Day 29
Derek had technically been living at the hospital for almost a month by now, and it was one of the toughest experiences he'd ever have to go through. He would spend his nights sitting on a chair placed right beside her bed, his head resting upon it as he'd try to get some sleep which would never come.
Casey's once beautiful body was withering away with each passing day, and he was starting to feel unable to keep her from falling into a down spiral of sadness and withdrawal. She was becoming way thinner than she already used to be, her flaky skin getting dull and bruised. She'd get cold so easily that they had stopped going to the hospital garden for their usual walk, so all she could do in one day was just taking brief, quick tours around the ward or just staying in bed until a nurse would come to administer a new drug into her IV.
"Come on, Case, you gotta eat this."
"What's the point if it keeps coming back up after a while?"
He placed the plate containing her soup down on her bedside table again, sighing heavily. He was running out of patience, he could feel it. He went to sit by the bed again, his hands holding the back of his neck as he was trying to figure out a way to keep calm. "Case, you have to. You haven't eaten anything today. Please, baby…"
"Derek, I just want to sleep."
He hated it whenever she'd say that, always stressing the last word. She was starting to never make it sound as if she just wanted to take a nap and it really bugged him to think about the many meanings she could be giving to the verb 'sleep'. He tilted his head backwards, staring at the ceiling as he let out another sigh. "Case, please. Please, just help me out here."
"Baby! You'll never believe it: I got all A's on my finals! It's amazing, I thought I was screwed! I would've never possibly done so well if it wasn't for you… you really saved my butt, Case. Oh my gosh, thank you so much!"
A huge smile crept up over Casey's face at the sight of him running towards her from across the living room, grabbing her by the waist to lift her off the floor, spinning her around in a circle before putting her down again.
She laughed as she gave him a quick peck. "Well, what can I say! I was glad I could help you!"
"You always do."
"Hi Casey! How ya doing?" asked Nurse Jackie, cheerfully smiling as she stepped into the room.
Derek's face lightened up, hoping she could raise Casey's mood, but the girl remained silent, turning her head to the window, instead.
"Well…" began the nurse "good thing is, yesterday was your last day of your chemo cycle. Today we're just gonna take some blood samples and Doctor Welsh will give you the results of the bone marrow biopsy you took a few days ago…"
"You heard that, Case? That's good news, right? Maybe we're done with the chemo." Derek was smiling widely as she kept ignoring him, blankly staring ahead of her. When she finally turned over to face him, she gave him a weak smile too, gently nodding. "Yeah, Derek."
Nurse Jackie rapidly checked Casey's IV, and then quickly ushered herself out of the room.
"Der…?"
He promptly got closer as she began to graze his face with her fingers, a sad smile still on her delicate face. Although he couldn't help but notice how much bigger the dark circles beneath her eyes had got, he was still quite surprised to see her spontaneously showing him affection, seeing as she'd been avoiding any sort of actual conversation or physical contact with him over the last couple of days.
"Der…" Her voice was quiet and calm "You know I'm still not done yet." She kept caressing the back of his neck, entangling her fingers in his hair from time to time. A small tear rolled over her cheek, but he instantly leaned over to wipe it off with his thumb, as other ones formed into his own eyes.
"I know, baby. But you will be, soon."
He actually knew there was little hope of that being her last cycle of chemo. Even without knowing the results from the biopsy, they could both already tell Casey was still not ok, seeing as she had started to bleed from her ears too in the past week, every then and there. The two of them stood still, eyes staring into each other's.
"I miss you holding me and just sleeping next to me."
Derek smiled, letting his head rest on her pillow, so that he could kiss her earlobe. "Me too" she rolled over to face him, their noses only an inch apart. "Well, at least now I wouldn't be waking up with your hair in my mouth as usual!"
She started to laugh, and for one moment he saw her once genuine laughter back on her face, briefly relieving his immense sadness. But then she just kept laughing so hard, it quickly turned into silent crying.
"Babe, c'mon. It'll be alright. I swear. We'll always find our way to be next to each other. Heck, may the doctors kill me, I'd make love to you right away, if only I didn't smell like this!" he chuckled, faking a weak smile.
"Derek, c'mon… I might be on drugs, but I'm still lucid enough to understand I might probably be the furthest from being attractive right now. And plus you don't smell."
"Hey, hey!" he quickly interrupted her "Don't think that. Ok, I may have more hair than you do but… I never made love to your hair. I used make love to you, Case. And God only knows how much I would love to do that once more at this very moment."
