Missing Piece

Prologue

Melanie

Getting hurt is inevitable.

We can't avoid it.

It doesn't matter how hard we try to shield ourselves from being hurt, life still somehow finds a way to tear us down.

Life would've been so much easier if only we could skip getting hurt like we skip those annoying YouTube ads.

But the harsh reality of life is it always can't be rainbows and sunshine.

One moment we are at our happiest and in the next moment life would be asking us, 'Hi there! How's that rock bottom treating ya? I hope I didn't knock you down too hard? But you see that shove was very much needed or you would never learn to appreciate the good times.'

And by some good fortune or miracle life doesn't do its work of hurting you, then it just moves to the person you love most. Because one way or another, you gotta be hurting. That's just life's motto.

As humans we can't seem to handle when our loved one gets hurt.

It's never easy to see the people we love suffer. And it's even worse when you can't do jack squat about it. Sometimes, you're just compelled to stand there idly and watch as they live through the pain.

You don't know the misery and suffering till you get to experience it firsthand. If you think being in pain yourself is hard wait till you see the person you love gets hurt. There isn't anything worse than feeling of helplessness.

No matter how many times you wish, you could take their place, you can't do that. You just watch and watch and watch from sidelines as they slowly wither away and become a shell of themselves.

My hand moves up to wipe the lone tear from my cheek as I watch Marcy's sleeping figure on the bed.

What wouldn't I give to trade places with my baby sister right now?

Marcy just had another round of her chemo today. The medicine makes her feel drowsy. As soon as she was brought into her room, she went to sleep.

Shifting forward in my chair, I take her hand which isn't hooked to an IV line and hold it gently as I watch her face.

Her face looks ghastly pale. The usual rosy hue on her cheeks is absent now. It's so obvious that this treatment is draining her day by day. And her hair, the rich chocolate brown which both Pilar and her have inherited from Roger, is completely gone.

It all started going down three months ago when Marcy, started to get sick frequently. It was so unlike her. I mean out of us three siblings, she's the healthiest one.

Mom and Roger- my stepdad were busy with work at that time so I had taken her to the hospital thinking she had caught a stomach-bug or something, only to get the shock of our lives when her lab-results came in. What we thought would be a normal check-up, turned into a fucking nightmare.

'It's a cancer', that's what the doctor had said.

I don't remember much of the conversation from that day, except for sitting in his office in shock without moving a muscle after he had uttered those horrendous words. After getting out of the shock, I had just run out of his office and I do remember calling mum, only blabbering god knows what, but I think I had asked her to come to the hospital amidst the blabbering. I had stayed outside the hospital, sitting on one of the benches, crying my eyes out, till I saw mum's blue Honda pulling up.

Mum had just hugged me till I had stopped crying. And when I had repeated the words, the doctor had said she had broken down in tears too. I had never seen my mom cry like that.