Never Met a Girl Like Her | ✔️

(44)

Her eyes squeezed shut, sending a fresh fall of tears down her cheek. She nodded and let me lead her towards the room. It was warm inside. The lighting was low, so as not to be too harsh and the sound of monitors beeping to a beating heart were piercing. I was relieved to hear it. It was assurance. But it also meant that we were here. In this place. And then I saw Sarah and I saw that sweet, scared little girl who mom brought home from the hospital when she was two.

A girl who was scared for about three seconds until she saw my collection of Lego and demanded that we play with it together. Just as she had back then, she hid her fear when she saw mom and I standing at the foot of the bed. She smiled. Her pale, chapped lips curled upwards and her gaunt, hollow cheeks lifted. Mom clutched the bed rails as she moved up to the head of the bed and held Sarah's hand.

Mom looked at Sarah for a fleeting moment and then she sniffed, picked up her med chart and started scanning it over. "Are you in pain? What have they administered? How ab--"

"Mom," Sarah croaked. "I just need you to be my mom for a few hours. Please?"

Mom bit her lip as her chin quivered and she slipped the chart back into its slot on the wall. Sarah told her to lie down beside her in that fragile voice that I had never heard before. She didn't sound like her. The usual tone in which she used to boss us around or crack jokes, was gone. The strength was gone. I clutched the foot of the bed and lowered my head as a tear rolled down my cheek.

When Sarah received her diagnosis, I'd felt helpless. When she'd sat through hours of chemo, I'd felt helpless. When she'd lost her hair, friends, nights to pain and all hope, I'd felt helpless. But none of that could compare to how helpless I felt knowing that within a few hours, I wouldn't have a little sister. I wouldn't have a best friend. I was humming with the need to do something, anything to stop the wheels turning and save her life. But there was nothing I could do and it was breaking me.

"Heath."

I looked up to the quiet rasp and saw Sarah watching me through half closed lids. Mom was curled up beside her, drenching Sarah's gown with tears. I walked around to the other side of the bed and saw Sarah's fingers twitching atop the blanket, as if she wanted to lift her hand, but couldn't. So I held her hand and smiled at her.

"Has anyone ever told you, that you matter?" She whispered this time. I couldn't answer her, so she continued. "You're always so concerned with being what you think we all need, that I think you deny your own needs from time to time. But you shouldn't do that, Heath. Not all the time. Put yourself first once in a while, alright?"

"I don't really know what you mean," I said, attempting to un-clench my jaw so that I didn't sound so tense.

"If you want to move out of home, do it. If you want to travel, marry, have babies with Leonie, do that too. With her permission of course. If you want to tell Damien that he's a piece of shit and you no longer relate to him or want to be his friend, do it. If you want to express that you're in pain, don't hold it back because you think we can't handle seeing you cry," she raised a brow and I could see that my sister was still there, under all of that illness. She was there. "You think that I don't know how you wait until I leave the room to let it out? I do know Heath. And you're entitled to your feelings. So don't you dare think you need to push them down. Just do whatever you feel, Heath. You deserve it."

I wasn't planning on letting her speech win me over. But I didn't have a choice and I broke. Snapped. I felt as if I could barely breathe as I dropped my head into her pillow and cried harder than I'd ever cried before. What the hell was I going to do without her? Without her advice. Because despite the fact that she was sixteen and I was twenty one, her advice had never let me down. I'd come to trust her above most others. She'd never steered me in the wrong direction.