In Sickness and In Health

A Horrifying Reality

Cole POV

" Cole thank god your okay," Lili has just walked into my cubicle. I throw my arms around her as she kisses my bruised face. I was distressed about how she was doing, the last thing I remembered was everything going to a blur after I had just ploughed into a moving truck.

"I was so worried about you Cole," she says kissing my grazed cheek. "Do you know that, where's Theo?"

"He went of with a hospital porter, don't worry he's in safe hands." I say noticing the scratches on her hand.

"Lils , you okay?" I say pointing to the cuts on her hand.

"I'm fine, don't stress, just a few cuts from the glass, they've removed it all the fragments on my face too if your wondering where all the bandaids are from, how's your hand doing?" She ask sitting on the edge of my bed.

"Ah it's fine just a broken wrist," I say leaning in for a quick kiss. She leans in and I kiss her softly, it hurts a little due the gash underneath my lip but I'm not going to complain.

The nurse in charge of me comes in and notifies me that she's just going to collect my painkillers from the drugstore downstairs. Lili says she's just going to ring her mom and dad to tell them about the crash and that no one was injured badly apart and that she and I just have a few cuts and bruises. She talks to her mom for a bit and I sit on the hospital bed watching my darling wife talking to her mother five hundred miles away as if she's in the same room.

Lili is very attached to her mother and always makes an effort to talk to her and it makes me feel quite down as I've never been that close to my own mother. After my parents divorce myself and Dylan chose to live with my dad and saw my mom every weekend but after we started middle school it became every second weekend and by high school once a month, she rarely visited us in college and if I'm being completely honest Chrissy has been much more a mother figure than my own mom has and will ever be. Lili tried so hard to get her to come to the wedding but she declined and obviously I was hurt but Lili was very hurt herself because she couldn't comprehend how someone wouldn't show up to to their own sons wedding but alas she understood as I explained my mother has her own issues.

Lili and her whole family are impeccably close and I love it, they are all so encouraging and nurturing towards each other at first I found it slightly overwhelming all the affection thrown my direction but now it is just second nature to me now.  My nurse returns and hands me my painkillers tells us we are free to leave and Lili wraps up her conversation with her mom and we get of the bed and then Lili just collapses, just like that. I begin to panic, I call out for assistance and a nurse walks in.

"My wife she just collapsed, she has lymphoma cancer please just help her, please," I say in a frenzy.

"Try not to worry Mr Sprouse, she's probably just dehydrated, I'll get her a room and I'll get her a doctor to run some tests, here bay three is free, I'll be back in a second I'll just get a doctor. Do you remember what doctor your wife was with?"  She asks.

"Dr Garcia." I say with absolute confidence as I remember Lili saying his moustache was like a bush above his lip.

Dr Garcia comes within a couple of seconds and he tells me that they want to do a full body scan to see if Lili's cancer has progressed. They take her off to her scan and tell me it would be best if I stay here. I sit on the bed completely petrified, I'm craving a cigarette, I know I don't need one but I'm on edge, I'm stressed about my wife's health, I walk outside and I meet a fellow smoker, I don't have any cigarettes on me so I ask the person beside me for one, I take one and I light it and inhale slowly, because I have not smoked in over three months now I despise the taste of tobacco in my mouth, I drop the cigarette and watch it fall to the ground and I crush it instantly with my foot how I ever smoked in the first place is beyond me. Even in that little puff I can feel my lungs responding to the ashy taste left in my mouth.

I walk back into the hospital and ring Lili's mom Amy and inform about Lili's recent fall, I tell her not to stress as they are running tests constantly. She tells me she and Dan will be on the first flight over and that she will see me soon. I end the phone call, Lili comes back on a stretcher, her body lifeless but she's awake and I breathe a sigh of relief. They bring her into a private room, Dr Garcia tells me that they should have the results within the hour.

Lili is fighting her tiredness but I sit with her  quietly, keeping my eyes focused on my wife holding her hand tightly, my breaths matching to the beeping of the machines that surrounded her bed. Curiosity slowly pried made me look around the hospital ward, magnolia colored walls everywhere the doors a cobalt blue. Lili drifts of into a slumber and I read a magazine.

Around forty minutes Dr Garcia returns, he closes the hospital curtain and takes a seat. He has me worried. I wake Lili up properly who had woken up but still in a trance.

"I'm so sorry but there's no easy way to say this but the cancer has spread to your brain at this this stage it can be terminal," he says looking genuinely sorry but I can't accept losing my wife.

"No, there has to be a way, there has to be, come on doctor, there has to be a way, there has to be something medicine has come so far." I say holding back the tears.

"Come on Cole, give it rest, its time. We knew this day would happen." Lili says tugging my arm but I pull it away sharply.

"There is one thing, it's incredibly risky but it could be worth a shot." Dr Garcia says getting up of the chair.

"Well what is it?" Lili says leaning forward.

"The cancer has spread to the cerebellum, not the cerebrum which is the largest part of the brain, we could perform a procedure that would reduce and consequently kill the cancer cells but... it's a incredibly difficult procedure that takes about eleven hours to complete and there is only a slim survival rate." He explains.

"How much?" Lili asks cautiously.

"Em Lili," I say because the operation sounds risky.

"One in five don't pull through ," Dr Garcia says placing down Lili's results on the table attached to her bed.

"Then let's do it, " she says in a determined voice.

"Are you sure?" Myself and Dr Garcia say in unison.

"Yes!" She says, Dr Garcia asks her one more time and she says yes once more. He then goes of to make a call and myself and Lili are left alone together, her perky persona drops and tears begin to stream down her cheeks, her whole face is red, and she screams at the very top of her lungs. Her upper body and shoulders wrack with every sob that forces their way out, chest rising and falling unevenly as she gasps for breath, and she squeezes her eyes shut, balling her hands into fists each time  she throws her head back to let out a blood curdling scream. I hug her so tightly, "I'm never letting go, you know that." I say as I kiss her red cheeks.

I have never felt to scared in my life, losing my wife is becoming a reality that I never wanted to face...

Hey guys, thanks for reading so far!
Lots of love
L 💗