I'll Be Superhuman (One Direction Fanfiction)

Chapter 12- Niall- One Year

~Sorry I didn't update this weekend! 1D Day was going on and I knew it was pointless to try and update then because everyone else would be too busy to read ;) and then I was just too busy 'til now. Grr. So here's more Niall. And sorry if I get medical stuff wrong. I have no clue how doctors break news like this to their patients, too. So... Yeah....~

The scan was pretty uneventful. Niall just laid on a bed that moved into some kind of machine and held still as best as he could. Then he and Maura went to get his new pain medication and took a taxi home. Bill had left before the X-Rays on his arm was done.

When Niall got home, he took the first dose of his pills and went to bed. They kicked in pretty quickly and the pain in his shoulder and head started to fade to a dull ache. He realized how tired he was and he fell asleep in a matter of minutes.

* * *

The next day, the hospital called and said they looked over Niall's MRI and wanted to talk about the results. Maura drove them both there and they met the same doctor from the night before in his office.

“Hello, Niall,” He smiled at them, but it didn't quite seem to reach his eyes. Niall looked at the small gold name plate on his desk. Dr. Schmidt.

“Hi,” Niall said politely as he and his mum took a seat in front of the desk.

“How's your arm?” Dr. Schmidt asked.

“Could be better,” Niall said.

“So I've been looking at you MRI scans,” He said, getting straight to the point. He pulled out a flimsy almost clear sheet and put it on a board. Niall could just barely make out the outlines of it before the doctor turned a light on and it highlighted everything. “Niall, this is what a perfectly healthy brain looks like.” He made a small circular motion around it as if he were pointing out something in particular. “But on your scan, I'm afraid we've found something.” He pulled down the healthy brain chart and put up another one. The light on the board was still on and they could see everything perfectly. Maura gasped at the sight.

Niall only stared, trying to process what he was seeing. It looked like the healthy brain, except there was a large, white mass near the back of it. It stuck out from the darker parts of his brain like a sore thumb. Except it was much bigger than that. Much bigger. It was the size of a small apple.

“Niall, I'm sorry to tell you this,” The doctor looked at him and he seemed to age 20 years with the sadness that was written all over his face. “But you have cancer.”

Maura let out a sob next to him, but Niall only stared at the mass on his MRI. When the hell did this happen? Wasn't there some way he could have noticed something like that growing inside of him? But then he realized, he did. The head aches.

“The tumor is so large, it's causing a lot of pressure inside your brain,” Dr. Schmidt said, sitting down in his desk. “It's giving you those head aches, making you pass out, sensitivity to light and sound...”

“So can't you just, like... Take it out?...” Niall couldn't find the right words to say.

Dr. Schmidt looked down at his hands folded on his desk and sighed. He licked his lips before he looked back up at the boy and spoke. “It's so deep inside your brain we can't remove it without causing you severe damage or maybe even... Killing you. It's only going to get bigger.” Niall's heart shattered with each word the doctor said. His mum was trying to contain her crying. She hadn't said anything since they got into the office. “A few rounds of chemo therapy and radiation might be able to shrink it down, but not enough for a safe surgery. It would only be enough to give you about a year.” Maura lost it then.