A/N: This is for the lovely xXlamia vampressXx! Happy birthday Jen! Hopefully we can meet up in the summer again ;) And this is all human once again. :)
1000 Cranes
Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer.
John Quinn couldn't believe it, but he has cancer. He knew it was for all the wrongdoings that he did in the past, all the sins he committed—it was the heaven's punishment to him. He tried to amend for his sins by helping people out, hoping that maybe God or whoever was watching over him would give him a miracle and save him from his hopeless situation . . . but nothing happened.
He was already losing faith, losing the will to survive, when he met Rashel Jordan. Rashel was a beautiful girl; green eyes, dark long hair, pale skin, and, not to mention, a pretty body. Although her surface was what attracted Quinn at first, he realized, as he continued to watch her pass through his almost-always opened hospital door, that he might have fallen in love with her.
He always saw her pushing her mother in a wheelchair around the hospital. Sometimes, he would see them out in the courtyard through his hospital window. Rashel would always greet him with a smile whenever his hospital door was opened.
And then, on a bright Thursday noon, Rashel's mother died of sleep apnea. At least it wasn't painful, Quinn had thought when he heard Rashel's soft wails through the thin wall separating his hospital room from her mother's. She probably stayed in her mom's hospital room for half an hour before slowly making her way out of the room to call her other family members.
That was when Quinn decided he had to act. It was now or never after all.
"Hey!" he called from his hospital room, not sounding weak at all.
Rashel, who was hugging her elbows, jumped and looked in the room. Quinn aimed a friendly smile at her and gestured for her to come in. Rashel didn't know what to think or to expect, so she gingerly walked in his room, wiping at the corners of her eyes.
"I'm John Quinn," Quinn said, offering his hand punctured by an IV line, "and I'm dying." He smiled wider. "Will you take care of me, please?"
Rashel stared at him blankly for a minute, and began chuckling a bit crazily, all the while with tears in her eyes.
"I'm serious," Quinn remarked while she continued to giggle and cry to herself.
"I think you're crazy," she said, wiping the corners of her eyes with the heels of her palms. Quinn continued to look at her, observing her at a closer proximity. Perhaps it was his dark eyes, but in the end, Rashel agreed to take care of him. She never mentioned her mother, and he never asked about it.
A few days passed when Quinn asked his doctor and the hospital staff to let him go outside for a day. Surprised, his doctor and the staff agreed to let him go. Quinn had persuaded Rashel to accompany him to the nearby park that day, and he was ready to start his plan. A plan to make her fall in love with him. Or something like that. He didn't want her to grieve for him once he dies of this cancer—but he wanted someone to love him, even if it was only temporarily, while he was still alive.
So, in that restaurant, he made Rashel a white crane.
"What's this for?" Rashel had asked when he handed the paper crane to her.
"Just keep it." He then grabbed both of her healthy hands in his thin pale ones, adding, "Don't throw them away until I die, okay?"
Something about the way he gazed at her, the way he held her hand and the way he talked to her so seriously, caused Rashel to agree and keep the cranes.
Day after day, every time Rashel visited Quinn in the hospital, he had a hundred or more paper cranes prepared for her. Although the cranes were taking the majority of her desk's space at home, she couldn't force herself to throw them away. She was slightly hoping that maybe Quinn would tell her why he was doing this and what the cranes meant, but every time she tried to bring it up, Quinn would immediately move onto the next topic.
Not only was her room getting filled of paper cranes by Quinn, but her mind and emotions were starting to get filled by him. Rashel thought that it wasn't possible to fall in love this fast and this hard, but apparently, she was wrong.
They went out on a lot of outings (she didn't dare call it a "date," however, she didn't know that Quinn was already calling it a "date" secretly), and . . . they enjoyed it. They enjoyed it a lot, and they both clandestinely wished that Quinn wasn't going to die—that they could be together for the rest of their lives.
As Quinn fell asleep on his hospital bed—after another long day of adventure and luxury, she started crying. He looked dead. Pale skin, eyes closed, thin structure . . . Rashel was scared to see him like this. He looked so vulnerable, so fragile, but he wasn't like that. She knew that Quinn was still fighting, somewhere deep inside. She knew he was strong. But seeing him like this made her heart ache, and again she realized how much she cared for him—even though they had only known each other during a short period of time.
