Fighting for a Life

Part Eight:

Part Eight: 

"Hallucinations. Already typical in cases with tumors in the brain, but made more likely by the chemotherapy treatments.  I know that it must be hard for you, Elliot, but as your cancer progresses, it's likely to happen more and more often."  

That was the doctor's explanation when Alex had me call him that same night.  He suggested that on Thursday I also get some tests run to see how the cancer was progressing, but I wasn't so sure I wanted to know.  

What if I was told I no longer had my last month and a half?  What if I only had a couple of weeks or days to live, I didn't want to know.  I just.. I wanted it to stop.

I was scared to open my eyes for fear of seeing something that wasn't real, I was terrified of leaving the bus or doing anything.  To make it worse, the hallucination of the other night had the boys terrified for me.  I could hear them arguing sometimes, which is something they almost never did before finding out about my cancer. 

I could see dark bags under their eyes from the sleep they were losing because of me.  God I hated it.  

When their final show came, I couldn't have been happier.  Less stress for my boys, less having to move around for me, and it was nice.  It didn't stop the lack of sleep for them, it didn't stop the arguments, but it helped a bit.  

When Thursday finally came around, both Jack and Alex came with me, promising to stay the entire time so that I wouldn't have to wait on them to pick me up afterwards.  

I had to go through with the testing first, but directly afterwards we were all three lead into a large room with multiple chairs for waiting, and several chairs for the patients to sit in as they went through chemo.  

It was the first time I wasn't in a single room, where I was the only chemo patient inside, and this room that they'd put me in was terrifying.  

The smell of sickness and death hung stale in the air despite the obvious measure that the hospital took to ensure it smelled pleasant.  

The worst bit was I was the second oldest patient in the room, the oldest being a man in his early forties at least, but three children also sat in the room getting their treatments.  

One boy couldn't have been older than seven, while the two girls were between the ages of thirteen and fifteen.  

All of them looked miserable. 

Did I look like that? I wondered, noticing the horrified looks on Jack and Alex's faces as they took in the children who were going through the same pain I was.  

The little boy was sat directly next to me, and he looked at me and smiled.. he smiled.  

"Hi.  My name is Brent, who are you?"  One of his top front teeth were missing, and he had short brown hair with dark blue eyes that despite what he was going through, sparkled with happiness.  

"My name's Elliot, it's nice to meet you," I faked a smile as well as I could, but it turned into a real one as the little boy giggled.  

"You're a girl but you have a boys name."  

"My mom really wanted a baby boy just like you but she was stuck with an icky girl like me." I made a face, watching as Brent laughed again.   

"That's okay if she didn't like you 'cuz you're a girl, I like you lots.  After my medicine I'm going to write letters to Santa and make him cards with the other boys, d'you wanna come and write one too?"  

I nodded, making plans with a seven year old to write letters to Santa as the nurse set up my equipment and started my chemo.  "Sure I do! I haven't written to Santa yet but I have something I really wanna ask him for."