As much as she could feel the sincerity in his voice, Casey sighed, as she turned her head back to the ceiling. "I miss us, Derek. I know you're always here by my side, and I couldn't even begin to express how glad I am I have you here with me, but… I miss how we used to be. I feel like I just keep being mean to you for no reason, as if I was letting cancer get in the way of our relationship and.."
"Now I know it's true
My every road leads to you
And in the hour of darkness
Your light gets me through"
Casey smiled as he finished humming the familiar tune, lightly kissing her forehead. "Yeah, I also miss us watching cartoon movies together on the couch."
"Case…" he stood back up, their eyes still locked on each other's "Baby, you're the strongest person I know. Probably the strongest one on earth actually. So… it might take longer than we thought, but… I know you're gonna beat this. And yeah, that was the typical cliché you would say to any cancer patient, but in your case, that's actually the truth. Just wait and see, baby."
She chuckled as she sat up on the bed to kiss him. He had just expected a quick kiss and was taken aback at how she was deepening it, making it a slow, passionate tongue battle. "Someone's antsy" he murmured, as he leaned over her intending to make her lie back again on the bed, but they were soon unexpectedly forced to break apart as they heard a man clearing his throat from behind them.
"Just what in the world do people here have against knocking…" Derek whispered, visibly irritated as Casey politely greeted Doctor Welsh.
"Uhm, hello Casey, Derek… I'm sorry I interrupted you, but apparently it was best I did. Casey, unfortunately, your results from the biopsy are still not good, seeing as your body is still overproducing white cells. But since those white cells have endured severe genetic modifications due to cancer spreading, you immune system is now very low, so we might want to consider making people around you wear masks and use an antiseptic hand wash each time they enter your room."
Derek looked defeated at the news, although he had pretty much already expected it. "Does this mean she'll have to go through another cycle of chemotherapy?"
"Sadly, yes. But thank goodness we caught the cancer at its earlier stages, so the chances of survival are extremely high, especially thanks to her young age. We'll get started tomorrow with the first chemo agents, but this time they won't be pills and will be administered intravenously right away"
Not too late after Doctor Welsh had left the room, the family came to visit, so that Derek didn't have the chance to hold Casey and comfort her for as much as he'd wanted to. He made sure everyone was wearing a mask before approaching her, and then proceeded to leave the room to go home for a shower as usual.
As he was leaving the building, though, he heard a voice from behind him calling his name. He turned around to face who it was, surprised to see it was Sally.
"Uhm, hey, Sals. Uh, what are you doing here? I thought you were living in Ottawa…"
She smiled widely at him, her scent invading his nostrils. He had always hated it. "No, well, I was, still am, actually. I just got back to stay with my parents for a few weeks. Plus Emily told me about Casey…"
Casey barged into his room, as he could immediately tell she had been crying. He quickly stood up from the bed, hurriedly taking her into his arms. "Case, what's wrong, babe, what happened?"
"Derek, we're screwed… I messed up big…"
Worry spread across his face at her last sentence. "What do you mean? Just tell me what happened…"
"I told Emily about us. I thought she was over you but…"
Derek let himself collapse onto his bed, his eyes fluttering shut as he let out a sigh of frustration. Afraid of his next reaction, she hesitantly kneeled down beside the bed, so that their faces could be on the same level. He opened his eyes and slowly motioned her to lie next to him. He wrapped his arms back around her shoulders as she snuggled closer, silently beginning to cry. He kissed her forehead, trying to calm her down and eventually she was quiet again. "What did she do?"
"She started ranting about how I could've possibly sneaked around behind her back with the guy of her dreams for three months and how this is so sick since we're almost brothers… and I just got so scared 'cause she was looking really mad so I basically started pleading her not to tell anyone but…"
Derek really tried hard to keep himself from slapping his hand onto his forehead, not wanting to make her feel worse about herself. That was really the last thing she should've done.
"Yeah, of course, the Davis' can't just keep their mouth shut." Derek replied in a husky tone.
Everybody had just been called downstairs for an emergency family meeting in the living room. Casey and Derek were the last ones to join them, already fearing what it was going to be about.
"You!" Nora angrily began, threateningly pointing at the two of them still standing at the bottom of the staircase, next to each other. "How could you do this!"
"Anyone minds telling me whether or not I'm in trouble too?" Edwin interrupted, only to be shut up by a glare from Lizzie.
Casey was looking down, already beginning to feel tears forming into her eyes. Her fingers reached out for Derek's hand, as he promptly tightened his grasp around her wrist. "Nora, please, listen, we only…"
"Shut up! Shut the fuck up Derek!" George yelled out of the blue, standing up from the couch. "The Davis' themselves came here this morning to tell us that apparently their daughter has been TERRIBLY SHOCKED with news of your incestuous relationship! Now WE were BEYOND being terribly shocked ourselves!"
