Finding Melody

63: Last Day

It's a gawdy feeling. A gawdy feeling as my chest tightened staring out of the home's balcony. We were leaving today. Leaving our escape to a reality filled with nothing close to normalcy and I didn't and wouldn't be able to accept the fact that everyone was waiting for Vi to just give up. She didn't have it in her, she had the fight in her and it was apparent, apparently loud.

"Thinking of something?" A hand snaked around my waist, as I felt his head rest on my shoulder. I didn't know how his head was straight properly, I didn't know how he wasn't a mess, but whatever was working I hoped it continued for him.

"Just how- beautiful it is". Lie. An apparent lie. I wasn't a fan of forests. The empty nothing, empty nobody. They were amusing, but not what's in them. That's nothing but amusing.

"It is beautiful". He agreed. His small form of agreement won me over a million reasons why I should pry through his mind.

"I gave Vi her breathing treatment, but she's refusing. Can you read to her?" He asked, his eyes strained from sleepiness. The night had caused Vi to become restless, restlessly ill. She woke up in the middle of the night with her lungs on fire, gasping for air, until we gave her an oxygen tank.

We were supposed to leave today, but knowing she had gotten worse, postponing seemed like the right idea and Natalie understood. She understood out of all them, he needed me, she needed me. And most of all Dallas could use the help. He didn't sleep, he watched her throughout the night. I sat with him, slowly dozing off as I sat next to him. I hoped he had dozed off, but it wasn't possible. I saw him in the morning, his eyes bagging down, his voice too tired to speak and his hands too tired to work. He needed sleep, sleep he wouldn't allow himself.

"She'll be okay, Dallas". I tried reassuring him, knowing he wasn't showing his worry. Knowing that he prided himself on being the strong one, that there was no one else to be strong for him. But he could lean on me, he could seek out me for comfort, comfort he dearly needed.

"We don't need to say those things anymore, Bambi". He said softly, his voice reeking of fear, his eyes understood. He couldn't keep up with the amount of false hope everyone gave him, especially everyone that gave Vi it.

"I know what's going to happen in the next couple of days, weeks, months. It's going to happen and she needs someone that can-". His voice broke, his hands became shaky on me, as I turned to face him. He was unsettled, his eyes frozen on the abyssal display of trees.

"Dallas we don't know if-".

She had a chance, everyone always had a chance. She had to have one, she could still get a transplant, she could still be saved, she could survive. She wasn't doomed, she would survive.

"She's free. I think for the first time I realize how tired she is of always fighting".

Vi pushed it onto him, the idea of her death, making him comfortable with it, the idea of her passing. Vi from the beginning had been tired, tired from treatments, from exercises, from living and I knew she was the most content with death. But she still had to fight, especially when she still had it in her.

"Please. She's so tired". His voice broke as he spoke, and I knew he hated seeing her like this, lifeless, missing from her own body.

Dallas wandered out onto the balcony, staring into the display of trees that surrounded the home. He couldn't break, I knew he was forcefully denying himself of the tears that wanted to come from him. I knew most of all he was in pain, and I wasn't sure if there was anything I could do for him.

I walked out of the room, heading to VI's room with a book in my hand, ready to read to her. But when I arrived she already had a book tucked into her side. She flipped the cover on its back, and slid it under her blanket.