Under the Full Moon
Prologue
"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing to do with it." –W. Somerset Maugham
If Only.
Anthony Miller shook his head vigorously, trying to defog his sleep-deprived mind. Dark circles were present beneath his almost black eyes, which were bloodshot. Being this tired and studying just didn't work out very well. And whatever anyone said, pulling an all-nighter was not fun, nor should it be part of the college experience. Of course, it was bound to happen, especially if you had a big test tomorrow in sociology on the behavior and influences of criminals and, on top of that, had to deal with the imminent death of a family member. No, in this case, an all-nighter was definitely going to happen.
Anthony's eyelids drooped and his head slipped off of his hand. The impact of his head onto the book didn't wake him, though, and he slept, sitting in his hard wooden chair, head on book, in jeans, tennis shoes, and all. How he could ever sleep in the most uncomfortable positions was unfathomable to his older sister, but she found it endearing ever since he was four and she was six.
Felicity Miller, on the other hand, sat in a plastic chair that was pulled up to her mother's bedside in the darkened hospital room, head in hands. Tears streamed down her cheeks, plastering her raven-colored hair to her face. Her shoulders shook in silent sobs as her mother slept next to her, looking thin and frail and anything but peaceful. How does anyone ever say that people look peaceful in death? she thought, wiping her tears with a tissue. Maybe they were talking about people who died from heart attacks or something. Certainly not cancer.
If her mother had looked bad before, she looked horrible now. Her curly red hair was completely gone because of the chemotherapy and she looked so skinny, she was practically anorexic. Her wrists were so small that Felicity could wrap her hand around one and her fingers would overlap. It was sickening to see.
Sitting up, Felicity pulled her black cell phone from her small purse by her feet. The nurse had just informed her that her mother only had hours left. She dialed the number she now knew by heart and waited for her brother to pick up.
The shrill ring of her brother's phone woke him with a start. He blinked blearily and checked the caller ID. Seeing his sister's number made his heart drop into his stomach. He answered without any falsities of happiness or hopefulness. "Felicity?" he asked, his voice still thick from sleep. "What's wrong?"
"It's Mom," she burst out with a sob. It took a few minutes of coaxing for her to be able to recover herself enough to talk again. "The nurses said she…she only has a few hours left!" Felicity was sobbing again by the time she finished her sentence.
"Felicity, I'll be there as soon as I can. Hold on, okay?" he said in a rush, already grabbing his jacket and shrugging it on. Anthony felt like screaming every curse he knew at the sky. He heard a feeble 'okay' from the other end of the phone and shoved it in his pocket. He hurried toward Felicity, feeling numb as he hailed a cab to go toward the hospital.
Far away in the night, the Millers' mother was not the only person in danger of losing her life.