Page 12 of Breaking Point
I hold up a hand. “Don’t even try to offer me money again. Every cent needs to go towardyourhealth, which speaking of, is there any news from the university hospital?”
Layla has suffered from lupus since she was the ripe age of fourteen, when her symptoms first began to appear. As an adolescent girl, it was hard for her to be diagnosed. Layla’s time in high school wasn’t spent in classrooms or at football games but instead in doctors’ waiting areas and hospitals until she was finally diagnosed at eighteen.
Layla and her parents have done everything they can to try and create a normal healthy life for her. The Charité, a university hospital in Berlin, Germany, has experimental programs, oneLayla’s doctor referred her for, which she has been anxiously waiting to hear back from.
She shakes her head, an edge of disappointment in her eyes. “No, nothing yet.”
“Well, don’t give up hope. There’s still time. The program starts in two months, right?”
“True, but they require you to arrive a month before for preemptive testing.”
I lay a hand on her arm, rubbing my finger back and forth in soothing motions. “Whatever happens, I’ll be here for you.”
Her swallow is audible. “The same for you, Bella. Please let us help you and your mom.”
I lean back on the couch, truly sobering up now. “It’s not that dire yet.”
Yetbeing the keyword.
“That’s true, and we applied for dozens of jobs. I have no doubt they’ll all be knocking down your door to hire you.”
My smile is forced, stretched taut. As much as her positivity wants to seep into my pores, I know how fucked up the job market is right now.
“How did her latest doctor appointment go?”
Now it’s my turn to swallow my emotions. “Not well.” I burrow further into my couch, covering myself with blankets and throws because every time I talk about my mom's cancer, my entire body breaks out in a cold sweat. “They say it’s not taking a turn for the better, that the chemo isn’t working despite the grueling dosage. It’s…still spreading.”
It’s quiet in my apartment for a moment. The only sound the ticking of my clock that hangs on the wall.
Nothing quiets a room quite like the wordcancer.
Layla’s eyes gleam with tears. “B, I’m so sorry.”
The tears pooling in her baby blue eyes no doubt mirror my own, the back of my eyes burning with unshed tears.
“Life sucks,” I admit with a sad laugh as a tear finally falls.
The first of many, it seems. I can’t stop the second or the third tear, or the rest that come after that as they turn into heaving sobs.
Layla moves quickly, wrapping me in her arms as I cry into her embrace. The weight of my life crashes down on my shoulders. The chance of my money lasting my mom and me three months is slim, as slim as my mom’s life even continuing on past three months.
How do you prepare yourself to lose the person who has been there for you through thick and thin your entire life? How do you say goodbye to the woman who raised you, who molded who you are today?
I don’t know what’s worse. Never getting the chance to say goodbye to someone as they experience a sudden quick death, or watching them waste away, losing who they are at their core as they fade into nothing, day by painful day.
The worst thing you can do to a person who craves control is make them feel utterly useless by uprooting their entire life with events they have not a single ounce of say in.
My worst nightmare is coming to fruition, and I fear I’m not equipped to deal with it.
There is no to-do list that will prolong my mom’s life. There is no perfect resumé to submit that will make people want to hire me on the spot. There is no amount of cleaning I can do in my apartment that will erase the ugly cloud hanging over my head. There is nothing in my life right now but sadness, and all I can do is sit in it as it sucks the life from me.
The tears stop falling once I have nothing left in me. I pull away from Layla’s embrace, pick up my laptop, and do the one thing still within my control.
“Let’s keep applying for jobs.”
Chapter 4
Bella
