Perhaps if Ryan hadn't been feverish, exhausted and carcinogenically challenged, he would've had a stronger reaction to Chloe's announcement that their mother was returning.
As it was, all he did was stare at her with an indecipherable expression on his face for a few moments, before making his decision.
"I don't have the spoons to deal with this shit," he said, flopping back down onto the bed.
Chloe didn't know if she was more surprised by his lacklustre reaction or his casual use of "spoons" as if he expected her to understand. "Fine, suit yourself," she said simply, before wheeling out of the room. She knew it would properly sink in eventually - probably when he had more "spoons", whatever that meant.
In her absence, Ryan dozed off for what felt like the dozenth time that day. When you were chronically ill, sleep was something you felt like you could never get enough of, especially seeing how sleeping was difficult when it was actually bedtime. It was at times like this where Ryan wondered if a chronic illness was trying to make you nocturnal.
No one is absolutely certain as to why humans sleep, but it's clear that aside from resting the body, sleep plays an important part in many important tasks, including memory and learning. REM sleep has been shown to particularly facilitate the retention of emotionally-laden information. Some researchers even believe that the principal of sleep is to allow us to dream, which is an essential part of the process of resolving emotional issues.
So maybe that was why the information about his mother sparked a dream about her - and not a nice one.
You'd think that after years upon years of trying to repress the memory of such a tragedy, certain details would be rather vague and blurry. This was, indeed, the case for Ryan - if he truly remembered everything exactly as it had happened, he would've always known that he had never pushed Chloe and would have never carried that guilt for almost a decade - well, not to the extent that he did, anyway.
But dreams are odd. Even if his mind was filling in some of the blanks with new information, all details - true or false - were as vivid as they would've been as if he was recalling events that had happened yesterday. The tiny pink teddy bear top Chloe was wearing, scruffy and slightly stained. The huge smile on her face as she shook him awake excitedly, saying that he should get up early so they could have fun. The paper birthday card she had given to him, a crudely drawn picture of both of them standing on a sandy beach with big smiles, a big number 5 above them, drawn with wax crayons.
He remembered the stifling heat that summer's day, so his mother had left the window open before going out grocery shopping. Ryan had taken that opportunity to sneak into her bedroom and snoop around with Chloe, opening up her wardrobe and drawers to find out what "grown-up" treasures could be hidden in there - only to find a few tall, dark glass bottles stuffed into her bedside cabinet. There was even one under her pillow.
Chloe had begun to have qualms then. Even as a three-year-old, she could probably sense the bottles were slightly off. She worried that their mother would come in and find them looking around her room and ran off. Ryan, however, found too much morbid fascination in the sleek, sinister bottles to follow her.
Looking back, he'd quickly sussed out that Chloe must've been trying to see their mother through the window before she fell. Somehow, her cries of fear as she fell from the window to the pavement below failed to reach his ears (and was yet another reason why he still felt a degree of culpability for the whole incident). It was only when he heard his mother's scream that he abandoned his findings and ran to find out what had happened.
The sight of Chloe's mangled body was a sight he would never forget.
Their mother was cradling her little body in her arms - which was actually the last thing you should do when coming across a casualty with clear injuries such as broken bones - when she looked up to see the height of the fall and met Ryan's eyes as he stared down at the scene below him.
Her face contorted before suddenly she seemed to pounce like a cheetah from the pavement all the way up to the window on the first floor (How she did that, Ryan had no idea, but dreams aren't particularly known for making sense). Her hands were outstretched like claws, going straight for him ...
Ryan woke with a start, breathing heavily, more beads of sweat clinging to his forehead and jawline. It was all just a dream ... except it wasn't, it had already happened years and years ago - and his mother was returning for round 2.
Sleeping was meant to recuperate spoons damn it, now he had one fewer than he had before he went to sleep.
"Are you okay?"