When she got home that night, Rashel couldn't sleep. So she counted all the cranes he made for her, which kept her awake the whole night—wondering why he gave her so much.
"Nine-hundred and fifty-seven," she stated as soon as she entered Quinn's room the next day. Quinn looked up, halfway finished with another crane he was creating to add to the pile he had already created. "Nine-hundred and fifty-seven," Rashel repeated. She stepped closer. "What does it mean?"
A ghost of a smile appeared on his chapped lips and he continued to finish up his cranes. He didn't answer.
"Quinn," she called, sitting by the same chair she sat on last night. It was the familiar chair she had been using since she started spending time with Quinn. She dug her nails in the chair. "Quinn . . . Quinn, why are you giving me so much of these cranes?"
Quinn tilted his head a bit, examining the colorful cranes on his lap. Carefully, he counted them. Rashel was silent as she watched him, and then he slowly met her gaze, a tired but handsome smile on his face. "Forty-two cranes."
"Nine-hundred ninety-nine cranes," said Rashel, knowing that he was going to give her these cranes. "But why?" She leaned over the bed and firmly grabbed onto one of his hands. "Tell me why Quinn."
"You know," Quinn sighed, moving her hand on his chest as he turned to face her, "I learned to fold paper cranes when I volunteered to help out the kids in Japan. They said that cranes brought good luck."
She could feel his heart beat, slow and steady—healthy even. "And I learned so many things ever since I found out I had pancreatic cancer. I tried to amend for my sins—I really did—but," he paused, "I can feel it, you know. I can feel my ending."
"Quinn," her voice cracked.
"I wasn't like this," Quinn continued, a weary expression on his eyes. It looked like he was about to go to sleep. In the past few days, his health has been depleting faster than usual—and it was truly scaring Rashel. It got her shaken up that she couldn't sleep at night nowadays. "I was a bad person who did bad things. And it took my health, my future, for me to realize that." He looked away from her, trying to hide his watery dark eyes. "I'm sorry, Rashel."
Her bottom lip started to tremble. Should she say it? Should she confess? "Quinn, I—"
"Rashel, I—" Quinn stopped and merely pulled her by the arms, leaning forward and crushing his lips against hers. His eyes were closed as he pressed his forehead against hers. "Rashel, I really love you. If I didn't have cancer, I wouldn't have met you. So I'm pretty thankful for this bittersweet twist of fate." He opened his eyes and moved away from her. "I don't have as much energy as I had before, so we can't go outside."
He was about to let go of her, but she wrapped her arms around his hips to prevent him from moving away from her. "Quinn," tears began dripping onto his hospital clothing, "Quinn . . . what did the doctor tell you?"
Quinn loosely wrapped his arms around her, his hand leisurely rubbing her back. "He told me that I could die any day now."
She hugged him tighter. "And what about your family? What will they do?"
"Screw them. They never cared for me anyway."
Rashel never grasped that no one, besides herself, visited Quinn in the hospital. She buried her face in his neck. "Quinn?"
"Hmm?"
Rashel tilted her chin up to give him a kiss. "I love you too. I really, really love you." The somnolent look in his dark eyes seemed to disappear as his arms hugged her tightly against him.
"You do?" he asked, face pressed on her shoulder.
"I love you so much," she whispered. Rashel unexpectedly felt something warm on her shoulder, and she immediately understood that Quinn was crying. His frail shoulders were shaking underneath the baggy hospital shirt he was wearing, and he was sniffing as he tried to control his emotions.
"I'd never thought that this could happen," he mumbled against her shirt. "I think . . . this is already a miracle," Quinn added, moving to place a kiss on her forehead.
"Can I spend the night here?" she asked him, feeling warm as he continued to kiss every inch of her face.
"Please do," he whispered.
