Rhapsody (Part 2 of Medley).

101: HARRY'S JOURNAL.

I'll always remember that day. I didn't write about it before on this journal because I was too busy being the pillar my family needed. But now that we're starting a new chapter, I finally feel able to talk about it with dry eyes.

Niall was in town. I don't see the boys too often, but every now and then we make some time for each other, although it's hard to find all four of us in the same place at the same time. But Niall was on tour and I was home when he played in London.

Em and I made a date night out of it, since Mum volunteered to take the kids. Her move to London has proven extremely beneficial for everyone. She gets to help Emilia when dealing with a girl and two boys in my absence becomes a little chaotic. And the kids adore her and have her a phone call away whenever they want to be spoiled rotten by her.

Niall's show ended and after going backstage to see him and chat for a bit before leaving, we came home with full intentions of taking advantage of a children-free house. I put Em in charge of lighting some candles to set the mood and I went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.

But I froze when I walked into the kitchen and turned on the light.

"EM, STAY THERE! Whatever you do, don't come into the kitchen!"

Seb was lying on the floor, his eyes half-opened looking at me as if saying 'sorry for the mess'. He had thrown up and there was blood in his vomit. All I wanted to do from that moment, besides getting him help, was to prevent Em from seeing him like that.

"For Christ's sake! You never listen, do you?"

Before I could even attempt to get off the floor to clean it, she was standing right behind me.

"No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" That's all she said.

It sounded like she was pleading with the universe. Like the 'nos' were a prayer. She doesn't talk to God, but she was asking someone, anyone, not to take her baby from her.

I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her backwards and down to force her to sit on a chair, but that only broke her out of the state of shock she'd been in and then I couldn't stop her when she crawled through the floor until she reached Sebastian.

"We can clean that later! Go get the car back out! Now!" She yelled when she saw me grabbing paper towels.

As hard as she tried to get him to sit up, Seb wouldn't move. He was too tired, too weak. I had to pick him up and carry him in my arms to the running car, but Em had to help because he was too heavy and wasn't cooperating with me.

On the way to the Pet ER, I'd look at her in the back seat, holding Seb's head on her lap and quietly crying whilst trying to comfort him, to make sure he felt protected, and I could feel her pain irradiate out of her chest and float all around the car until it reached me, choking me.

When they took him away to check on him, Em fell onto my arms and cried on my shoulder for as long as it took the vet to come out with news. Seb was stable, but they needed to perform some tests to know exactly what was wrong. The wait for those results was when I worried about her reaction if we had to come back home without him... she was already too broken as it was.

Seb was her eternal baby, the one she loved long before she loved any of us at home, the one who prepared her for motherhood, the one she'd give anything for just like she would for any of her children.

We weren't surprised when they told us it was cancer because we had been speculating whilst we waited and that possibility was the first one to come up.

But that wasn't Sebastian's last day. We got to take him home and enjoy him for a few more months... and that gave us all, and Em in particular, time to prepare for the last goodbye.