How to Save a Life

Chapter Three ~ Back Home

My house was the white colour that reminded me of a hospital. It was repulsive and maddening. How could Tari live in a home so antibacterial that there were hardly germs there despite if they were good or bad. It was almost like she was living in a hospital most of her life.

The scary part was that she had spent most of her life in the hospital when the doctors treated her with radiation and chemotherapy.  None of them actually worked, of course, and in return only made her more infected by trying to treat it. What had happened was that her bones were ninety-nine percent cancerous, and when they treated it they told us that it was gone. After about two months of health, the cancer returned with a vengeance. It infected not only her bones, but her lungs as well as her breasts.

She was bedridden for weeks after, and when we thought we had it under control in June, the doctor told Dad and I that she was dying and it was uncontrollable.

But the worst part was she didn't know. Dad wouldn't let me tell her, not that I wanted to. He said he would come around to it. He said a lot of things but it wasn't like he actually followed through. He never did.

I was sure I would have to inform her, but I feared she would just slip into the darkness before she actually withered away from the killer that grows inside her. I couldn't bear to see her fall and dull like the coloured petals on a flower before the fall; to see her stop living while she was still alive.

"Hey sweetie." Dad greeted me as I got through the door. He snapped me out of my trance, and I smiled up at him.

"Hi, Dad. How was your day?" I returned the favour and gave him a hug.

"It was good, the shop was pretty quiet today, so I caught up on dishes and some cleaning." he replied happily.

Dad worked out of the office that is on the main floor and in the shop out in the back part of the yard. It was this huge two story building with the main floor which was as  tall as three stories in the one area where the farm equipment would go in to be serviced and the smaller one story area underneath the offices where the employees worked upstairs, was for cars. It was sided and roofed in tin, and Dad and Mom had decided to call it "Quin's Can Do Repair Shop".

Dad was a popular mechanic and so he had to hire and train people for his shop as well as people to do the paper work, and to put it in the most simple way, he and Mom got rich off of it.  Western Sales had wanted to partner with them and so they shared parts and supplied the shop with the right parts, but that was the only reason. In reality, if Dad had a company across Saskatchewan, he probably would've taken all of the customers Western Sales had. 

The reason Dad had an office that was downstairs was because he wanted to be able to take care of us when we were little and when I was five and Tari was three, Mom had passed away from cancer so he had to keep an eye on us as well as run a small town business.

It wasn't like the office didn't fit in the two story house. The office was huge, being in the northwest corner facing the driveway, and then the main area where there were a few chairs and a coffee table with magazine's on it for any customers. The main area had the stairs to get to the upper floor, it connected to the porch area where there was a huge closet with oak doors, and three symetrical arches: one on the west side to the living room, and the other on the east side leading into the kitchen which connected with the third archway to the dining room. There was a bathroom at the southern part of the house, and underneath the staircase to the second level, there were also stairs leading to the basement. Surrounding the entire house was a porch, with doors coming from every side- the living room, office, dining room and of course the front door. The exception being the bathroom and kitchen, every room had huge windows which were carefully made and had designs at the arch part. In other words, the main floor was very open.