Ryan looked up to see May-Li standing by his bedside, a tray in her hands and a look of bewildered concern on her face. On the tray was another glass of water and a steaming mug of something. Ryan really wasn't in the mood to eat, but the nausea wasn't due to his illness this time.
"She's back," Ryan simply said in response, as if he were in the Wizarding World declaring that Voldemort was back.
May-Li sighed. "That she is." She set down the tray on his bedside table and brought his desk chair over to sit down next to it. He could smell slightly that the mug was full of chicken soup, classic sick food. If only enough chicken soup could cure cancer.
"Do you want to meet her?" May-Li asked.
Ryan let out a mirthless laugh, sitting up. "I was actually planning to spend my wish on it."
May-Li's eyebrows flicked up in shock. "I know, it sounds weird but ... all I've wanted for ages is to see her one last time, just so she could really see what she did to me, so I could tell her exactly what I went through because of her, just ... make her feel just as bad as I did for years."
May-Li rubbed the top of his back in sympathy, avoiding the tumour and noting with worry that his fever appeared to be rising again after falling in the afternoon due to the medication. It was understandable once explained - Ryan had been told constantly for many years that he was evil and had been heavily ostracised for it. Treat someone like a monster, especially a child, and it wouldn't take long for them to believe it and act accordingly. It was incredibly tragic now she thought about it. "I'm sorry, Ryan."
The boy just shrugged in response. "Not much I can do about it now."
"I think your temperature's risen again," May-Li commented, touching her fingers to his forehead. "Do you want some more medicine for it?"
Ryan just nodded, maybe it would help the nausea as well.
May-Li left and returned with the pills, popping one out for him to swallow. He washed it down with the water before reaching for the mug of soup, taking a small sip to test its temperature. Warm, not hot, so he took a couple of gulps. It wasn't too bad, but not quite tasty enough to give him an appetite. "Thanks," he murmured, setting it down.
"You should sleep, now," May-Li said. "You've has a rough day, you'll feel better in the morning."
Ryan scoffed. "I fell asleep after Chloe told me, next thing I had a dream about mum coming to get me," he retorted, rather matter-of-factly.
May-Li just nodded in sympathy. "Well, you should still rest up, we can talk about it more tomorrow if you want, when you're a bit stronger."
Realising he wasn't going to win, Ryan just nodded, slumping down as May-Li left. He wasn't going to sleep yet though, he needed someone to lean on, loath as he was to admit it.
Spoons?
The answer came a few minutes later.
Just 2
R: Can you spare one?
F: Think so, wassup?
R: I just need to talk to someone rn
F: What about?
R: It's kinda a lot, idk where to start
F: The beginning is always a decent starting point
Ryan then proceeded to spill his backstory to Finley - how his father had died from the same type of cancer he had when Ryan was three, causing his mother to turn to alcohol to cope with her husband's sickness and later death. He told him about the constant neglect of him and his little sister Chloe, culminating in Chloe's fall while their mother was absent and the subsequent framing of an innocent just-turned-five-year-old. Finally, he filled him in on how his sister was put into care when their mother had moved to America, the reveal of her lies, and she now had the gall to come back and try and bring Chloe back to America with her.
There was a long moment of no response after that before finally a message returned saying:
Would it be rude to say that I don't have the spoons to deal with this right now?
Ryan let out a somewhat manic laugh. That's almost exactly what I said when my sister told me, he texted back.
Sounds terrible though. Sorry man, talk later, came Finley's message.
***
The next morning arrived quickly, with Ryan waking up long after the others had left for school, feeling a little better than when he'd gone to sleep, but still weaker than preferable, with only 7 spoons. He'd probably be recovered enough to go back to school tomorrow, though he definitely wasn't looking forward to the reactions of the rest of his school year.
But there was a lingering feeling that he was dreading something else - something that dwarfed his worry about his classmates ...
Oh yeah, his mum was coming back. The same woman responsible for most of his life being a complete shitstorm.
