Was it All an Accident? (A Harry Styles Fan Fiction, Book Three)

Part Eleven: Fine. Results, Please?

(Whytnie’s POV)

The results are in. I’m being serious. I know I’ve already said this, but the doctor has my results. His eyes widen as he rereads the results before he tells us. My father is sitting on my left, his hand tightening around my own. My mother is on my right, squeezing my right hand just as hard. Harry is standing behind me, his grip on my shoulders feels just the same.

            I don’t know what the doctor is trying to do to me, but I’m irritated by the way he’s making such a dramatic show. Just give me the damn answer already. Am I gonna die yet or not?

            “How are you guys today?” Oh, just lovely, depending on whether I’m going to die right now or tomorrow.

            “Just give us the news.” My dad’s just as irritated as I am.

            “Well, Whytnie, I must ask, how are you feeling today?” Honestly, I feel like throwing up if you don’t just come out and say what is going on.

            “Fine. Results, please?” I try to be as polite as possible, but I’m past the points of irritation and I’m ready to start screaming. Or breaking things. Most likely both.

            “I’m going to need an honest answer, please.” Just shoot me now.

            “My stomach hurts, but I’m thinking it’s because of that.” I point at the papers he’s holding in his hands. He nods at them and smiles.

            “That is perfectly normal.” You think. “Well, I’ve called you all down here,” he makes a quick glance at Harry and then back down at me, “because your results are in.” No kidding? “Well, our results have some good news and some bad news.” Stop making small talk and just come out with it already! “Whytnie,” I swear if he makes another long dramatic pause I’m going to strangle somebody, “you don’t have leukemia.” Nobody moved. I could literally feel my heart drop before I breathed out with relief. Harry almost screamed as he hugged me from behind. My parents were relieved, even though the worry was still there. But the happiness didn’t last long. “We can’t tell you what you have exactly, but you do have something.” Everyone was silent again, seething and angry; just like somebody snapped their fingers, that’s how quickly the moods changed. “What you have is something entirely different, my colleagues and I haven’t pinned down just exactly what you have.” Please tell me I’m not the only one that doesn’t understand. “I would be highly cautious; the therapy will most likely slow down the process.”

            Slow down the process? I was still going to die faster than old age had a chance to catch up to me? Well, this is great news: I don’t have leukemia. Bad news? I have some weird disease that nobody knows about or how to cure. I might as well have leukemia.

            I know it’s wrong of me to even think, but I can’t help it. I feel bitter and broken right now. My insides are turning to goo and I can hardly hold myself up. My whole body seems to sag and cave in on itself. My head feels dizzy and my eyes droop closed, until all I see is darkness. I don’t even hear or feel anything as I fall forward into darkness and nothingness.

[…]

(Whytnie’s POV)

When I wake up, I’m right back in a hospital bed. Harry’s sitting beside me, his head lying down on the bed beside my left hand. He’s snoring quietly and I can’t help but smile seeing him there. I know it’s selfish and wrong, but I don’t tell him to leave. I don’t tell him all the things I should to make him hate me. I just lean back against the bed and smile, feeling giddy all of a sudden. As I’m readjusting myself, Harry wakes up and is in full alert.

            “Hey,” he whispers after a moment and blinks lazily at me. I watch him as he checks over me to make sure that I’m fine. Well, as fine as I can be, given the situation. “You scared all of us back there. How’re you feeling?”

            Shrugging is the only answer he’s getting from me. My throat hurts and I feel like I’ve been walking through the desert for years, not that I have the slightest clue about what that really feels like. I’m just saying.

            “Do you need anything?” I try to croak something out, but I don’t think Harry speaks whale or frog or whatever noise I just made. He gives me a confused look before stumbling out the door to get me something to drink, I hope.

            Sighing, I turn my back on the slightly open door and glare out the closed window. I’m so sick and tired of all this that I can’t help but cry silently. I’m so lost in my own world that I don’t even notice Harry’s returned.

            He moves the chair to sit back down, and that’s when I suck up all my pain and hurt to look over at him and semi-smile. Handing me the water, the look he gives me tells me how much he buys my fake enthusiastic smile. What can I say? Sometimes I feel like he knows me better than myself.

            “Feel better?” he asks after I take a large gulp. Nodding, I glance at him once more before taking another long gulp. “They’ll let you out in the morning, promise,” he says before I can even form the thought to ask him. “Did you want to talk about it?”

            “No.” At least this time it sounded like English.

            “We’re going to have to eventually.”

            “Not if I block it out of my mind.”

            Taking a deep breath, he looks down at my hand, which he is playing with absentmindedly. “The doctor said that if you went through chemo therapy, they’re afraid it might kill you because of what you have.” As if the whole “what you have” could be an average everyday cold with coughing and fever. I’d take a runny nose over the stinging pain inside my stomach any day. Although my body doesn’t seem to want to make the swap, I grip Harry’s hand and remembered that the doctor told me that I should go into chemo to “prolong my life” and not avoid it like the seven deadly sins!

            “But they don’t even know what I have!” I blurt out loud.

            “They know enough.” He suddenly seems older than he is. Older than me, maybe. And it breaks my heart to look at the distance in his eyes, like he wants to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It’s wrong of me to not want him to be. I shouldn’t. But I do. And my heart breaks just thinking about it. I can’t even look at him anymore.