I put the phone down. It felt like my heart had shattered into hundreds of sharp shards scattering inside me making me bleed. I'd taken the phone into the hallway, sat on the bottom of the stairs as I spoke, happy to find that Lukas had taken time to call me back.
"Could you come to the hospital Sophie?" I listened with a hollow feeling in my chest. I had the image of Lukas lying a the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood flashing through my mind, I breathed deeply. I could hear Nicky in the kitchen making a chocolate sponge and singing along to one of my favourite songs, but it seemed a thousand miles away. Like I'd stepped out of reality and into a world where everything was the same but slightly different.The light refracting through the window was a little too bright for the tone of the conversation, and the carpet on the stairs a little too prickly against my legs. I felt uncomfortable.
"Why?" I didn't really want to hear the answer. I was terrified. Not only because he hadn't accepted my apology for my terrible behaviour when I was drunk, but that I knew he'd never be as close to me as he had been. That I could have lost my Lukas forever.
"Lukas needs you. He's in the Leukemia department, and he wont wake up" I dropped to the floor fumbling with the phone. Leukemia? Leukemia!
"Sophie?" I heard a waver in Lukas' mums voice. She was being deadly serious.
"I'll be there" She replied swiftly as though time depended on it.
"When?" I hated the sense of urgency.
"I said I'll be there!" I threw the phone up the stairs so it hit my door, where the front and back disconnected and the battery fell out.
I walked into the living room with a hollowness playing in my stomach. My friend was in hospital, his physical presence missing from my life for such a long time that it felt somewhat catastrophic to think he'd been gone this long and I'd never noticed just what he'd been going through.
"Mum, can you take me to hospital?" Nicky jumped to attention like something was wrong with me.
"Why?" She continued watching the television. I watched as the towers loomed up through the ground, people pretending to make six iron rings that flew into the sky and sparked a million dazzling sparks.
"Lukas is in hospital" I felt so vulnerable, everything had seemed to be going so well until now; it was like a hole had been ripped in the fabric of my life. I couldn't lose him too.
"Is that the emo boy?" My Mum brushed it off as nothing, and I felt like reminding her how I'd nursed him back to health and how he'd saved my life but I didn't bother. It felt more like I would be wasting time telling her this when I should be on my way to him.
"Can we go?" I looked desperately at my Mum.
"Tomorrow morning, lets watch the opening ceremony" I could hardly believe she was brushing this off like it was nothing.
"He's dieing!" Nicky choked on his mouthful of coke. My mum laughed like I'd made some destructive yet witty joke, I wished it was a joke. I wished I'd just sudden;y developed a sick sense of humour and that this wasn't really happening.
"Don't be so melodramatic, nobody's dying" My mother turned back to watch the fireworks. They were popping and zipping around the screen in three distinct and familiar colours to our country, blue, white and red.
"He's got Cancer, he's in the critical ward, he's been missing for weeks and nobody's seen him and I thought he was just being a recluse but something really bad has been going on" Nicky was holding my hand, I'm not quite sure how he got there and laced his fingers with mine without me noticing but I really didn't mind.
We got to the hospital in eighteen and a half minutes, which I was pretty sure was a mew record from my house on the other side of town. The hospital seemed worried about me as I sauntered in, sweating profusely from running up the hill from the bottom of the multi-story car park. It was dark outside, pitch black, and I'd left my Mum and Nicky in the car. They probably hadn't even paid and displayed ye and goodness knows how long it would take them to find me in the maze that is a hospital. Especially with both Mums and Nicky's sense of direction.
"Excuse me, where would I find the cancer department?" The lady behind the counter pointed towards the far corridor looking startled.
"Follow the red arrows" I was sprinting those halls like an Olympian. I felt like hurdling the beds with the patients in even though I was forced to the side of the hall desperately trying to push past to the one person who needed me. Who at that moment I needed to see.
