Hi! Welcome to my new story. It's a spin-off of my first, Little Wonders, but it can be read with or without having read the first. It starts off with Romeo's diagnosis and will follow the show's version of the storyline with my own twists. Anyway, I've had several people asking me to incorporate Romeo's cancer storyline into L.W, but since I've already planned the story without it, I've decided to write either this as a one-shot, or a short story if there's enough interest.
Chapter One:
Cloud nine. Romeo and Indi were floating care-freely up in the clouds, to the skies and beyond having just opened Summer Bay's 'Body and Soul' Gym.
It was unbelievable how a series of words could completely tear that all apart for Romeo Smith. Entirely.
"It's a stage four melanoma. It's spread to your liver, your lungs… your brain. Some people have survived" Sid held his breath momentarily. Romeo was oblivious to the pause. It all still felt like a tonne of bricks coming down on him. On his life.
"…For up to a year."
The painstaking words stabbed all over Romeo like piercing knives.
Melanoma.
Spread.
Four.
Liver.
Lungs.
Brain.
… Up to a year.
One year. He'd been married for one year. His infant son wasn't even near one year old. The hope for one more year of life that Sid, Romeo's father-in-law might as well have been one day as far he was concerned.
Hearing those words, he didn't know how to feel. He felt sick to his stomach. He felt numb. He felt overwhelmed. His head was ringing. The pain in his shoulder that had been cause of the present felt like shooting arrows. A lump in his throat ached. He struggled to breath.
He hadn't been able to muster up the courage to tell his wife the news that cancer was threatening their dreams, their life together, while it had been overcome-able in Romeo's eyes; a melanoma was a short term problem that they were going to have to and going to be able to overcome.
Now that he knew that it was going to change her life completely, knowing that eventually he was going to have no choice in leaving the love of his life as a widowed single-mother, Romeo had no idea how he was going to break his wife's heart. How he was going to be the one to tear their perfect life apart.
He was down in the pits, while Indi was at home, floating along, blissfully unaware, on their previously shared cloud of happiness.
And that was only Indi.
For the first moment since becoming a father, just months earlier, he mentally cursed the event. The happiness and joy that it had brought both himself and his wife with the prospect of a lifetime with their then-newborn baby boy together was going to be something else he would be forced to leave behind; the same little boy that he realized was unlikely to have any memory of him. His little boy who wasn't going to have a father…
Disbelief, shock, pain. None of those words even came close to the hit of emotion that he was feeling right now.
Sid was listing off treatment options that passed through Romeo's ears without his even recognizing their presence, while all of Romeo's pain, physical and emotional as his heart was gutted with pain, collaborated themselves to set Romeo's legs into action, hurrying him out of the hospital room that he wished and hoped he could erase from his memory… The hospital room that Sid had not followed him out of.
He was used to reactions such as Romeo's, he'd been the bearer of bad news to all too many families and individuals, but as he watched the tall blonde struggle down the hallway, Sid was hit the hardest now than with any of his other patients.
For doctors, professionalism was a must. He'd spent months preparing himself in his studies for preparing himself of bearing such bad news, practicing the art for the 23 years of his career.
No amount of training or practice could have numbed or diluted the difficulty of opening Romeo's test results and delivering them to him personally. You're not taught how to tear your son-in-law -whom was growing as close as a son's- life apart. You're not taught how to deal with knowing that your daughter and grandson's life will soon be void of a husband and father... They just don't train you for that.
#
Down on the beach, Romeo was sitting on the sandbank, watching out as the waves went in and out and in and out. The smooth repetition in a calming rhythm, numbed him to the world around himself until he felt a hand on his shoulder, having missed the calls of his name. He could have missed an entire day without even thinking twice about it.
"Hey, why didn't you answer me? I was calling out to you" Indi questioned as she carefully sat down next to her husband.
"Sorry. I'm in my own world right now, just thinking," he croaked without focus as his eyes settled on the baby in Indi's arms. "Can I have a hold?"
Indi didn't think twice, she didn't even have to reply as she willingly passed her husband their child. "So where have you been? I checked the gym and Heath said you'd been gone all morning."
He could have told her there and then, shattering her dreams, her life as she knew it. But to Romeo it felt almost physically impossible to do so.
So instead he didn't lie, but he also didn't tell her.
"I met up with your dad; we were chatting for a while."
"Secret men's business? Hey? Hey, hey?" Indi joked with a smile as she nudged Romeo in his side, before seizing the opportunity of their closeness, shuffling slightly closer to him, relaxing her head down as she rested it on his shoulder.
"Yeah... Something like that."
Their conversation had gradually been lulling into a silence, without either of them realizing it. The couple were as oblivious to the silence as Indi was to Romeo's inner turmoil, while she contently snuggled into her husband's form.
Indi was also oblivious to what Romeo would have given to gain even just a fraction of her mindset, her perspective... Her untainted, shatter-free view of their perfect family; their perfect life which they had mutually shared mere hours earlier, but for Romeo Smith, there was going back now.
The end. Or is it? That's up to you and whether or not you lot liked it/want more.
Enjoy the long weekend!