen therapy would help him.
Even through all he was going through, he was happy.
He began to deteriorate so quickly, though, that I was afraid that I would lose him when I left. Every day at school, I couldn't bring myself to focus on my work. All I could think about was how Garry was doing and if he was still chugging on.
On day fifty-six, they told him how long he had to live. I didn't know he had that information when I first visited him.
"I'm going to die." He hadn't talked about his imminent death the entire time he had been in the hospital. I felt the unbearable weight of gravity pull me down altogether in a single swipe.
"I wrote a will, though, Ib." He spoke as he stared out the window. Something inside me wanted him to look at me as he spoke, and when I grabbed the side of his face to direct him towards me, I found he was crying, too.
"You're not going to…" my voice sputtered into nothing.
"They told me how long I had today." He choked before falling into racking sobs, but I tried to stay quiet, to keep the situation from getting any worse. I couldn't.
"I love you." I squeaked.
"I know."
On day fifty-seven, he gave me his will, along with a kiss on the cheek. He made me promise not to read it until the day came.
On day sixty, he didn't speak through my entire visit. Neither did I. We stared out the window together for hours, communicating by squeezing each other's hand.
On day seventy-five, he gave me the money to buy myself chocolate and roses for Valentine's Day, since he couldn't do it himself. He refused to let me come back until I physically had them with me. I stopped by a café to get macarons for him in return. He wouldn't eat them unless I ate them too.
On day one hundred and fifteen, I had some feeling that Garry could've been getting better. Color returned to his face, and he told me he felt he could breathe easier. It would've been a miracle if he had been doing so, but whenever he coughed, it still sounded strangled and damp. I decided that I would wait and watch his progression over the week to see if the disease would progress further in any way. Besides, the doctor and Garry had already let me know that the scarring in his lungs were irreversible damage.
On day one hundred and twenty-nine, I discovered that waiting before my hopes were high was a good idea.
On day one hundred and thirty-two, we celebrated his twenty-sixth birthday with red velvet cake, tea, and kisses on the hand. I bought him a new watch as well with the allowance I had saved, knowing his birthday would be coming up.
On day one hundred and forty-five, I told him I had a little kid crush on him in years past and I had planned on marrying him. He laughed weakly and coughed, "That's my girl." as he ran his fingers through my hair.
On day one hundred and forty-six, the classroom phone rang for my teacher. After she had hung up, I was instructed to leave, and to go home, as I had something important waiting for me. I was blinded by tears before I had even made it out the door, even though I wasn't entirely sure what was actually going on. A few teachers tried to calm me down as I walked through the hallway, but I shook them off. They seemed to understand, much to my convenience.
I ran all the way home, and didn't dare stop until I was coughing up my lungs in the front doorway and my eyes were full of tears. I finally wiped them away as I struggled to catch my breath, and noticed the cardboard box on the dining room table to my left. I made sure to shut the door behind me before walking in. Even from far away, I could read the slip of paper beside the box, with my name written in bold letters on its surface. I fished around in my bag for my keys before finding them somewhere and yanking them out. I sawed open the taped box and ripped it open.
Inside the box were the clothes, brushes, soaps, and other personal belongings of mine that I had kept in Garry's apartment the past few years. Combs from when I was eleven, the handkerchief from my ninth birthday, that watch I had given him for his birthday, and the many hairbands Garry had bought me years ago were all packed tightly inside. I couldn't collect myself and hold back quickly enough.
On the home phone, I dialed the number for my dad's company, but it rang out. I was so frustrated that I threw the cordless phone against the floor and watched as it shattered into thousands of plastic fragments and memory chips. I was never punished for it.
I nearly forgot to grab my bag before running out of the house and to the hospital. It couldn't have felt any heavier on my shoulder.
The nurses were told by my parents to tell me to go home. His mystery disease required an autopsy. I couldn't see him unless I had been given permission by a proper authority, which I hadn't been granted. I begged to see him one more time and was turned down.
In complete darkness, I walked back to Garry's vacant apartment, stumbling over pebbles and cracks on the sidewalk in utter blindness.
I slept on the living room couch with his will held tight in my hand, as if a strong force could have come at any second and ripped it out of my hand. I wasn't ready to read it. I sobbed endlessly throughout the longest evening of my life, before struggling to fall asleep. What compelled me to sleep and what I had hoped was that, when I woke up, I'd find Garry sleeping on the floor in front of me.
On day one hundred and forty-seven, he didn't wake up in front of me. I read the first few sentences of his will aloud that morning before quickly becoming unable to.
On day one hundred and forty-eight, I went out and bought one single red rose and one blue rose for him. My parents read the will while I wasn't home, just like I had asked them to.
On day one hundred and fifty, I began to paint a picture of him, and I wanted to paint him like how he had looked a year ago, healthy and bright. But after all that had happened, I was worried I would paint him to appear how he had been in the hospital: pale, fragile, and tired.
On day one hundred and fifty-two, I finally gave the roses to Garry. I noticed the blue rose I had bought days ago had been living well, considering the lack of water it had received, but the red rose was beginning to wither away quickly.
On day five hundred and fourteen, I finished the painting. He looked just like how he had many years ago.
On day one thousand five hundred and ninety-three, I wished him a happy thirtieth birthday and made sure to remind him that I was legally allowed to marry, and that I had finished painting him. Left behind were a bouquet of blue roses and a note I had handwritten.