The room is cold and sterile. White walls, white floor, white ceiling, white lights. Everything is blindingly white, stinging his eyes. It's freezing, too. Goosebumps raise on his arms, a shiver rakes through him. The air conditioning is blasting even though it's the middle of autumn. Halloween just around the corner and all that. The two chairs are hard plastic and an ugly dark brown color - one of the only things in the room not white or a medical, light blue color. The sink is silver, so are the cabinets to the handles. There's a small, generic picture on the wall. Just some landscape. The examination table is blue, covered with a rumpled piece of white paper. There's a computer in the corner, along with a chair.
He is one of two people in the room. He always is, at least for now. In just a few minutes the next person will enter. He knows. He always knows. It's the same every time, no changes, no nothing. Never worse. Never better.
"I'm sure that you'll be fine, Arlo." The woman next to him says, smoothing her hand down his back. Her voice contains barely masked panic, hidden hysteria. She is tall and narrow, with long brown hair falling in carefully crafted curls down her shoulders. Her eyes are the color of chocolate, filled with pain and worry. She tries to hide it, but it shows through. "I'm sure that you'll be fine. It's just a misdiagnoses, I know it." She's speaking more to herself now than to him. She has to calm herself, too.
He hates her. But he can't, he shouldn't. She does what she can, he knows. She isn't someone who deals with these things well. All she wanted was a happy family, him and little Jessie and his father. She didn't want this. She didn't want him. She would never tell him this, but he knows. He can see it in her eyes, with the worry. With the pain.
"Okay, Mom. I know." He replies, looking down. His heart is thumping in his chest, heavy and slow. It almost hurts, almost but not quite. All his senses are muted. They always are. He stares at his feet, two identically white shoes. The doctor walks in. He has hair that's black and messy, eyes that are a tired, worn out blue. A white coat over blue scrubs. His pants are a shade too big, hanging lower than they should on his hips. His gloves are too loose. His clipboard has four pen marks on the back, and the paper that it holds is blank.
His head spins as the doctor clears his throat. It was always like that, his stomach dropping into his feet and his vision blurring. He can feel himself shaking, feel his breathing become uneven. The knowing makes it worse, so much worse...
The doctor tries to hide it, he always does, but it's clear on his face. The worry, the sadness. He wishes it were just the cold, clinical detachment. Not this. Never this.
"Mrs. Finnegan, Charles..." The man pauses, clears his throat. "I'm afraid... I'm afraid that it's terminal. There's nothing we can do."
The world collapses in around him. It always does. He knows the diagnoses isn't real, this isn't how it really happened. It wasn't like this in real life. It wasn't a reliving of the past, it was a twisting of it.
As everything fades into blackness, he can hear, very quietly, a sob.
Then nothing.
