In Every Breath - Sen Çal Kapimi

3.

Being told that your son has cancer is one of the last things a mother wants.

Aydan had been in Serkan's arms for several minutes, unable to stop sobbing, until it was Seyfi who released her from him to give her some sedatives.

She had been taking them for years. Ever since she had lost her first child. And even if she had decreased its use over time, making it almost nil, she had not been able to get rid of it completely, finding herself promptly having to resort to it every time the negative emotions threatened to overwhelm her.

Them had been the lifesaver that she had kept her afloat after Alp's death and that had allowed her to stay there when she, that deep depression into which she had fallen, had turned into isolation and then into prison.

Her mind had created invisible boundaries around her to keep people away and heal wounds, but it had become real barriers between her and the outside world, which she was no longer able to cross. Until Eda arrived.

Eda had become the bridge that had reconnected her to the world ... the resurrection that had given her back her life. She was grateful that was now next to her son, in such a delicate moment.

It had taken her a long time to figure it out, but that girl had been a blessing to both of them, a bright star that had lit up their sky.

«Then I'll wait for you at home», she told her before closing the call. «I told Seyfi to make his favorite dishes».

Eda smiled, even though Aydan couldn't have seen her. A mother's love is the most precious thing in the world and it was what she had always lacked.

No... not the love: she would have been a hypocrite just to think of it. Her aunt really loved her as she was her daughter and Eda loved her as she could have loved her mother of hers. But it was that special connection that binds a mother to her child that she missed. That invisible thread that connects their souls and binds them forever.

She put her cell phone in her bag and sat down next to Serkan again, her fingers constantly intertwined with hers.

«How do you feel?».

Serkan looked at her uncertainly, thinking for a few seconds about the answer to give her.

He had undergone the histological examination ten days earlier and the doctor, after obtaining the results, had decided to immediately start a shock therapy that attacked the cancer cells before they could begin to reproduce; that would be the first session of the radiotherapy treatment he had planned for him.

«Tense...».

Eda knew how much it cost him to admit it.

For the first time in his life, Serkan Bolat was vulnerable. Cornered. Forced into a situation where he could not exert any control. Without the possibility of action. Without possibility of choice. Completely at the mercy of fate. And for a man like him, it had to be something unsustainable.

He had spent those days of waiting and preparation in a reflective stasis, closed within himself and always thoughtful. And although she had tried several times to probe his soul, he had never opened up enough to talk to her about what he really felt inside.

And she was finding herself divided in half ... on one side, consciously aware that Serkan had every right to want to metabolize what was happening to him on his own. On the other, torn by his closure, by that his silence that stood as a barrier between them.

She was beside him, but she couldn't reach him... she couldn't touch him. And that was hurting her more than anything.

And then the fear... the visceral fear of really losing him, in the most definitive way that could exist. A fear that she was chasing away with all her strength, genuinely convinced that Serkan would defeat that evil, but that came back, sneaky and creeping, to creep into her thoughts just when she felt him so distant. As if that of his keeping her away from hers, of her thoughts, became a prelude to the detachment that was threatening them.