"Sophie?" She looked rough. I didn't give the girl enough credit, the way she'd sounded on the phone I'd be surprised if she'd turned up at all. But there she was, obviously tired, red in the face and sweating like a wilder-beast in the Sahara.
"Where-is-he?" She gasped with little rasps inbetween each word. I looked her up and down, she was wearing pink rollerblade pyjamas and a pair of pink bunny slippers. Her hair was in a scruffy nest on otp of her head and her eyesmakeup was smudged from the days hardships.
"He's in there" I pointed to the window covered with blinds, you could see him unmoving form through the gaps between the slats. She stopped dead and took two steps towards the window, looking through it at my beautiful boy who was just lying there motionless.
"Oh my god, poor Lukas" I watched her hands that were balled into fists shake.
"Whats wrong with him?" I looked at the floor.
"He's got testicular cancer, and its spread throughout his body. At the beginning of the week they discovered a tumour on his brain, and they operated on it yesterday but now we cant wake him up" It was like word projectile vomiting. She didn't need to know all of the details now, with all that spinning through her head what could she possibly think to say to him to wake him up?
"And nobody told me, for all this time. How longs he known? Months, a year, was it a genetic condition? I deserved to know!" That's when something in my head snapped, like a red mist descended over my vision. How dare she say she deserved to know? Where had she been the last few months, nowhere near him; that's where!
"Who are you to say you deserved anything off of him? You are the girl who broke his heart and left him out to dry, and from all accounts I can gather that you also cheated on him when you swanned off into paradise!" Her eyes were vague and clouded as she lunged for me. Out of nowhere an arm wrapped around her waist and my Doctor friend held her back so her fingertips couldn't reach me. But she didn't struggle, she composed herself and coldly stated the facts the way she saw them.
"He was cutting himself you know, slashing his wrists for months when we were together. Its no wonder you didn't know he hated his life so much, you were the one letting him get pulverised by his own father, who you were stupid enough to let hit your only son. And as for judging me, what right do you have to do that, my father died and he was there for me. He saved me; and god damn you if you don't think I'm gonna do the same" She dropped the Doctors arm like it was lead. I watched as her eyes focused again and she looked me straight in the eyes "I blame you for this, and if he dies I'll never forgive you" She turned and entered his room. I watched as she tenderly took his hand in hers, tears painting her pretty face. She was right, I didn't know about him self harming, and I didn't know the specifics of what he'd been going through, and I should have known. It shouldn't have been up to her to keep his spirits high. I was his Mother.
And she was the girl he loved...
There are no words to describe how I was feeling as I ran a hand along Lukas' arm, we'd been through a lot, and he'd helped me so much. And yet I'd abandoned him when it got tough; just like Courtney had said. I thought about how cold he was, about how still and silent he was. I could almost fool myself into thinking that he was just asleep.
'Lukas, I don't know whether you can hear me or not, but um... Basically you Mum told me that you needed me, so I'm here. Oh god I'm so sorry I let you go, I didn't mean to hurt you, and I didn't know you were ill. I wish you'd told me, I never would have let you go through this on your own" I nervously wrapped my hands around his, and thought about how I was such a stereotypical girl. I was being a cry-baby, what help was I gonna do by crying and being emotional? If he could pick up on vibes in his state he would probably stay well clear of this.
"And I know you well enough to know you wouldn't have wanted me to stay with you through obligation. And it wouldn't have been, if you'd told me I would have stayed because I would wanna be there all the steps of the way to show you how much I needed you. I need you to pull through Lukas" I let go of his hand knowing I looked like those people in hospital programmes who sit by the bed for hours gradually aging, but never leaving.
