Once In A Blue Moon

27 Insanity

Now I know I've got a heart because it's breaking.

— L. Frank Baum

☾

"I can take it. Tell me everything about my condition."

She had never thought this is how life would be like one day. That one day, the beauty in the glitters won't appeal to her anymore. That all the riches at her feet would come to be just ashes against the cost of a life she cannot pay to save. She had never thought life would become so meaningless, all due to the process of suffering a loss, not all together but in bits, until the day the love that has come to fill her heart is no more and her heart is empty again.

"The cancer has disseminated in your body. Here's your CT scan, and here's your bones scan. Your bones are badly affected."

She had never loved her blood so much. Yes, just how much a family could be loved for someone like her. But no, never to insanity. She had never thought loving someone could be this intense.

"Ah, so... how much time I've left?"

But then again, the fear of loss brings forth the worth of a thing or person. And until then, we're always taking it for granted. Until then, we're in oblivion. Then one day, it's just too late to value them. Then, we mourn.

"The survival rate is different for everyone, Mr. Humayun. After bones metastasis, the mean rate is seven to nine months. But it can be more or less than that."

Banafsha exhales a shuddering breath. Heavy silence settles in the clinic and neither Zoraiz nor the oncologist say anything anymore. She forces herself to hold back her tears-- she cannot cry. Zoraiz forbade her too ever since she broke the news to him and couldn't hold herself together. For her brother, she has to try. She cannot display her pain to him-- he himself is suffering enough.

After a long moment, Zoraiz finally replies, "Okay."

His doctor starts explaining to him his reports and treatment options. Banafsha listens to everything without participating.

"In advanced stage even though we cannot save a life, we can still try to increase life expectancy by slowing the progression of cancer. But at terminal stage, the cancer usually does not respond to therapy," the doctor informs him. "We can start with chemotherapy if you wish. Our main aim will be to make you comfortable as much as possible."

All these years in the hospital, she has seen numberless people die everyday. All these years, she has broken many news of deaths herself to the people, patients taking their last breaths in front of her, dying in her hands, from children to adults to elderly. People have come to her with all kinds of incurable illnesses, counting their last days to leave the world. But this time it's different. This time it's her own brother and it's intolerable. She has never made peace with young deaths in her career. Then how does she do so now with the man she has come to love more than her own existence?

"Then let's just not trouble ourselves with therapies, doctor. The pain from them are enough torture in themselves. I still haven't forgotten my first time. I don't want to add more to the list."

Her heart cracks at his words, breaks open with her every beat, the pangs enough to suffocate her. She wants to get up and leave, finding it difficult to keep listening to the discussion. But she doesn't want Zoraiz to go through it alone like before. She wants to be here for him. So somehow, she forces herself to stay.

"Any other complaints besides the coughing up of blood and headaches?"

"Back pain. Especially around my flanks."