Chapter 4
When I got sick, everything that was my life came and shattered around me. I couldn't do sports. I took up gymnastics. My doctor said that was something I could do, as long as I didn't get too tired. But I have never been one to follow the rules. And that is what has killed me.
I realise that I'm not dead. Not yet at least. But I am a dead person walking. Or talking. When I heard the news that my cancer was terminal, to be honest, I had to look it up what it meant. My death wasn't going to be some big dramatic one. It was going to be of me lying in a hospital bed somewhere, too tired to go on.
That's what leukaemia did to me. Is doing to me. Some days, it is a struggle to get food into my mouth. Others I feel like I did before leukaemia hit me. And Waller looked into my life. Those days are like once in a blue moon.
Those days I look around me, at people going around on their daily lives, and I wonder, if they ever stop to think how damn lucky they are to not have to go to into the hospital every 2 weeks, that every time they have a cold or a fever, they have machines hooked into their blood stream and can't get out of bed for a week.
They probably think that their life is hard because their presentation at work didn't go as good as they hoped or that the cookie they got at school had 2 chocolate chips instead of 3. I hadn't been to school in a very long time and whenever a doctor asked where I went to school, I always said I went to school abroad.
Across the sea. Yeah, my fantasy. I can't even remember what it was like to be in a classroom. It has been almost a decade. To get away from my thoughts and all the people I go to the gymnasium that I was very surprised about. I never would have thought that Belle Reve had a gym. It has mostly gymnastics equipment.
High bars and ropes to swing on. If I didn't have cancer and I wasn't made to be in this place, I would want to go pro with gymnastics. But no. In my dreams, something that doesn't really happen often, I imagine dancing and flying on the gymnastics equipment. But like I said, I don't dream often.
What is the point?
I know that it will never happen and I am fooling myself if I think for a second that it could ever happen. I like going on the ropes and stretching over them. If I was to fall, god, it would hurt like hell, but I rarely ever fall. I heard the door to the gym open just as I was going upside down. I readjusted myself to see who it was.
Eoghan Griggs.
"You're going to fall." He said. "And? What do you care?" I said. I let go of the rope and let myself drop down until I was a metre from the floor. I then dropped down and looked at Eoghan's horrified face. "If you fell you wouldn't be here." He said. "But I am." I replied, picking up my jacket. "Your only, what... 16? You should be more careful. People shouldn't die so young." I stopped.
"But they do." I replied after a moment. "Anyway, Waller told me to tell you that Task Force X were dispatched half an hour ago and she needs you in Command." He said, moving on. Eoghan went to leave. "Why?" I asked swinging on my jacket. Eoghan turned around at the door frame. "Go and find out." He said and he left.