Living with Noah Parker.

☂ Chapter Seventeen ☂

He was dying.

He had a terminal brain tumour.

You hear about things like this all the time on the news, headlines in a newspaper, it’s heart breaking and devastating, ‘dying teenagers’ written in big bold letters, but it never grip's you until you’ve experienced it yourself.

I was standing outside Cole’s hospital door, numb.

The three black dilapidated numbers against the glazed white door made the situation seem much more solemn. My vision had distorted and the tears surfacing my eyes were ready to spill down my cheeks, but I wouldn’t let them fall, not today, not now because crying was for the weak and I wasn’t.

I blinked once, and then twice trying to comprehend the information I had just assimilated from Noah because - no – this wasn’t real – no.

A terminal brain tumour?

How?

Suddenly the jigsaw was fitting together, his mood swings, lashing out, his anger, his headaches.

Maybe it was the medication I’d been on; perhaps it had partisan my hearing because this wasn’t real, Noah was lying, this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to him and it comes so sudden, the trepidation of loosing another person that my mask had slipped and my walls were beginning to deteriorate, everything inside of me crumbling and slowly turning to ash.

My eyes drifted over to his body and I wasn’t cognisant of when I’d sauntered into the room. He glanced up at me aware of my presence and my small feet were suddenly making the loudest of sounds in this empty, hollow room. The two of us were staring at each other in taciturnity, but no words are needed because it was the kind of silence that spoke our minds.

“Don’t cry Megh‘ his eyes plead, beg, beseech. His azure eyes, twinkling like two blue pools of innocence and youth drift over my face taking in every feature as the sunlight elucidates the bags below my eyes, my messy hair, the tear stains concealing my cheeks, every imperfection, everything I don’t want him to see.

“I love you,” he managed to gasp out in between long, raspy breaths and his voice was so quiet and brittle it didn’t sound like him any more but the fear in his voice was palpable and he was trying to hide it but he couldn’t, because I knew him too god damn well.

Tears finally spilled out over my cheeks, like a never-ending waterfall of depression, and it just hurt so god damn much, like a fire igniting, slowly spreading through me, burning everything that was still standing. Anger pulsed through my veins as I lashed out at him, “This isn’t funny-“ I was yelling at him and I hadn’t yet registered the asset or anger laced in my voice until it bounced of the barren walls in the silent room and hit me, “Why – Why would you joke about something like this Cole?” I was crying, and there were so many sobs wrenching out of my throat that I didn’t even know if he understood what I was saying and there’s just so much heart break that it felt like I was drowning in my own tears while my body began to shiver in fear like a breath of melancholy made itself felt like a chill and sudden gust from an unknown sea because I’m so scared.

He laughs a little, cracking his lips into a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes and tilts his head backward, his eyes locked on the ceiling. He’s biting down on his rolled in lips; I can see that he’s trying not to cry as I stare at the machine regulating his heart, the machine telling me that he’s alive, the minute irregular squiggles making me feel unsettled as he finally gathers the courage to talk again, “I’m not lying.” his voice was so sweet, so innocent that my face crumpled up again.

“It’s alright though, isn’t it?” I alleged, running over to him, grabbing his face between my palms as I wiped away his tear so roughly I left red stains on his cheeks. “You’re going to get better aren’t you?”