A few weeks ago the doctor told him that he had cancer and that he had two months to live. He didn't tell me until he had a month left. That was all the time I had to say goodbye - as if I could.
Two months. We all come with an expiration date but it's a date that very few of us get to see. If we could though, if we could know when and where we would die would we really want to know? Could we live our life knowing when we would die? Could we really enjoy life at all knowing when it would all end? I know I couldn't.
He didn't look sick. He looked just like he always did, on the outside at least. But I knew that inside the cancer was eating away at him causing him incredible pain. And of course since he was my guardian angel and he was supposed to take care of me, he would never admit that he was in pain.
The idiot.
I walked down the corridor of the hospital that I had come to know so well. The off-white walls, the dismal paintings that had been placed along the wall in intervals in an attempt to brighten the place up. It didn't work. If only they had chosen brighter happier paintings; but then if you're in a place like this you really don't give a shit what's on the walls.
Patients, doctors and nurses walked up and down the halls. Most knew who I was and smiled and greeted me. I gave polite but distant smiles in return. You know you've been around a hospital too long when the staff is on a first name basis with you.
I stopped cold when I reached the door to his room - it was closed - and picked up the sound of voices from inside the room. I could hear his voice and the voice that I knew belonged to his doctor. There was more bad news, as if that was even possible. The doctor never came anymore, not unless he had more bad news. The nurses were the ones that took care of his medicine and made him "comfortable". He was dying, and he would never be comfortable again.
The door swung open and the doctor paused when he saw me. The grim look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He started to say something but I brushed past him; I didn't want to hear more bad news not from the doctor. I walked into the room not sparing the bed and the man in it a glance and went straight to the window staring silently. I heard the doctor close the door quietly behind him and was grateful for the privacy. No one else needed to be intruding on this conversation. Although since it was close to two o'clock I knew the nurses would be making their rounds soon.
"How long?" I asked in an emotionless voice still blankly staring out the window.
"Anna-" He stared and I knew he was going to sugar coat it try to break it to me easily. Even this close to death he was still trying to protect me still trying not to hurt me. He didn't know that just seeing him like this - weak, frail, dying - didn't hurt me enough. I cut him off not wanting to hear yet another change of subject. That was his tactic when there was bad news to change the subject to something light hearted and happy. I could never last when he started doing that. Probably because I knew that when he was gone I would never be happy again. I would never smile or laugh never love again. I suppose you're not supposed to fall in love with your guardian but of course being that that's what you're not supposed to do that's exactly what I did do.
"How long?" I said more forcefully now. I was getting angry. I scoffed at myself, that was my response to most everything these days; anger. That was how I dealt with things, I tried not to because just like seeing him in that bed made me hurt I knew that when I let my anger get the best of me it hurt him. And he was the one person I never wanted to hurt.
He coughed before he answered. That horrible rattling cough that ends with being out of breath and his blood on a tissue. Sure enough when I turned to look at him his hand had a pool of blood in the center of his palm. I barely suppressed a grimace. When he did answer his voice was out of breath and shaky. "The doctor says it's only a matter of days now."
I was floored although I knew I shouldn't have been. I had known that this was coming. Last week though it had still been a couple weeks and now with just a sentence my world was coming crashing down around me.
I hadn't cried, not once through this whole thing had I cried. Not when he told me, not when I saw him for the first time hooked up to all the machines and tubes. Not even the first time that that hacking cough had turned into a rattling blood filled cough. But now it seemed as if the last week had come crashing down on me and all the anger fell away. My eyes were burning and I willed it to go away but it wouldn't. My legs stopped working and all of a sudden I was on my knees by his bed praying like he really was an angel.
Then the tears fell. And I cried for the first time in what felt like forever as he - the one who was dying and in pain - comforted me.
