Silence (April 2, 2023)

“I’m dying.”

She looked at me, her face once so full of laughter just a moment before. Slowly began to fade. Before it perked back up. “That isn’t a very funny joke. Don’t say things like that.” She punched my arm. I stood up, the sun shining through the window at my back.
“Jackie. Look at me.” She made eye contact with those beautiful brown eyes and opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “I’m dying.” I gulped, my mouth was so dry. Saying it aloud made it seem all too real. That it was really something happening to me, instead of someone else. That I was really dying. 

She still sat there on the couch, the one we had bought together. Finally she said “You're scaring me. You're taking this joke too far. Please knock it off.” She looked like she was close to tears. And it broke my heart, somehow this was worse. How was telling her worse? How was telling her that I was dying worse than actually learning I was. I couldn’t keep looking at her, I turned away and looked

*

Out of the window of the doctor's office. I was standing, not sitting, I had too much energy for that. I looked away from the window and resumed pacing back and forth. I had already been here for three hours, nurses coming and going, taking more blood and doing more tests. This was my third visit in just as many weeks. But maybe they would finally figure out why I kept coughing up blood. Why some days I felt so incredibly nauseous, so many whys, all I wanted was answers. My head snapped towards the door as I heard it opening. 

Dr. Reed stepped in, he was a kind man, one who always wore round glasses. “Hell Christopher.” He looked somber as he closed the door behind him.  

“So Dr, do we know what is wrong with me?” I crossed my arms.
“Chris. Do you have any family you would like to be here with, any friends.” I felt my heart sink, it felt like the floor disappeared underneath me. In an instant it felt like Dr Reed was so incredibly far away. But I remained standing. I had seen movies before, I watched TV. I knew what that meant. It was bad, really bad. 

I spoke, but my brain didn’t really process the words I said. “Any news that would upset me Doctor would upset anyone I would want to be here with me much more than it is going to upset me. I would be comforting them, they wouldn’t help me. So just tell me.”

“You might want to sit down.” He looked almost pleading as he said so. 

“Tell me, it straight.” I remained on my feet, I’m not sure I could have moved them even if I had wanted to. 

He looked me in the eyes as he stepped forward to rest a hand on my shoulder. “Its stage 4-

*

She was crying now, she was scared. I didn’t feel fear, I wasn’t afraid, not yet. “I’m not messing with you Jackie. I would never do that to you. I am not that cruel. And to be honest I would never lie to you.” I paused, I wanted to explain, to make her understand. “Do you a few weeks ago when you caught me coughing up blood into the sink? And I told you it was just a bloody nose.”

“I do.” She looked scared. So much more scared than I felt.
“I lied. That has been happening most days, at least for the last few months. The tiredness, the getting sick. All of those times I thought I was just sick, I wasn’t, I never had a cold.” The tears had stopped, leaving the two of us just standing there. The sun quickly setting, the light in the room quickly fading. 

“What is it?” She was trying to pull herself together for me. She was making a great effort to do so. 

“Lung cancer.” It sounded so matter of fact. My voice sounded so cold, so disattached even to myself. The two words that would define the rest of my life. The two words that defined that I would only have a little time left.
“How! You don’t even smoke, you're not even twenty one yet!” 

“The house fire. Or at least that’s what the doctors think. I mean it makes sense. You remember me telling you about that house fire, the one that happened when I was a kid. The reason I can’t escape the smell of smoke.

She nodded slowly, her eyes wide. “I do.”

“I don’t know how long I was there inhaling smoke Jackie, but it was a long time, and I was all alone. There was so much smoke” I looked away from her and down

*

The smoky hallway. I stood in my doorway as I coughed, there was so much smoke, I felt the heat scorching my face. It came rushing down the hallway like a thunderstorm, like an evil melavant beast. I couldn’t see, my eyes were blinded and watering, stinging with pain. Here I was, I knew mentally that I was standing in the hallway outside my bedroom, a hallway I had walked countless times. But now it was just yellow and black smoke pouring up from the stairwell. 

I turned back and slammed the door to my room. It was hazy there to now, the smell of burning over powering everything else. I coughed, but coughing just caused me to inhale more and more smoke. There was no way out of here. I was going to die here in my own bedroom. The whole house felt like it was moving and shaking. Fear overpowered everything, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe. The flames roared as the sound of 

*

Jackie's voice brought me back, I had been staring at her but not seeing her.  “When do you start treatment?” Jackie was crying now, she was slumped on the floor, crying and looking up at me. There was so much hurt in her eyes, so much pain. Pain that I couldn’t take away, it was something that I could help. I was dying and that was hurting her deeply. 

