❦ 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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CHEMOTHERAPY sucks.
It's a painful contradiction.
Its purpose is to cure. It cures by destroying. It does its job at a cost: it makes me unbelievably ill, it steals my hair, but I walk out with some more years on my counter. It's a difficult sacrifice I'm willing to accept, I suppose.
I lay on my bed, scrolling through the Instagram feed I'm not supposed to have.
Two months.
Two long months I've spent in Tombstone.
It's not all bad. I never thought I'd like it here—not being able to go where I want, do what I want, having to sit in therapy with other people like me and talk about my problems and feelings, hanging around with other sick kids.
I thought it would all be too much.
I thought I'd be better at home.
Opinions change.
The nurses here are so much nicer than the last hospital I was at—small talk comes with everything, and I love it when we chat about anything as they set me up to get my body pumped with cancer killing ass kickers. Doctor Patrick has to be one of the best doctors I've ever had.
The other sick kids have been very inviting. They're not so down and out about their own problems or death sentences like the last place I had an extended stay in. Rather, some of them are quite chipper considering they may not make it past thirty. I understand why.
Despite the name of the ward, the patients want to keep it as comforting a place they can full of positivity, the complete opposite of the kids I'd once surrounded myself with who went around not wanting to rock the boat.
I only wish Mom and Dad came to see me as much as Nick does. I don't understand why me being in St. Andrews should be such a secret. It's not like people don't know I've got cancer. It's public knowledge.
Nick doesn't talk about them when he comes to visit. I've asked about them—when they're coming to see me, what they're doing, how Dad's campaign is going. He just gives me short answers. The same with Mom when she finally decides to call me.