Still, he could deal with that later. His body felt gross from lying in bed all of yesterday and his back and legs were hurting again. He reached for some Codeine and swallowed a pill dry, before pushing himself up and hobbling out of the room. By the time he had showered and dressed, the Codeine had kicked in and he felt better, albeit with only five spoons left.
"You feeling alright?" Mike asked, seeing him sitting in the kitchen shortly after, reaching for an apple for breakfast. His hair was tousled and his normally pale cheeks were still tinted pink from the remnants of fever, but otherwise, he seemed relatively okay.
"Better than yesterday," Ryan said simply, taking a bite out of the apple.
Mike nodded, taking a seat next to him. "Best conserve your energy today. We had to cancel your radiotherapy yesterday, of course, but that means you'll need to have another one on Saturday to make up for it."
Ryan groaned. "Mike, the only way I'm gonna get through today with radiation in it is if I literally do nothing from now until we have to leave for it."
"Spoons?" Mike raised an eyebrow.
Ryan nodded. "Radiotherapy needs three - one for getting there, one for getting back and one for being strapped to a table and having laser beams shot into me," Ryan explained with a scoff. "I have five now and I need one for lunch, one for dinner, one for getting up the stairs" - he ignored the widening of Mike's eyes at that point - "and another for getting ready for bed, and I'm probably losing one just talking to you right now. See? It doesn't add up."
Mike silently stared at Ryan's resigned expression for a few moments, finally fully taking in the full extent of the physical limitations presented by Ryan's perpetual sickness, as well as how frustrating that must be for him.
Finally, he said, "Does caffeine help?" though it sounded lame even to his own ears.
"If only," Ryan snorted, "Sadly, chronic fatigue doesn't work like that, I've tried. It doesn't make you any less tired, but it does make it harder to sleep."
Mike sighed. "Alright, just don't worry about it, okay? We'll sort it."
True to his word, Mike did sort it - or try to, anyway. After successfully postponing radiotherapy that afternoon, he decided to do some research on reducing fatigue when dealing with cancer, trying to see if there was any way he could help Ryan.
Finally, he resolved to talking to Dr Gareth about medications to reduce Ryan's fatigue. It probably wouldn't eliminate it entirely, but it could supply him with a precious few more spoons.
Or maybe the doctor would refuse, seeing how Ryan would hopefully be cured soon and his strength would return to him in time.
***
The rest of the day passed and soon enough, the others returned home from school. Ryan was sitting on the sofa playing a video game when Tyler flopped down next to him, school uniform wrinkled and his tie undone.
"How are you feeling?" Tyler asked.
"Better," Ryan said, pausing his game. "I'll probably be back at school tomorrow."
"Yeah, about that ..." Tyler looked down sheepishly, "... the whole year knows you have-"
"I know, I told them," Ryan interrupted nonchalantly. "What's happened?"
"They won't shut up about it," Jody huffed, joining the conversation. "But it'll pass, it'll be old news by next week."
"Hopefully," Ryan snorted.
Chloe appeared suddenly, clearing her throat aggressively at Tyler and Jody, signalling for them to leave. They did, looking rather unnerved.
"Mike says that Mum will be arriving next Saturday," Chloe said simply. "Just thought you should know."
"Do you wanna go back with her?" Ryan asked sharply, expressing what had been plaguing his mind.
Chloe blinked, looking down awkwardly as if she didn't know how to answer the question. "Um ..."
Her lack of response said enough for Ryan. "Whatever, I can't control you," he said, turning back to his video game and leaving Chloe disheartened.
***
When Ryan walked into his classroom the next morning, all conversations stopped almost instantly and everyone in the room turned to stare at him like he was a grenade that had its pin removed.
"Keep staring, I might just do a backflip," Ryan quipped, before making his way over to his seat like nothing had happened.