I felt the first tear come to my eyes. Not for myself, no, death was something I had already seen. It was not something that I was scared off. I was ready to die. No, I was crying for her, for the pain I was about to put her through. “I don’t. I won’t ever be starting treatment. It won’t help me, it would just make what little time I have left, much more painful.”
She looked at me, with anger in her eyes. “SO YOUR JUST GOING TO GIVE UP!? You're just going to stand there and make me watch you die while you don’t even try and save yourself? What is wrong with you, I love you, I can’t lose you.” She dissolved into sobs as all I did was 

*

Stand there. But I couldn’t stay there, every moment I waited the more hot the floor under my bare feet became, the more that smoke poured in through the cracks in the door. I looked around, desperately trying to remember everything schools had ever told me about fires, about how to survive. “Get low” was the only thought that kept coming to mind. 

I sank to my knees, burying my face into the floor. For a moment it felt like I could take a full breath. For a moment I felt a clarity of mind. So I stayed there, right there for a very long time as I tried to think. Finally a single thought came to me: ‘the window.’ I needed to make it to the window. I jumped to my feet and ran across my hazy room and grabbed the window. I wrenched at it again and again, but it didn’t move. My breath was coming heavily now. I started pounding on the glass as hard as I could. Nothing happened. Why wouldn’t the window open? 

I looked back towards the door and the smoke pouring up from the cracks had gotten larger. That was the only way out, it was the only direction I could go. I turned back to the door, I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and stepped out into the hallway. Immediately the heat hit me like a wave. Stinging my hands. I could see a single thing, so I just started running towards where I knew the stairs were. 

One moment my feet were on solid ground, the next they vanished into the smoke as I must have reached the stairs, my hand slammed painfully into the wall as I grabbed at its smooth surface to keep myself from falling head first. My shirt slipped away from my face as I stumbled and slipped. My hand is scrabbling to find any leverage on the stairs. 

I started coughing and hacking as the smoke filled my lungs. But I couldn’t stop here. I had to keep moving. I reached the bottom of the stairs. The tongues of flame shot out of what had once been the kitchen. The place I had called home looked unrecognizable. It was just smoke and the flickering light from the red flames. 

I saw the open door. I kept moving, that door was safety, it was salvation. Putting one bare foot in front of the other. Running towards the darkness, away from the light that tore apart and burned the home I had grown up in. I reached my hand out, as if I was grasping for the blessed darkness. The only chance I would make it out. I opened up my hand as I slipped out into the cold night air and felt as someone grabbed my hand. 

*

Jackie looked up at me, her hand clinging to mine. As if just by sheer force of will, she alone could make me live. She looked at me with such a pleading look. “I can’t lose you.” She repeated. 

“I think I should go.”
“Please don’t go. Please don’t give up.” I pulled my hand away from her. 

I looked out towards the window. The sky was crimson with the setting sun. “I haven’t given up on anything. I don’t want to die. But I have accepted what is my reality. I think we should break up with Jackie.”
“WHAT?!” She yelled with mixture of fear and anger. 

“I can’t ask you to stay, I can’t ask you to watch me die. Because I know if I asked you to stay, you would, and I don’t want to do that to you. I want you to live your life. I want you to be more than a young man's window. Because you are so much more, you can be so much and I don’t want to drag you down with me. You are. . . You were my whole world, I love you. I will love you for the rest of my life. Which is why I think I should leave.”
She wiped her nose as she spoke, resolving filling her voice. “This is my choice. I choose what I want to do.”

“Then I will stay, I will stay for you. But I don’t want you to give up your life just because I am losing mine. I want you to live Jackie, I want to see you happy.” 

“Then you need to survive. I am not ready to give up on you even if you are willing to. I think you need to go

*

“To the hospital.” My Mom looked over at me, she didn’t realize I was still awake in the bed. “I think we need to take him to the hospital.” She repeated again, this time with more force behind it.  I was holding in another cough. The same cough that had plagued me since the fire. Since we had lost our home. Since the insurance companies had given Dad and Mom so much stress. Insurance companies, it was something that they had spent so much time talking about in the last few weeks.

“We don’t have the money.” Money, that was another word they had both spent so much time talking about. Apparently money ruled the world. “It seems fine. It’s just a cough.” My dad said. “I wish we could, I want to take him to. But that kind of money that we would need for a hospital bill right now is the difference between paying for this motel room and being homeless.”

“We can find the money. I don’t like the sound of that cough. It’s been three weeks since the fire.” Mom sounded concerned.
“Maybe it is just dry here? This motel is a mess. Maybe we could just buy a humidifier?” 

“Maybe. . .” Both of them looked at me. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could feel their eyes on me. I couldn’t hold back the cough any longer and started gagging. My body shaking with each and every gasp. 

*

I cleared my throat and sat down as she continued to cry. I took her into her arms as she cried. At some point the tears came and we were sitting there on the floor crying together as the last rays of sunshine faded away. Time just seemed to slip away as we sat there. Hour after away. Moment after moment. Each just as precious as the last, each one just as likely to be my last. 

Eventually she fell asleep, I couldn’t, I didn’t know how many times I would get to do this. I didn’t know how much time I had left, how much space I had before everything came to an end. So for at least one more night, I would sit here with her, I would sit here in my thoughts. Because time was so precious, every moment at least for now it was a gift, I would sit here in silence.