Derek rolled his eyes in frustration, anger already burning at the top of his lungs. "Oh God, this is not happening…"
Casey instantly grabbed him by his elbow "Please, Derek, don't make it worse…"
"Yeah, Derek, listen to your new girlfriend! She really knows how to pay some respect to her parents by sleeping around with you!" Nora paused for a few seconds, staring intently into her daughter's eyes "She completely deceived her mother."
"So uhm, still… I don't see why you're here. You and Casey have never been that close anyway."
"But I was close to you. And I figured it would've been nice to just let you know I'm here. For anything." She smiled again, as she tried to reach out to pull him into a hug.
He stepped back. "Uh, yeah, well, thanks. But I'm sure me and Casey will both be just fine…"
"Wait!" she called back as he'd started to turn around to walk away "Uhm… isn't it weird that we both keep saying uhm or uh? We've never been this embarrassed in front of each other…"
"Well, I'm not embarrassed, I'm just tired. Plus I really need to go home to take a shower, and then come back here so that the family can go back home themselves…"
"Why don't you let them stay with her for just one night, instead? They're her family too, Derek, you know. Plus you look like shit."
"Thank you very much."
"You know what I mean. How can you be of any support to her if you can't take care of yourself, first?"
"Sally, you're missing the basic point, here."
"No, D, you are. You can't let yourself get so…"
"Sals, you know I've always been blunt, but spending a month here really made me turn into a very mean and mouthy person too. So please don't make me tell you what I'm thinking now."
She pretended not to hear his last sentence. "Derek, if she really does love you, she'll feel just as much bad to see you like this as you feel anytime you look at her being in this sort of situation…"
"Woah, ok, Sally, that was it." He placed his hands on her shoulder, in an attempt to keep her away from him. "That's the thing, you see? You just don't know what love is, and trust me, you'll never find it if you just expect to keep looking for it without keeping your clothes on. I'm perfectly aware of the fact that I look like shit, and I'm still a whole lotta better than she's doing right now. But I've never felt sad anytime I would look at her. Yeah she's bald and she's got these weird smalls veins creeping up from beneath her skin almost everywhere, but… I feel like the sun itself was shining right on me whenever she smiles back. And I know it's cheesey, and God forbid I should ever say this again, but it's exactly how I feel. I'm not tired. I barely got any sleep at all in the last month and I'm probably losing as much weight as she is but… I just don't think I could care less. I don't feel any physical tiredness. I'm only just so fucking depressed I have to see her like this, puking and just being sick, whereas I could've been waking up with her in my bed every morning, at home… This is just so…"
He had started to break down, and he knew there was no way to stop himself at this point. He had been pushing all his sadness into the back of his mind for weeks by now, wide aware of the fact that it would've only caused Casey some more distress. Nonetheless, discussing his own feelings in front of Sally had just brought to surface what he had tried so hard to conceal. As tears were already straining his cheeks, a slight sense of guilt and shame rushed over him for letting himself cry and simply break down in front of none other than his ex-girlfriend, whereas all he really wanted to do was just to go back on the third floor to his brave little fighter.
She pulled him into a hug and this time he felt just too weak to get away from it. "She's my everything, Sals. She's always been." He whispered into her hair.
"I know, Derek. I knew all along."
They were lying on her bed, her blonde hair spread across his chest as she was resting her head upon his abdomen. "That was amazing, Der."
He kept blankly staring ahead of him, totally not listening to her. "Der?"
"Yeah?" he finally said, looking down to meet her eyes.
She sighed heavily, her eyelids slowly fluttering shut in frustration. "Just tell me why, Der. Why do you always have to keep thinking about…"
"About what!" he angrily cut her off as he sat up, reaching out for his clothes and beginning to get dressed again, visibly irritated.
"You should say 'about whom'".
He pulled back from the hug, smiling at her and slowly wiping away his tears with the hem of his sleeves, his eyes still red and puffy. "Look, Sally, uhm… I'm glad I got to see you again but…"
"Don't worry. I won't come here anymore. And I won't call you either."
His smile grew wider. "Thanks anyways."
"Take care, D…" She was waving her hand as she slowly walked away from him. "I hope she'll get back to normal."
"She will. She'll always come back to me, in the end."
A.N.: Sorry guys, I knew this was long! :D
Thank you so much for reviewing, please keep doing back, feedback is always welcome :D
To those who were wondering whether this will have a happy ending or not… well, I wish I already knew the answer too! Lol! I still have to decide what will happen of Casey. Let me know what you guys think things should end up like, and we'll see about that!
Chapter 5 is gonna be up soon.
