This reborn personal trainer is going to whip the royal army into shape!

My Death (RIP me)

The soft whirring sounds of running machines. Stale but sterile air. A body too heavy to move. Eyes too weary to fully open.

I guess this was it.

I'd been in and out of the hospital so many times these past couple of years but something told me this would be the last time. The voices of doctors and nurses travelled into the room from the outside hall, their foreign language reminding me how far away from home I was.

I shouldn't have come. Now even my death is going to be one big administrative/insurance mess for my mother. How do you transport a corpse across the world? Can she Fed-EX me? Weekend at Bernie's my body through airport security?

The TV in my room was playing the Olympics but I didn't understand the overlapping Japanese commentary. Still, I watched with rapt attention as Aimee wandered up to the balance beam, looking visibly shaken. I really should not have come. This was supposed to be the most important day of her life and I tarnished it by making her watch a team of paramedics rush me into an ambulance as my body shut down, yet again. I just hope I didn't throw her off of her game. 

I wondered whimsically which body part would give up on me next. Hopefully something essential. I sighed, I didn't mean that. Thoughts like that just kept creeping in recently.

She mounted the beam, her worried expression quickly replaced with determination.

The small prickle in my chest that I felt every time I watched came back as I remembered that time, what felt like lifetimes ago, where everyone believed that was going to be me up there.

Her routine began. I watched her flip, twist and dance across the beam, her body executing each move with expert precision. Next was her dismount, this was the part she always struggled with. Beam was her weakest event and she had at best a fifty-fifty chance at sticking it.

She did.

She grinned widely, showing every single one of her teeth.

The crowd went wild.

Good for her.

"That was for you Meg!" She hollered, pointing at the camera.

Despite my circumstances, I felt my heart lift a little. Suddenly, I thought maybe I found the strength to live another day.

The sliding door to my room rolled open. It was likely my mom. I no longer had the function of my neck to turn and check.

"It's me," mom said. All of the optimism I briefly had must have escaped out the door. It was her tone of voice that did it. It had that timbre you only hear at a funeral: hushed and subdued with a forced hint of something like kindness. It was like it was taking all of her strength to hold in her grief and if she tried to speak at a regular volume, she'd just crumble.

The conversation with the doctors and the translator must not have gone well.

"How did she do?" She asked.

"She did it," I said with slurred speech. "How long do I have left?" I then asked bluntly, not patient enough to discuss anything else.

My mother tensed. "They're not always right."

"But what did they say?" I pressed.

"They told Hawkings he'd only have two years and he lived for fifty," she said weakly, in obvious denial.

"I can't live like that," I said.

She was quiet for a couple of beats. "I know."

From the way my neck had been positioned to watch the screen, I could see my entire deteriorated body laid out on the bed. The muscles I had carefully cultivated my entire life had wasted away, my calves were half their original size. My skin that was always tanned from outdoor activity was nearly transparent. Beyond sickly at this point, I looked like I was already dead.