The Struggles Of Waiting ✔

SIX

2059

He was nearly ninety-seven, his birthday only a month or so away. He didn't need to look in a mirror to know that he looked the same as he had for seventy-five long years. People said that as you got older the years seemed to fly by, but for Alexander, every year seemed to take a century.

He was meant to be doing an interview with a popular tv show right after his birthday. He'd forgotten the name of the show mostly because he didn't watch it. It had taken them a couple of months to convince him to come on the show and at this point, he was just doing it so that they would stop bothering. They said it was meant to be about the new technology his company was producing, but he knew that they would barely talk about it. The majority of the interview would be about how he was the oldest person without a soulmate.

He didn't want to talk about it. He was sick of it being the thing that defined who he was. He was the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world, one that produced the majority of the technology people used. He was extremely wealthy, he gave to charity, sponsored children and sports teams and invested money into shelters for the homeless. But all people could talk about was how he was so old and still hadn't found his soulmate.

The age that normal people found their soulmates hadn't changed much, most finding them between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. It was getting to the stage where people didn't know what it was like to stay young for decades and were no longer cherishing it. Even with that belief in mind, Alex wished that he had found his soulmate the instant he had turned twenty-two, he was very quickly growing sick of the world, he had been alive too long.

"Oh," a tired voice started, pulling him from his thoughts. "I didn't know you were here. How long have I been asleep?"

Philip looked up at him from the hospital bed with tired eyes, skin pale and body too skinny. His face was gaunt, cheekbones sticking out in an unhealthy way and skin a strange pale-yellow colour. "Not sure," Alexander answered. "You were asleep when I got here twenty minutes ago."

"I'm sorry," Philip muttered, rubbing at his eyes.

"Don't apologise, you need the rest."

Philip only let out a little groan in response, staring at him with half closed eyes. He had cancer, one of the extremely rare ones that doctors were still struggling to treat. He was undergoing chemotherapy, but Alex wasn't sure how well it was working. Every time he visited, the other man only looked worse and worse.

"Where's Thomas?" he asked.

"Sorting out some charity event to pay for all this crap," Philip replied, coughing lightly. Despite being a successful artist, Philip and Thomas were struggling to pay off the medical bills the cancer treatment had given them. Alexander had tried to help them, mostly by buying Philip's art; the stupid man wouldn't take his money any other way.

"How's that going?"

Philip sighed. "Not too bad," he said. "We're getting there slowly. This next event will hopefully pay off everything."

"And the cancer?"

"Getting smaller, slowly. Doesn't stop me from feeling like shit though."

Alexander reached over, clasping Philip's hand. "I'm sorry," he told him.

"You don't need to be," Philip said. "You didn't do this to me. It isn't anyone's fault."

"I know, but-"

"No 'but's," Philip interrupted. "Just be here for me, that's all I need."

Alexander gave him a sad smile, staring at the aged face of his friend. His hair was completely white, wrinkles stretching out over his cheekbones. Even without the cancer he would be frail, bones weakening and skin sagging. He was seventy-four, even if the cancer didn't take him, old age would soon, just like it had taken Sarah.