The Cancer Patient (Story base on John Green's award-winning novel The Fault in Our Stars)- By MissTheoretical (In Progress)
It was a cool autumn morning as I was driving home from a night with Hazel and her family. The bright, pale sunlight gave the trees a washed out colour and made the grass a pasty green. I had decided that I would email Peter Van Houten regarding Hazel and his extraordinary novel, An Imperial Affliction. Other than that, my day would consist of gaming, preferably Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn, and visiting Isaac and joining him in whatever blind man games he had lined up while he rambled about Monica, his ex-girlfriend. By rambling, I mean the typical 'bitching' that a non-blind person does when their partner dumps them when they go blind from cancer. My car shuddered to a stop about 7 feet away from the traffic lights, proving the struggles that go with having a fake leg. The light turned green, and the car jolted forward, almost ramming straight into a lamppost. I sighed inwardly, silently cursing whatever higher power had it in for me and my leg (more like a plastic replacement leg). At least I could say with confidence that I was NEC, something the majority of cancer patients could not say. Pulling up to my house, a wave of depression suddenly hit me. This happens fairly often, as, after all, I am an ex-cancer patient, and most cancer patients (or ex-cancer patients) get depression. It is merely on of the side effects of dying. Hazel Grace says most profoundly bad things are side effects of dying, which I would disagree with. Some of them are side effects of mental health, and some of them are side effects of event or even a person's state of mind. The rest of them are a mixture between side effects of dying, and, in my opinion, side effects of side effects of dying. In my case, it was a mixture of being a side effect of dying and a side effect of knowing I'll never do anything useful and worthwhile in my life, I'll never do anything people would remember. I was just another single soul in a whole universe of them. I was nothing special, I didn't stand out, the only reason people noticed me was because of my fake leg and my terrible driving, and all I would want is to make a difference, but that would never happen. Oh, the joys of existential crisis. Clambering out of the car, through my front door and into my room, I sat down at my desk and struggled to control the heaviness over my heart. It felt like someone was slowly crushing my heart, deliberately taking their time to make me suffer as much as possible. I closed my eyes as my heart rate increased struggling to keep my breathing under control as a single tear rolled down my cheek. Keep it together, Augustus, keep it together. I opened my eyes as the pain subsided, still trying to shake it off. That was the worst one yet, and I started to question whether that was just from the depression. It felt as though there might have been some physical pain there, I was damn near brought to my knees. I shrugged off that thought. Of course there was nothing wrong. Just a side effect of dying.