That night, after persuading the hospital staff to allow Rashel to stay overnight with him, Rashel lay in bed with Quinn as he carefully made another crane. The feeling was different—it didn't seem like it was a normal crane that he was making; although when he finished creating the red crane, it looked like the other cranes.
"One thousand," Rashel mumbled sleepily as Quinn wrapped an arm around her and began rubbing her arm. Her eyes felt heavy but she didn't want to fall asleep before Quinn. She didn't want to fall asleep before him. She was scared.
"One thousand cranes," Quinn murmured, his hand on her arm slowly stopping. She didn't want him to stop because it felt so soothing. What he said rang a bell from the back of her mind, but she couldn't seem to grasp it. One thousand cranes, one thousand cranes . . . one thousand cranes . . .
"Make a thousand cranes and it will grant you a wish," was what she heard him say. But she was already falling asleep when he was talking, and the last thing she heard was his weak chuckle as her dreams engulfed her.
The next day, Rashel woke up, still in Quinn's arms. He was already awake, smiling.
"Good morning," he greeted. He kissed her forehead chastely.
"Good morning," she said back, easing herself from him. He probably couldn't feel his arms because she slept on them for so long. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired," Quinn replied. He suddenly flinched and grabbed onto his abdomen, deep breaths escaping him. He wasn't speaking. He was only gasping in pain.
"Quinn?" Rashel asked in panic. "I'll call the nurse, okay? I'll call her right now." She pushed the button that signals the nurse as she rubbed his back—trying to soothe him. Her eyes were already getting watery. "Quinn, everything's going to be fine, okay? It's going to be fine." It looked like he couldn't hear her through his painful coughing and painful gasps. Rashel was terrified to the point that she began crying as she tried to reassure that Quinn was going to be alright.
The nurse then barged in with the doctor following behind, and there were other hospital staff prying her away from Quinn. She didn't want to let go, but they were persistently pulling her away from him. Everything became a blur to her then. The tears couldn't stop falling from her eyes as she watched the doctor and nurses try to relieve Quinn from his pain. She kept telling him that she loved him so much, that she would love him forever, that—God, she loved him so, so much.
And then she saw him turn his head to look at her, his eyes half-shut, his face paler than ever, a tiny smile on his face—and slowly, oh-so-slowly, his eyes shut for the final time. Rashel cried harder as the doctor performed CPR on him, using the machines that sent electrical shocks to the heart.
She kept waiting. One . . . two . . . three . . . but his heart wasn't starting up. His heart was tired, not beating—dead. Dead like her mother. Dead like Quinn.
Dead. She swallowed and buried her face in her hands, crying. Four weeks, and he was dead. Even before the doctor told her that Quinn was dead, she already knew. He was exhausted after fighting for that long. What could he have been fighting for? The thought made her sorrowful mood even worse as she caressed Quinn's face with her hand.
"Can you give me fifteen minutes with him?" Rashel murmured hoarsely to the doctor. The doctor agreed and hurriedly moved out of the room with his nurses.
"Quinn," Rashel whispered, "I love you. I love you so, so much." She placed her chin on the bed, next to his face, as she continued to stroke his smooth, pale face. "Thank you so much for everything. For the memories, for the experiences—I loved spending all those times with you." Big tears dropped from her eyes. "I would have never changed any of it. I wish we could've met sooner—I . . ." She suddenly remembered all the cranes he gave her and saw that single red crane crushed underneath him, just barely peeking out from underneath his back. She pulled it out, recalling what he told her last night. She tenderly kissed his forehead. "I love you." Rashel hugged the red crane to her chest. The one thousandth crane. "I wish we could be together."
And so, on that same day, her wish came true.
With all my heart, I make these folded cranes.
I prayed a lot.
And I folded a lot.
In no time we had a thousand cranes.
A/N: I hoped you liked it Jen-darling! I haven't been writing lately (instead, I've been drawing!) so I'm HELLA rusty. Still, I hoped you liked it! :) The italics at the bottom are from a poem called A Thousand Cranes by Itaya Sayuri. :) Hope you had an awesome birthday Jen-darling! :D Oh and if I did anything wrong, please feel free to tell me! by PM or review, I don't mind. thanks again!