Through the rest of the day, Ryan did his best to maintain a nonchalant, uncaring attitude, but it wasn't easy with everyone's eyes burning into him like the beams from the linear accelerator. His teachers, thankfully, still treated him the same as they had known beforehand, but he could see them occasionally giving warning looks to those who whispered no-so-subtly behind his back.
He felt those whispers like spiders crawling up his back.
The one person in his class that seemed to have a semblance of common decency was Violet, a quiet girl who often seemed to be peeping out at the world from under her heavy dark hair. She wasn't peeping now, only glancing down at the biology worksheet they had been given. Ryan guessed her reaction would've been roughly the same whether he had cancer or whether he led a double life as a supervillain that held entire cities under his dictatorship using his immeasurable telepathic powers.
Which was why she was the last person he expected to be accompanied by when he sat alone at lunch.
"Hey," she greeted at first.
"Hey," he muttered in response.
"So ..." she said awkwardly, "you're sick."
"Wow, I didn't notice," Ryan said with an eye roll. "Look, you don't have to feel sorry for me, I'm coping."
"Doesn't look like it," Violet commented, looking at his plate that was still two-thirds full despite the fact that lunch had been going on for half an hour. "You haven't been eating much since we got back."
"Yeah, that's what happens when you have radiation shot into you at least once a day," Ryan explained. "Besides, even if I did eat more, half of it will go to the little bugger growing inside of me."
Violet actually let out a chuckle at that. "That makes it sound like you're pregnant."
Even Ryan couldn't hold back a smirk. "I prefer to think of it more like a parasitic tapeworm."
"Sounds lovely."
Ryan shrugged. "That's cancer for you."
"So you're on radiation," Violet sussed out, "and chemo too?"
"No, just radiation," Ryan said. "It's not as bad as it could be, all things considered."
Violet was surprisingly easy to talk to, even for someone as normally closed off as Ryan. She always had an answer to everything he said, making it easy to keep the conversation flowing.
As lunch ended and they got up to put their trays away, Ryan asked her, "You won't tell anyone what I've told you, right?"
"Who would I tell?" Violet replied. "My best friend isn't here and I don't talk to many other people."
"Thanks," Ryan said simply. "See you around, probably."
***
F: When is your mum coming?
R: Next Saturday, Chloe says.
F: Good, gives you some time to prepare.
R: I don't think I ever will be
F: But you wanted to see her, right? You told me, you wanted to use to wish for it.
R: Yeah but I didn't want the possibility of her taking everything away from me hanging over my head.
F: What does Chloe say
R: I asked her if she wanted to go with her, she said nothing
F: And?
R: She obviously wants to go but doesn't want to say it to my face.
F: Yikes
R: You're telling me
F: I guess you'll just have to wait and see
***
Ryan would've preferred to do more waiting and less seeing, but the following week passed far too quickly. Before he knew it, it was Saturday morning and Chloe was waiting by the door for their mother to turn up. Ryan preferred to remove himself from the matter for as long as possible.
Finally, the door opened and he heard Mike greeting Ms Reeves ("Please, call me Karen.") and Chloe's exclamation that she was excited to see her again.
May-Li walked into the lounge - the room that Ryan was currently hiding in - and squeezed his shoulder. "Go on, see her. We're all supporting you," she whispered.
Very reluctantly, Ryan stood up and made his way into the foyer, step by step, May-Li following close behind.
Then Karen looked up from Chloe and saw him, and he saw the same face that had held such rage directed towards him in his dream and many a time in real life.
Earlier that week, to ease May-Li's worries about his cancer metastasising, Ryan had had a PET scan, which had shown that no new tumours had grown anywhere and the fever was merely due to the action of interleukins.
But right now, it felt like the astrocytoma had seeded itself in his breastbone and a new tumour was growing in a matter of seconds, filling up most of his thoracic cavity and pushing his heart and lungs and trachea out of place.
He turned to May-Li. "Catch me."
"What?"
With that, Ryan's legs buckled and his vision left him as he fainted dead away.