When It's Time to Move On

The Hospital - Chapter 1 - Bad News

Harris was dying. This much had been made thoroughly clear to him. But he couldn't bring himself to accept it. It felt like only yesterday when he had been sitting alone in his apartment, content with the quiet solitude of his own company. He was a solitary figure who found solace in long walks, preferring to keep his distance from others. For Harris, friends played a secondary role in his life.

However, one day, his carefully constructed walls came crashing down. It all started with a twinge in his stomach that he couldn't ignore. Being a paranoid person, even the slightest hint of pain sent him running to the doctor. But this pain didn't go away, and it persisted for months, gnawing away at him like a persistent ache.

"Harris! I was counting on you getting by at least 3 months before visiting again." Dr. Roslin greeted him with a smile. "What is it this time? Oral cancer? Aneurysm? I have 3 hours till lunch with my daughter so I'll only be an hour late if you start now."

Harris replied dryly, "It's nice to see you too, doctor. And would you please quit with the jokes? I've been getting these pangs in my stomach, and the pain has been lasting longer. A few weeks ago it began interrupting my sleep. I haven't slept for 3 hours straight since then. And yesterday, I couldn't stop vomiting."

"What do you mean by couldn't stop?" Dr. Roslin asked, her tone more serious.

"Pretty much the whole day," said Harris. "I had to leave work early because I kept feeling sick. The rest of the day I barely ate anything, I just kept throwing up."

For the first time in a long while, it seemed Dr. Roslin was taking in everything he said. Harris couldn't help but find this unsettling.

"Try these and I'll see how you respond to them," she said, handing him the prescription. "But just to be sure, I'll need to run some blood tests and scans, among others."

Harris left the clinic, going through the formalities of multiple tests that took up his entire day. Dr. Roslin had reassured him that everything would be fine, but an odd sense of foreboding clung to him.

Although the pills hadn't shown any results over the next few weeks, Harris took Dr. Roslin's silence as an acknowledgment of his good health. But one day, the phone rang, and it was the clinic.

"Harris, I'd like to see you here as soon as you can. It's important," said Dr. Roslin.

The old sense of dread filled him again. When he got there, she was ashen-faced.

"I got all your results back. You should have come here sooner. Harris, there's no easy way to say it. You have stomach cancer," Dr. Roslin said.

Harris stared back at her, his mind blank. She had said those words, but they hadn't registered with him. All he did was vacantly look at her for what seemed like hours. Then the comprehension came, and all the blood rushed to his head.

"What does it mean? What do I do?" he asked, his voice shaking.

"I'm afraid it's not possible for us to operate on you," Dr. Roslin said, her voice breaking. "I'm sorry, the cancer has spread too much. Your organs won't be able to function if we take the cancer out."

Harris's world came crashing down. "But what do I do?"

"We should start chemotherapy right away," Dr. Roslin replied. "It might help, and you-"

"Could die easily?!" Harris interrupted, his voice rising. "Is that the only option now? You told me I was deluded, that I didn't take this seriously, and now you're telling me the only thing to do is die easy?!"

"I'm sorry," Dr. Roslin breathed, feeling the weight of the news.

As Harris stood in the hospital room, he felt as though the walls were closing in on him. He couldn't bear to look at Dr. Roslin, knowing that there was nothing else to say. With a heavy heart, he darted out of the hospital, his mind racing with thoughts of the end that was coming.

Days turned into weeks, and Harris found himself lying in a hospital bed, his body too weak to move. The nurses whispered to each other, and he could hear them saying that it wouldn't be much longer. He knew the end was near, but that didn't mean he was devoid of feeling.

One day, a group of medical students crowded around his bed as Dr. Roslin spoke about his condition. "Patient has stage IV stomach cancer, which we all know is at the terminal stage," she said. "He's only twenty-five years old, and given his South Asian ethnicity, he may have a higher risk of developing stomach cancer."

Harris felt a surge of anger and frustration. The doctor went on describing the symptoms of cancer as if he were reading from a textbook. But the mechanical way in which she spoke made it clear that she had no idea how Harris really felt. To the doctor, he was just a statistic, a set of details written above his bedside

As Harris lay alone in his hospital bed, he couldn't help but think about his life and the choices he had made. His friends had all come to visit him the day before to say their final goodbyes. It was then that he realized he had taken them for granted, that he had failed to appreciate the only people who had ever truly cared for him.

Now, as he faced the end, he wondered how he would be remembered. Would he be seen as a recluse who had died alone, as everyone assumed he wanted? Or would anyone remember the person he truly was, the person he had always wanted to be?

Harris wasn't afraid of death. No, he was more saddened by the way he had lived his life. What did it all count for in the end? A person with nothing to show for his existence, no legacy to leave behind.

No one was to be by his side when he needed one most. Maybe he deserved to die alone, maybe not. But the fact remained that he didn't want to, and that was the saddest truth of all.