When I Die [Wattys 2016]

Chapter 42: We Found Each Other In The Dark

Please enjoy! This was a fun chapter to write. It's a bit longer than usual, but I think it's worth it. Comment and vote! I love your feedback. ❤

The day of Prom came quickly and I was very unprepared when it did. The day before was spent sick, wrapped in blankets on the bathroom floor and then the bedroom floor with a bucket beside my head. I'd started a new medication which was absolutely destroying me from the inside out. I wasn't fevered, my mom concluded, which was a good sign. No infection, no virus. My head was killing me. If I sat up too quickly, the dizziness overcame me. I found no relief throughout the day, but by night I'd started to feel slightly human again. As my mom hemmed the pants to my tux at the kitchen table, she raised the question I was trying so desperately to avoid. I was lying on the couch bouncing my foot trying and failing to get comfortable.
"Are you sure you'll be able to go, son?"
I closed my eyes. I didn't want to even think about not going.
"I'm fine. It will be fine. Are you done hemming?" I asked, slightly annoyed, my voice shaking from my bouncing.
"Just about. You know, Leo, if you can't go, you can't go. You need to be honest with yourself," she said, matter-of-factly, as if not going to prom was a viable option.
"Mom please, just finish the pants?" I pleaded. She nodded.
I rolled onto my side and cradled my chest in my arms. It felt like fire inside. I breathed in slow, steady breaths and couldn't do any more than that. I wasn't dying this very second, and that scared me a bit. What would I feel when I did? It had to be worse than now. Maybe this wasn't that bad, maybe I was just weak. Maybe I had a low tolerance for pain. How would I know how bad this was supposed to feel?
I slept off and on all day and into the night. That evening I moved upstairs around eight. I slept all night, it was like I was practicing for dying.

The next morning, my worried mother woke me at around ten. My head was pounding and I felt particularly weak. For the first time, I let myself wonder if I was pushing myself too much.

"Leo, how are you feeling?" She'd asked.

"Fine," I'd lied.

"Leo," she'd scolded.

"I swear," I'd lied again.

She'd finished the tux pants and taken them in three more inches. I was shrinking. The cancer was eating me alive.

Throughout the day, I tried to psyche myself up. I even forced myself to eat a bit. I wanted to do this for Myra. After this, I could die. I'd ruined our Valentines. She deserved this one night. I wanted it to feel normal. I wanted her to be able to look back on her senior prom and be happy.

That afternoon, I slipped on the tuxedo pants and buttoned up my white shirt. I slipped on the tuxedo jacket and pulled on my socks. Getting dressed on a normal day was pure torture, today was no different, if anything it was worse. I was exhausted by the time I finished. My dad helped me tie my tie and patted my shoulder. He'd been different since our talk at my birthday party. I was starting to see the side of him that kept my mother with him. I started to see who he could be, or maybe who he was all along. He pulled me in for a hug just about every day. He told me regularly that he loved me and asked how I was. It was endearing. I just wished we could have had this before it was too late.

Everyone made their rounds taking photos with me once I was dressed. I looked myself up and down in the full-length mirror for a long while. This body, broken and bruised and battered, thin from rejecting food against its own good, dressed up in an outfit that is rare and beautiful, something you wear with pride. Well, I wore this skin and these bones with pride, even if my translucent skin showed every battered vein and these bones ached with disease, I was proud of who I was. My body was a mere vessel, containing the rest of me, the parts of me that wished they could live on long after my body decided it was time to go. My body would give in, but my spirit would not. Unfortunately, you can't have one without the other, you either go down in the night as a body kept alive by machines, though your spirit is long gone, or you die screaming and shouting that you're not ready, because your spirit is alive and well but your body has no more to give. I had a feeling I'd be the latter.