J.H. 86 | The Inevitable Nothingness

Seventeen | Parker

HAVE YOU EVER WOKEN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT because your lungs have filled with fluid? Well, neither had I, until a week after Xander died. It's a called a Malignant Pleural Effusion, and it basically means the cancer in my lungs has become too much for my body to drain fluids from my lungs, and my body drowns itself from the inside.

It's excruciatingly painful, and it's how I wake up on Saturday evening after I'd spent the entire day with Jack before his game. I'd fallen asleep around 6pm, because I was increasingly more exhausted these days, and woke around 8pm with a sharp pain in my chest that got progressively bigger.

I started crying, hard, and gasp for air, but no air would come. I didn't even need to alert the nurses, they heard my cries from the halls and were in my room in seconds. Olive is there too, eyes wide as she watches it all unfold, her hands shaking and her face pale.

She didn't want to lose two friends in one week.

I cry so hard it hurts, but then again, I don't know what hurts more at this point, but I'm clutching at my chest as I scream in pain, wanting it to all stop.

I'm given a sedative, which works fairly quickly, and then I'm being lifted by the nurses to a new bed, and wheeled out of the room as I lay curled in a ball, gasping for air that I can't find.

"She needs an emergency lung pump," one of the doctors spoke over me as they ran, guiding me through the hospital. "Prepare theatre ten, now."

My eyes flicker up, though everything is hazy and the world is spinning, and there's Jack. He came right after his game, just like he said he would, even though I told him I'd probably be asleep.

His eyes follow my gurney, his face still, void of any emotion. I reach a hand out for him, and our fingers brush as we pass, but I don't have the energy to call for him, or to look back.

Olive has her arms around his neck in seconds, pulling him into a hug as Jack watches me round the corner, then disappear.

I've had surgery a few times, so I knew how it went, and usually I'm afraid of the anaesthetic, but tonight, I welcome it, knowing that as the surgeon counts down from ten with me, that all the pain will soon be gone.

"Count with me, Parker," he instructs me.

And I do.

"Ten," I croak. My eyes watch as the doctors ready the pump, working so quickly I'm almost surprised. "Nine."

"Good, keep going."

"Eight," I whisper, my eyes fluttering closed, and I see Jack. He's beautiful. He's got this stupid pretty smile on his lips as he blinks at me, laughing about something I can't make out. "Seven."

He's surrounded by grass, and blue sky, and yellow wildflowers.

"I love you," I say out loud, but I'm talking to him. "Tell him I love him."

"Tell him yourself," the surgeon says strongly, like he means it. "You are not giving up on us today, young lady."

"Hurts."

"Keep counting."

"Six . . . Five . . ."

And the pain stops.