Cancer [SamandColbyFic]

Cancer

"Yo, how'd it..."

"It's back."

Colby looked up from his phone, a cold feeling sinking into his chest. Sam was standing in front of him, a glassy look in his eyes, and it had nothing to do with one of his eyes actually being glass.

Colby set his phone down, already getting flashbacks from eight years ago. Because he'd been driving Sam to his eye appointments for years because Sam hated driving with his eyes dilated but it had never gone like this. Not since... "How bad is it?" He asked quietly.

Sam shrugged, his voice empty. "They took a biopsy today. Said they'll get it back in like three weeks. Then uh... then they go from there."

Colby nodded, swallowing hard. There was already panic welling up in his throat, as remembered images of hospitals and doctors and fear and helplessness flashed back through his mind. "Okay," Colby said, "We uh... we'll figure it out, okay?"

Sam nodded, and his hands were clenched tightly into fists. "I gotta... I gotta tell Kat, I gotta tell my parents, I gotta... fuck..."

"Sam." Colby stood up, gripping Sam's shoulder's tightly. Sam's eyes were tearing up, and he sought Colby's eyes desperately. "Hey, hey, we don't even know if it's a bad one yet, the biopsy might be fine."

Sam shook his head, and he was already shaking. "I know, I know, I just... I don't..." He closed his eyes and looked away, "I don't wanna go blind, Colby..."

And Colby felt more emotion choke up in his throat, but he fought it down, because it was Sam, and Sam didn't need Colby losing his shit.

Sam was the one facing fucking cancer.

"We're gonna figure it out, dude," He promised, pulling Sam against his chest, feeling the first sob break free from Sam's lungs. "It's gonna be okay, we're gonna figure it out."

"It's called Intraoccular melanoma, I think," Colby remembered fifteen year old Sam explaining to him, "They're just going to go in, get it out, and then that'll be it."

And Colby was still fourteen at the time, and he didn't really understand what Sam was talking about. He just knew that Sam had been sent to an eye doctor after he discovered that he would need correction in one of his eyes to get his driver's permit. The eye doctor had taken a look at his eyes, and according to Sam, they'd found something weird.

They didn't know how bad it was at that point. They thought it would just be a simple in and out. However, further testing showed that the cancer had almost eaten the whole back section of his eye. They were lucky they caught it when they did, because the doctors theorized that if they had left it much longer it might have spread to other parts of his body.

And Colby knew even then that there would not have been a good way to treat him.

Colby remembered his parents trying to explain to him what was going on, when Sam had to go to the hospital for treatment (for radiation) and Colby hated that the thing that was supposed to be helping Sam was making his friend so sore and giving him migraines, making him miss school and band and all of the fun things that they were supposed to be doing together-

If there wasn't some fucking cancer trying to kill his friend-

But after about six months it became clear that the non-surgical option was not going to work long term.

And so they took the whole eye out.

Sam tried to be optimistic about the whole thing, and they were already doing social media at this point so Sam took their small following through the whole process of the surgery and getting fitted for a prosthetic, but of course, it wasn't that emotionally easy.