SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WATTYS!
Brooklyn Carson loves Avery Harlow, it's practically written in stone that he always has and always will. Travelling back to his home town was never going to be easy knowing she definitely doesn't feel the same way a...
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AVERY knew she should feel lucky, that was what everyone always told her, the nurses, her Mother, the newspapers and the stupid motivational app which her best friend Kristen had signed her up to. They all told her that she should feel ever so lucky that the warning signs were spotted as soon as they had been, that they'd managed to get Dr. Jenner on such short notice and most importantly that she was now in a clinic that wasn't designed to feel like one kitted out with the newest equipment money could by and all the luxuries her Father's bank account could afford.
But she didn't feel lucky, not one bit.
And why should she?
No one had the right to dictate to her how she was meant to feel, it had taken less than a year for her body to fail her, for her once toned arms to begin to wilt like sunflowers which hadn't been given enough sunlight, for the never-ending nosebleeds to start and the worst part of all, the weight loss. That was ironic, in her past life she and Kristen had often stood in front of mirrors talking about the weight they needed to lose, Avery had always wanted skinnier legs and now she would give anything to be back in her old body, to wake up every day with the safety and security of a fully functioning body which wouldn't shut down on her at any moment.
Breakfast was an ice-cold smoothie sipped through a straw in a chilled glass held by her Mother, smoothies were about the most soothing thing she could have when her throat became swollen as it had today. Her Mother peered at her anxiously and Avery fixed a smile on her face once she'd finished, it was all just a well-crafted act. She pretended to be strong and full of hope whenever her Mother was around.
Riley Harlow had always been full of optimism, she'd tried to give her daughter the same outlook on life, even when she'd found out that the test results that had come back from Avery's blood tests had revealed something far more malicious than a common fever she'd taken out every single book about cancer and its treatments from the local library, she'd come up with a plan for how they were going to fight what life had thrown at them without Avery's Father's substantial money. Of course, once he'd found out, he had travelled the measly five miles that separated his new home from theirs and talked about how he would do everything he could to support them in this difficult time. He'd spoken as if he was detached from the situation and paid for her hospital bills with the air of a martyr.
At first, Avery had felt completely fine, in fact, she'd wondered if the doctors had managed to falsely diagnose her, life had gone on she'd taken her temperature each morning and nervously brushed her hair ready to be brave if the symptoms began to show and she needed to go to chemotherapy. But nothing had happened after exactly three and a half weeks after her diagnosis, life had gone on. Avery had carried on attending her day job, she'd carried on meeting her boyfriend Cameron in her breaks and laughing with him like nothing else mattered, shadowing a journalist for the Herald Gazette, and for a moment it had seemed like everything was going to be fine and they had all let out a sigh of relief, for a moment.
And then came one night in August where Avery had woken up with a chill that her Mother couldn't seem to get rid of, that was the day where everything had begun.
It wasn't as if life was as bad as it could have been, no one had abandoned her who she truly cared about, and she didn't despise the hospital, she just hated the defenceless feeling of lying in bed whilst machines tracked her every movement and someone else decided her life for her. Everything that had once seemed so important to her, winning Prom Queen, having perfectly straightened hair, clinging onto Cameron so he wouldn't realise that she wasn't good enough for him and hating her Father, these all seemed to pale in significance compared to cancer, nothing made sense anymore.
She usually did this throughout the days that all seemed to blend into one another, she sat in her bed and dreamed about what could have been and what was her life to live. These musings were interrupted by two abrupt knocks on the door. Mentally calculating the hours she expected the next person in the room to walk in would be a nurse bearing a food tray, she'd specifically asked that all traces of time be removed from the room, clocks, watches and she'd even turned off the time on her phone she hated the constant reminder that whilst she sat in a hospital room the rest of the world went on. People were out there making new memories, laughing, loving and most importantly living when these might well be her last memories, her last days.
The person who walked into her room certainly wasn't a nurse, for one she didn't have any male nurses and this person was decidedly male, her heart sped up just a little bit, betraying her, thinking it was Cameron who she hadn't heard from for one hundred and twenty days, not that she'd been counting. From her position on the bed the large machine which detected her pulse blocked the new entrant into her room, she had to use her palms to support her elbows and painfully hoist herself up into a seating position.
Once she had, she wished she hadn't.
There standing in front of her, looking the same except for the hair, same brown eyes, same intent expression and the same horrifyingly touchable face, she wanted nothing more than to be able to leap out of this bed and fling her arms around him in the way that they had done a million times before.
Standing in front of her was her best friend, not Kristen who she had only met recently, but her real best friend, the one person in the world who knew each and every one of her terrible secrets, who didn't have to have moments recounted to him because he knew them all and the person she had thought the most about, even more than Cameron since she had seen his head disappear through the departures gate at the airport.
Avery could see the mental breaking down of this situation through his eyes the way he was trying to piece it all together, they'd once been able to read each other like open books and that's when she remembered, this wasn't how things had always been, they weren't living in a happy world where nothing had happened to severe the easy friendship they had before.
He had left her.
The words echoed in her mind getting steadily louder and louder and all her happiness at seeing Brooklyn faded as quickly as it had emerged.
What she wanted to do was scream, to claw at her now hairless scalp and demand that he leave, but she had no fight left inside of her.
The words that escaped her mouth were weak and pitiful, she didn't want to know what he was doing here, she wanted to voice her happiness that he was here, she was so very conflicted two parts of her fighting for dominance, not sure whether to weep for joy or to weep with anguish at her predicament.
Brooklyn's own words were sharper than she'd ever heard, he spoke in a detached way about how he'd found his way here, how he had felt some kind of duty to be there for her and it felt like an echo of her Father's words and her head was spinning out of control and all she wanted was for him to leave.
The last thing she wanted to do in front of Brooklyn Carter at this moment was to cry, but she felt overwhelmed, couldn't help herself, the tears that hadn't come when she'd lost her hair, when she'd bled so much she'd been sure there was no blood left in her body, when she'd heard her Mother sobbing on the phone, when she'd become pale and lost all hope of her former self-returning and when Cameron had dumped her by text of all ways she hadn't cried but now faced with Brooklyn and the fact that this was all so scarily real, she couldn't help the tears from flooding out of her eyes, from drowning her and her arms collapsed from underneath her, and he was there right next to her and all she wanted to do was rewind her life back to the Summer of 2016 where everything had been just fine.
When she'd been desired rather than pitied, where she'd felt the sun on her back and when the worst thing to ever happen to her had been a sprained wrist from falling out of a tree.