"And I'm begging you to forgive me for everything, I'm sorry about sleeping with Nicky in America, but I didn't know that we were still together. I never would have cheated, but you made it so difficult and I'm not blaming you. Why would you push me away when you were going through this? I told you I loved you and I didn't mind that you never said it back, and I didn't mind that you turned into a complete jackass but then we just fell apart. I know you probably hate me after everything but I didn't mean to hurt you, and I really don't want you to die. Oh god please don't die" Tears were spilling, hot and wet across my skin. I was shaking and running my fingers up and down his arm. I was running out of ideas, what was left to say? What would happen to him if he never woke up? Would they keep him forever in comatose? No, I knew how stupid that was. They'd pull the plug.
Paniciking slightly I banged my hand on the side of the bed and authoritatively stage whispered so only he could hear, I knew his viper of a Mother would be trying to listen in to everything I was saying.
"Lukas fucking wake up, I'll tickle you, or rugby tackle you. Just wake up, I'll do anything!" I tricked myself into thinking there was a movement, a tremor running across his bottom lip. I moved around the bed away from the heart monitor and closer to his face. I lent in as close as I could while still talking, my lip occasionally brushing the tip of his nose.
"Lukas? Can you hear me?" I leaned slightly closer, and found those familiar nerves rising in my stomach. Those butterflies he brought every time I was near enough to touch him, I felt guilty for the heat in my body, and the smile parting on my lips.
"I love you, you know that. So if you can hear me, wake up please" I breathed in and pressed my lips lightly to his, my lips moist where his were dry, my eyes open while his were closed. That's when I felt it, a twitch. This time I wasn't imagining it, I watched his mouth twitching and his eyes. And then something happened.
The machine beeped loudly with a continuing note. I knew what that meant, I'd watched enough holby to understand. I started screaming for nurses and pressed the big red button that hung from the drip. People flew in like I'd summoned them from the heavens, so fast they moved, and I watched numb as his heart failed. There was no rise and fall of his chest, people hammered it to the point where I was sure I heard his ribs crack.
"Time of death, twelve midnight twenty seventh July" I slumped sideways down the wall, and I didn't realise that I was screaming hysterically. I couldn't see properly through my tears, all I could feel was the imprint he'd left on my heart and how it felt like I'd been destroyed from the inside out.
It may have been a while since I'd kissed him. But I hadn't forgotten what it was like... this desperation I was feeling now was matching the intensity of the emotions he'd always brought to the forefront in me, except these were ultimately less pleasant.
When I gathered my thoughts enough to look around without seeing Lukas' face everywhere, I saw his mother in a ball on the floor, crying like I'd never seen anybody cry before. The anguish was clear on her face and her hand was reaching to the bed where Lukas lay. I felt like I was analysing a painting or a piece of stage theatre rather than my closest friends Mother.
I don't know how long I'd been in there, but I could see Nicky on the other side of the blinds. He had tears in his eyes, and I thought guiltily that he must have seen me kissing Lukas, but it didn't feel at all important just then. Feeling anything felt like a really bad idea, I had that numb cold feeling again. And it was spreading out and colliding, freezing my all too weak heart in its casing.
They wheeled the 'body' out of the hospital cubicle, it started me off crying again. I had noticed that because of all the doctors and machines they had brought into the room nobody but Lukas' mother had managed to push her way through. I was on the other side of the now empty room wondering if it had caused him any pain.
The next thing I saw was my mother, masses of mascara stains on her face pretty face and this traumatised look in her eyes. I wasn't quite sure why she was looking at me like that, it was Lukas who had died not me. She should be pitying Lukas' mother. But I was so glad that she wasn't, and that for once my cold and unloving Mother was holding me and rocking me, just so I felt okay.
"You shouldn't have had to go through that on your own sweetie" My Mother stroked my hair and I leant my head against her collarbone. I hadn't been this close to my Mother since I'd found out she'd been lying to me about my Dad. But it felt like such a release to have her hug me again.
"I didn't" I wept into her shoulder and actually believed in something. If I'd been watching him die and known he'd have nobody to guide him I'd have been kicking up a hell of a lot more fuss. But I had this calm feeling running from my head to my toes.
My Dad would look after him. I knew he would...