Cancer.
It's such a small word.
I keep repeating it over and over in my head, but I just can't understand it.
How can such a little word cause so much pain?
These six letters can cause entire worlds to fall apart – families ripped to shreds, a whole life ruined; not to mention the agony of the physical effects. And the physical part is torture.
What have I done to deserve this terrible suffering?
I ask God this time and time again; but he doesn't seem to hear my prayers, let alone answer them.
And so I wait.
Wait to live, wait to die.
Waiting for anything that will take me away from the prick of the sharp syringe, or the throbbing in my head from the anaesthetic. Or even the foul chemical stench that is always lurking around in the hospital corridors.
I hate that smell.
That odour is there to cover up something bad that the hospital is always trying to hide – something so awful that nobody must ever find out about it.
And I am petrified. Absolutely petrified. Petrified that it will come and grasp me in the night, when I have no one and I will have to face it alone.
Because after, there is just the unknown.
And nobody has ever come back from the unknown.
But I will have to go there soon, whether I like it or not.
The land of the dead.