Light bursts through the room as I wake up.
It is as if the sunlight waited for me to wake up, because as soon as I open my eyes, a bright flash greets me, and I am temporarily blinded.
“Warren!” a yell sounds from the hall.
As my vision clears, I see a tall boy, about my age, being dragged from my room. He’s holding a flash camera in his hand that he just used to take a picture of me.
“Wait!” I yell out, wanting to see who the boy is.
“Kyra!” I hear him call back.
He runs back into the room, followed by an upset-looking nurse.
“Hello.” I say. “Who are you?”
He has short brown hair and deep eyes to match. His tall, statuesque figure is fit, and his dark complexion makes him seem mysterious.
“Don’t you remember me?” He asks, cocking an eyebrow.
The gesture makes him look impossibly handsome.
“No.” I say, confused. Where would I know him from?
“It’s me.” He says, as if that explains it all.
“Who are you?” I repeat, annoyed because “It’s me” doesn’t tell me anything.
“Warren.”
Warren. The name clicks and suddenly I know exactly who this is. He’s gotten a lot better looking, but he’s still the same Warren that I will never, and can’t ever like. The dark and handsome stranger in front of me is the boy who has pitted for me to fall for him for two years now, but won’t ever succeed- because I can see right through him.
Warren is a typical teenage boy that goes about love in all the wrong way. He doesn’t like me for who I am, in fact, he doesn’t even know who I am, really. He knows next to nothing about me. He just showers me with shallow compliments and cocky remarks, and expects me to date him.
Stupid boy.
“How could you forget me?” Warren asks.
“Easily.” I tell him. “Now get out of my room.”
Somewhere in between him coming back into my room and me remembering who he is, the nurse keeping him away from me has left. I want desperately for her to come back and take him with her.
It’s not that Warren is awful; in fact, he’s a fun guy when he doesn’t like you. But he does like me, therefore making him a pain in the-
“You don’t want me to leave. So don’t lie to me.” Warren tells me, interrupting my thoughts- and probably for the better at that.
“Yes I do. I want you to leave my room this instant.” I say firmly and quickly, not wanting to show any hesitation on my part.
“Oh, whatever. I just came to tell you that I hope you get better and go home soon.” He rolls his eyes and sits next to me. I sit up and look at him, confused.
For the first time since I woke up, I realize that I’m not in my room at home. I’m in a hospital, sitting in an oversized bed with sterile white sheets, and dressed in a blue polka-dot hospital gown. I remember my side hurting, but it’s not any more. There’s a needle stuck into my right arm with a tube connecting to a bag of a faintish-pink liquid. I wonder if it’s pain killer.
How did I get here? I ask myself, trying to think. The night before is a blur, and I find it hard to remember much of anything. I can picture someone carrying me out to a car. Someone with blonde hair and green eyes with a panicked look in them. Someone that I care about very much… Bryan.
Bryan.
“Where’s Bryan?” I ask Warren, because he’s the only person in the room.
“You know, I brought you flowers and came to sympathize with you and all you can say is ‘Where’s Bryan’? I feel the love, Kyra. Thanks.”
He sighs, defeated.
“You brought me flowers?”
I’m momentarily distracted, looking around the room for the flowers he brought me. I look over at him and he points to the nightstand beside my bed.
There’s a vase of roses, at least two dozen, sitting in a clear, glass vase. They’re beautiful, but they’re not what I’m looking at.
“Who brought those?” I ask him, staring at the smaller vase next to it. Tiny and slender, it’s a pale blue color, and is holding three tiger lilies in it.
“I just got here! How am I supposed to know?” He asks crossly.
I lean over and examine them closely, as if that will let me know who did it. Of course, I already know who did it. There’s only one person in the whole world that would bring me those.
Just as I begin to think about him, he walks in the room.
“Bryan.” Warren mutters quietly, disdainfully.
Bryan walks in the room looking disheveled and stressed, but the second his eyes land on Warren he looks even worse.
“I go out of this room for less than five minutes-” He begins, pointing at Warren accusingly, “-and then you have to show up! Why?”
Warren stands up and walks over to Bryan.
“Well, hello to you too.”
“Shut up,” Bryan says. “And get out of here.”
“I can be in here if I want.” Warren argues.
“If Kyra were awake, she wouldn’t want you here.” Bryan shoots out at him.
“Ouch.” Warren says.
“It’s the truth.”
“I know.” Warren admits. “She already told me to get out.”
“How? She’s not-”
Bryan’s voice breaks off and he looks over at my bed. Once he sees that I’m awake, he seems to forget all about Warren and rushes over to me. His face lights up as he sees me and he reflexively intertwines his fingers with mine.
“Good morning.” I say.
“It’s evening.” Bryan tells me.
“Oh.” I say, frowning. “How long have I been out?”
“Two days.” He says.
“That long?” I’m surprised, to say the least.
Bryan nods. “I should know. I was here the whole time."
I blush, imagining him watching over me as I sleep. It makes me uncomfortable.
