❦ WINNER OF THE RIVETING WRITING CONTEST ❦
OLIVER IS DYING
With only months left to live at just seventeen, Oliver spends his remaining days of endless tests and debilitating drugs in the St. Andrews paediatrics ward planning his impending funeral...
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DYING is an interesting concept.
It's so hard, yet so easy.
It's so straightforward, yet so complicated.
It's hard to grasp the fact that once you're dead, that's it—the end of all ends.
But it's easy, because when the end comes, it's something you accept, I suppose, because it's the end. That's it. Done. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do.
That is, if you're old. If you've lived a full life, the end is like finishing a story. You die, people grieve, they move on and you become nothing but a distant memory.
But what if you die young? What if you're ending isn't when you're ninety reminiscing back on times well loved? What if you've barely had a chance to truly live, and you're ending creeps up on you and snatches you away?
I was two when I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. I don't remember my parents' reaction to being told that their only child was destined to die young. What I do remember is spending most of my childhood in and out of hospitals. I was in and out so much the paramedics knew me by name. Dean, Ally and I are good friends. We still send them Christmas cards every year.
Things started to go wrong when I was nine.
We were told of a routine surgery that would help my lungs. We went for it. And the first few days were fine. The Jell-O was okay. Still disappointed that there was no orange flavor, but there are worst things in the world.
Turns out routine surgeries go wrong sometimes.
One minute, things were fine. The next, I couldn't breathe.
It was like I was drowning. It was so sudden it didn't hit me that perhaps I was going to die. My lungs had gone into total failure, and I was put into a coma for three weeks.
My life had a bit of a stroll for a few years after that. Didn't almost die. Spent more time at home rather than under a medical light that probed my soul.
I was twelve when I was admitted to St. Andrews in Los Angeles.
We moved across the country from Montauk for me to live in the best pediatrics ward on the West Coast.
