❦ 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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It's raining.
I can hear it against the window. I can hear it on the roof, pouring down from the heavens coupled with the clashing of thunder.
It's raining. Just like when I first kissed him.
I rest the side of my hand on a closed fist as I watch him. He looks so peaceful despite the steady beeping of the machines around him, wires running in and out of him and a tube down his throat to help him breathe.
I'd scooped Ollie into my arms and carried him inside when no one came. I'd yelled at the top of my lungs in that main lobby with him in my arms.
Everything just went numb after that—when the doctors and nurses tore his unconscious body from my arms; when I chased them down the hallway to the ICU; when the nurses stopped me from going past that point; when after two hours, the nurses let me see him; when I sat down next to his bed and just cried because it's all my fault that he's lying there.
He was right. He was right about everything. I am a coward. I made him hide our relationship. I forced him back into the closet so I could save face for my father. And he did it. He did it all because he loved me. And that makes the guilt worse than I could ever imagine.
I hear the door open. I look up, sitting up and wiping my cheeks with my sweater sleeve.
A woman enters. I watch her sit on Ollie's other side. She takes his hand and kisses it. She smiles sadly as she strokes his hair.
"Are you Nick?" she asks when she finally looks at me. I nod in response. She offers me that same sad smile. "I'm Isla."
I connect the dots. "Ollie's mom."
I never got to meet her earlier. Ollie had wanted me to meet her and his dad at his birthday party months ago, but I couldn't make it because of Dad and his rallies; I'm never going to another one nor have anything to do with that man ever again, that's for sure.
Isla caresses Ollie's cheek with a gentle thumb. "Did he tell you about the transplant?"
I sit up straighter. "What transplant?"
Isla sighs. If she'd told Ollie to tell me, he hadn't, and her reaction to my confusion is a good indication of her disappointment.
"The doctors had to put him in an induced coma. His last diagnosis left him with a year to live after his latest scare." Her warm eyes roll over to me. "He's got weeks if he doesn't get this transplant."
I try to swallow the knot in my throat. "He said no, didn't he?"
"This morning," Isla says. "He said he didn't want to be resuscitated if he..."