“Ahem,” A loud throat clears itself behind us.
“Get out.” Bryan says to Warren, shooing him away.
Warren raises his hands in surrender.
“Fine.” He says, and leaves without another word.
Bryan turns back to me.
“Anyways, where were we? Oh, right. You just asked me to kiss you.”
“I did not!” I protest, but Bryan puts his hand over my mouth gently.
“You’re right. But you’ve been out for two days and I couldn’t kiss you that whole time. So, now you've got to make up for it.”
“Ugh.” I say, pretending to be disgusted, but it doesn’t deter him in the slightest, because he goes on right ahead and leans in anyways.
This isn't like the less-meaningful kisses we've been exchanging as of late. Bryan is kissing me like it's the last time he ever will, and it confuses me.
That thought in mind, I break away, and Bryan collapses on the chair behind him, looking troubled.
''What?'' I ask, wanting to know what's wrong.
"I just thought I'd never get to see you awake again."
"What?" I repeat, not sure if I heard him right.
Bryan sighs and looks at me with a strange expression on his face, like he's debating whether or not he's going to tell me something.
"When you... when you got here, you were already out. I didn't know if you were unconcious or just asleep, so I rushed you in to see Dr. Strider. We got lucky because he was here and still had an hour before some surgery that he scheduled for someone else, and he was able to see us right away. He said that something... something in your body had made your pain so intense that you went into shock. Yesterday he put you in a medically induced coma so that you wouldn't have to deal with the pain, but when he stopped medically inducing the coma, then you were still... asleep."
"Well, I'm awake now. But why wasn't I before? And why did my side hurt?"
"Well, Dr. Strider didn't know why you weren't waking up, but he says the drugs may have just affected you differently."
I notice that Bryan hasn't answered my second question, so I ask him why my side hurt again.
He looks uncomfortable.
My mind suddenly flashes back to the day that I found out I had cancer, with Bryan sitting there when I woke up. He told me that he was supposed to get the doctor as soon as I awoke.
He looked uncomfortable then, too.
"Bryan?" I call his name uncertainly.
"I- I'm going to go get the doctor." Bryan says, getting up to leave
I grab his arm and pull him back, so that our faces are less than an inch away from touching.
"No." I say. “You aren't running away from me this time. Tell me what's going on."
My heart picks up pace as I imagine the possibilities of what could be happening. What if the cancer is terminal now? What if it spread faster than the doctor was anticipating? What if the chemo stopped working and I'm never going to be in remission?
Instead of answering me, Bryan leans in and kisses me. I push him back, not wanting to kiss him at a time like this.
"Bryan, right now is not the time to kiss me!" I exclaim, irritated.” Now tell me what's going on!"
"Kyra, I don't want-"
"I don't care!" I yell.
I get up from my bed and walk out. I don't know where I'm going but I know that I need to find Dr. Strider. Bryan won't tell me what's going on so I guess I have to find out myself.
I hear someone running after me but I pretend like I don't.
"Kyra!"
I ignore him.
"Wait up!"
He catches up and walks beside me.
"Kyra, stop."
I ignore him still.
"Kyra, please!"
The pleading tone in his voice makes me soften a little, and I stop and turn to him.
“Are you actually going to tell me?” I ask.
Bryan sighs. He looks like he hasn’t slept for a few days, with his disheveled hair and tired expression. I wonder if he’s been going to school, or if he’s taken it off to stay with me in the hospital all day. I doubt it’s the latter; Bryan’s mom would never let him miss too much school, no matter what the occasion is.
“Yes.” He says, the words barely audible.
“Okay.” I submit, feeling bad about my rant.
He takes my hand, but slowly, as if afraid it might disappear at any time. I grasp his firmly, to show him that I’m still here.
“Bryan.” I say softly. “I just want to know. That’s all.”
He nods again, and then looks at me.
“Well, before I say the issue, I have to tell you that it’s not terminal yet.”
It’s not terminal yet? Terminal? Terminal…
My mind is thrown into a frenzy of thoughts, all of them echoing and revolving around that word.
Terminal.
“You’re… not accepting the kidney you received. Your immune system is attacking it, and a couple nights ago, when I had to take you here, your kidney almost failed.”
My mouth is dry and I seem to have lost the ability to speak.
“They can give you medicine to keep you alive, but it will weaken you quite a bit. They have to lower your immune system’s strength in order to get your body to stop attacking your kidney, and that won’t leave you much energy to do whatever else you need to do.”
“Like training.” I say hoarsely, realizing that if I am to live I cannot run the Ironman. This is the end of the road. There’s nothing left in front of me but wilderness that I am forbidden to enter.
It is no longer very improbable that I can run the Ironman.
It is impossible.
. . . . . . .
Thank you for reading lovlies!:) If you like it, remember to comment vote and fan! I'm thinking about entering this in the Watty's since it'll be done well before November:) What do you think? And any new cast ideas? If you have a good idea for cast than I'll dedicate a chapter to you!:)
Stay beautiful,
Rachelle