A Spine-Tingling Story - TDG Fanfic

Raincheck on Hell

The next day, it was Finley that texted first:

Sorry I was sick. What's up?

As it happened, the phone's text alert had abruptly woken Ryan up from an impromptu nap and the first thing that greeted him was pain caused by spasticity in his hips. As such, he was far from in the best mood to answer texts.

Oh so now you want to talk to me?

Finley: Mate I was in bed feeling like shit from the chemo. You can't blame me

Ryan: You literally told your sister to tell me to go fuck myself

On the other side of this conversation, Finley was curled up on the sofa in his living room, watching Sweeney Todd with his 13-year-old sister Rosemary. Unlike him, she took after their mother, with auburn hair and greyish-green eyes that sat behind a pair of small rectangular glasses. She had adopted a role as his makeshift secretary whenever he was on chemo or in hospital, and while the results weren't always what he wanted, they were always worth seeing.

Currently, she was craning her neck to look at his phone screen, rather amused at the exchange going on with the two of them.

"I did as you told me," she said.

Finley sighed. "I didn't mean literally, I just meant you to tell them I couldn't talk to them right then. Now he's pissed off at me."

Rosemary shrugged and turned back to the film. Finley rolled his eyes and replied back:

I didn't mean it. Like I said, I was feeling like crap, I wasn't thinking properly. I wanted to say that my father is free tonight so I'll talk to him about your case

Ryan: Don't bother, idk if I want it anymore

Finley: Really? Why?

R: There's no point. I'll be disabled for the rest of my life if I have it and no one would miss me if I didn't have it.

F: I would miss you

R: You don't know me. I'm bad

F: I'm getting to know you, you don't seem that bad

This conversation was almost an echo of the one Ryan had had with Gary not long ago. He decided to try a different approach.

R: Let me describe someone to you. Medium height, brown hair and eyes, ambitious, a passionate speaker, published author and loves art. Sounds nice?

F: I want to say yes but I'll guess no

R: Exactly, I've just described Hitler to you. I've done some bad things, I'm not proud of them.

F: If you were a truly bad person, you would be proud of them. I doubt Hitler ever regretted the Holocaust.

R: Maybe, but I can't help myself. I don't want to do bad things but I just do.

F: Is this about being in care?

R: Partly, I guess. The system puts me down so I have to fight for what I want. But go too far and you get shipped off to secure.

"He's a care kid?" Rosemary asked, having started paying attention to the conversation again.

"Stop it," Finley said, holding the screen to his chest. He doubted that Ryan would want people finding out about that without him wanting them to.

"My friend Phoebe says that care kids are really rough," Rosemary continued. "Always getting arrested and graffiti-ing on the streets."

Finley strongly doubted that, but seeing how Ryan himself had testified to his own flaws, it was hard to deny.

F: Does that happen often?

R: Not really. I guess my care home is one of the better ones. Have you heard of Ashdene Ridge? It's not far.

F: Yeah, I've seen it a few times. What's it like there?

R: Not terrible, it could be way worse. The care workers aren't even that strict.

F: Alright. But back to it, do you want my father to help you or not? Because I'm not wasting spoons

R: I'll get back to you on that, I'm not sure anymore.

F: Fine

Ryan ended it there, leaving him with nothing to concentrate on but the tightness in his hips. He would've liked another dose of Codeine, along with some of Chloe's Baclofen* too, but his clock told him that it hadn't been long enough since his last dose of the former and he was pretty sure that Chloe wouldn't appreciate him helping himself to the latter.

Reading one of his magazines was out of the question. It would just bring up all the painful memories again - as well as reminding him what he'd be missing out on.

Ryan sighed, what was he signing up for? Earlier on, he had been so petrified at the thought of dying young that he was willing to do anything that would prevent it. But it was clear he'd misjudged the weight of living life with paraplegia. Looking at Chloe, she had mostly grown used to the obstacles that came with it, but he had seen her be bitter, resentful and even depressed over it at times, despite her attempts to hide it. It was futile anyway, as Ryan could read people like books, but it was during these times that he felt guiltier than ever. Not only for not stopping the accident in the first place, but because he didn't have a clue how to help her.

Theoretically, they could help each other if he was paraplegic also, but knowing her and judging from her reaction to the whole thing, she would be unwilling to help him. He probably wouldn't be deserving of any help anyway - he would be making his own bed and he had to lie in it. (There was the very slim argument that Chloe was lying in a self-made bed too, but she was so little at the time that she could hardly be held responsible.)

Effectively, he'd be trying to navigate an unfamiliar landscape on his own. The thought scared him more than anything else, but he couldn't decide if it was scarier than dying young. Ryan was a cynic at heart, but he wanted to postpone his death as long as possible, as he was sure that if there was such a place as Hell, he'd be sent straight to it.

It was ironic - he didn't like being reminded of his illness and yet it was all he could think about when left to his own devices. Probably because he had the pain to remind him of it.

"Dinner!" Mike called from downstairs.

Food for thought, he could probably think better on a full stomach. The smell wafting from the kitchen was one of sausages and mash, making his stomach growl. It was quite a task for him to wrench his hips from their spastic position and get them to comply as best he could, making him feel rather like a rusted tin man.

***

The meal had helped a bit, as Ryan felt marginally better while watching Nanny McPhee with his housemates, but he found that despite his nap and the admittedly enjoyable film, his body still felt leaden. He felt like he could sleep through the loudest, explosion-heavy, CGI-driven, action movie directed by Micheal Bay.

He started wondering, was he even meant to be feeling this tired? Yes, he hadn't had any treatment yet, but a spinal astrocytoma didn't cause this much overall fatigue, did it? Muscle weakness below the level of the tumour, yes, but not chronic fatigue as far as he knew.

The next thought jolted him properly awake - what if it had started spreading throughout his body? Cancer was unpredictable, you never knew where it could end up. For all he knew, it could be in his kidneys by now, or his lungs, or his stomach. What if it had spread to his bone marrow and he had leukaemia like Finley?

A PET scan shortly before his radiotherapy showed that this wasn't the case - the cancer had stayed where it was and had only grown slightly in the days since diagnosis, but at that point, Ryan hardly cared. His mind was made up.

As soon as he could, he texted Finley:

Is your dad still free? I need his help.

*Baclofen is a medication used to treat muscle spasticity.