The parts you leave behind

Chapter 30*

Hayden's POV

I think in this moment the whole world went quiet. Which is odd considering there's a party of people just feet away, except I can't hear any of them. I think I'm standing in complete and utter silence, with the absence of sound so gone that I think I might be deaf now.

Not to mention I think everything in my body is slowly failing, not just my eardrums. I feel empty, as if every organ, every bone, and every ounce of blood has been taken out of my body until I'm nothing. Because I can't exactly feel any of the things that are supposed to keep me alive.

But for some reason I can feel pain. I can feel it replacing my heartbeat, and replacing the stream of my blood flow until everything is taken over with it. And in that moment when the world went quiet, and my entire body gave up on me I know one thing for sure, and that's the fact that I will never live the same. I will never be able to function as I normally would because two simple words with the biggest meaning keep repeating in my head, over and over and over again.

'I'm dying.' The two words slipped from her mouth as if the meaning and the weight of those syllables meant nothing. And I want to think it's a joke, or a manipulative excuse to get rid of me but the look on her face when she said it was just too real. You could see the same pain that's currently running through my body, in her eyes and I began to wonder if it's always been in her beautiful green gaze. If maybe I was so distracted by the happiness that I couldn't see the hurt they held.

"I have a brain tumor. It's cancerous and terminal." She says with a crack in her voice as I beg her not to say anymore. So why did you force her you asshole?

"I don't understand." I shake my head as my voice comes out only hardly above a whisper. That's all I can get out.

She looks away for a moment while I stare at her. "I found out about seven months ago. I know I should have told you because I told everyone but I was so scared of things changing with you. It was wrong and it was selfish, and if I could do it differently I would."

I don't talk. I mean I have no idea what to say but she continues to talk so I think that's good. Or maybe not. "It's just that when you go to the doctor because you're having constant migraines you expect to have like a sinus infection or something, not to find out you have brain cancer. It was so unexpected and once I told everyone it seemed like life was over, like I became a disease and nothing more. Except you didn't make me feel that way...you made me feel like a normal person and you made me forget that things are messed up and wrong inside of my head. And I took that feeling to far, you should've known this before we even went on a date so I'm sorry Hayden."

As her words make their way inside my head I realize that I'm living my greatest nightmare. A life without her. Question after question enters through me, while they go unanswered no matter how much she explains because none of this could ever make sense. It doesn't make sense that the pain is constant, and I can feel it beating because of just how new and fresh the wound is.

"And I do chemo to prolong my time, but I can't do it anymore unless I terminate the baby." She physically winces at her own words. "It's like having to picking my life over my own child's, and I have to choose between who gets to live. I mean I'm gone in the end either way, but I guess it's all about how much time...and I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I can't breathe when I think about getting rid of it."

I stare at her because I'm at loss for words. I don't understand how the life I've imagined myself having with her can just fall apart so fast. But through all that I still want her. And I plan to tell her that I am still so helplessly wrapped around her finger but nothing seems to want to come out when I want to say a million things.