Page 135 of Past the Broken Bridges

They’vebeen through enough because of me.

My recklessness.

Everybody who’s dealt with me knows the circumstances of my health. My scans all lit up like a glow stick. I was all but a Christmas tree that the medical students are probably sad they missed out on. “Would it matter?” I doubt, not bothering to shrug as I settle into the bed.

She doesn’t answer, but I can tell she wants to argue with me. We both know that’s not her job, though, even if it’s frustrating for her. “Do you need anything?”

To get out of here.

To go back to that night.

To stop Dawson from getting into that truck.

I close my eyes. “No.”

A hand comes down and touches my shoulder. “The oncologist will be in shortly to speak with you. Then we can discuss your departure. Okay?”

I say nothing, closing my eyes before the nurse leaves sometime later. When I open them, I’m greeted by the darkness in the room.

Thetick tock, tick tock, tick tockseems so much louder than it actually is, and nothing I do can quiet it.

Then the door reopens, and an older man in a white lab coat enters, introducing himself as the head oncologist. I don’t hear his name. I barely even hear the first half of what he says.

He’s patient but stoic. I suppose in his profession he has to be. Not cold, but not overly friendly. Why put effort into people it won’t make a difference to? He can’t grow attached to the types of people he sees, or he’ll never survive his own life.

“Do you understand?” I hear him ask.

It’s only then that I finally look at him. He’s older than my father, if I had to guess. There are age speckles on his face. Wrinkles on his forehead. He’s well kept. Groomed. Clean shaven. Nothing about him sticks out. He’s not wearing bright colors but neutral tones. Even his socks are white. There’s nothing special about him.

Or about this conversation.

He must know I haven’t been listening, so he says, “The survival rate for people with your type of stage-four cancer is fifty-seven percent over the course of ten years with treatment. I don’t need to tell you what that entails, from what I’ve heard. But a decade is a long time, especially for somebody so young.”

Ten years is also a long time to slowly wither away, losing all that youth and letting the people you love watch it drain from you no matter the money they sink into medications or the hope people offer in their prayers.

A decade’s worth of pain and suffering and watching people crumble around you is not what I want to be put through.

Not again.

I choose silence, letting him have a one-man conversation to tell me what he came here to.

“But,” he adds, the word a scratch to my soul. There’s always a “but,” and it always leads to bad news.

At least my mother isn’t here to witness it.

“Dr. Miranda noticed the start of discoloration on your skin and in your eyes when he examined you earlier, and your labs are showing significant damage to the liver. All of this to say that the cancer has spread since you stopped your treatment.”

It’s the first time anybody has said those words—that Istoppedtreatment.

Not finished.

Not won.

Ended it.

I never got to ring the bell.

Never got a farewell send off with claps and cheers from the oncology team.

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