Harmless Things (Jean Hobbs AU)

Part thirty

Dean P.O.V.

"So you're saying she's just okay?" 

"Pretty much. She's not any better, but she's not exactly any worse either."

"So what do we do now?"

"We do exactly the same as we are now, it's not saving her, but we're giving her that bit of extra time. Sorry, but I need to go and check up on another patient, I can answer more questions when I get back." I nodded as if that was permission for Doctor Ellis to leave and sighed, putting my face in my hands.

I was lucky to get just a few minutes with him recently whereas before he seemed to have all the time in the world for me, not that I needed it when it was available to me though. It was the same with the nurses on the children's ward, but I could understand why they were getting annoyed with us still being here, they were probably all sick of seeing the same faces.

It's not as if we brought any joy with us either, we were all just waiting for that time to come. The time where we said goodbye and left the hospital with our dying sister with no plans of ever going back, but this whole "she's not getting better, but she's not exactly any worse" felt like it was just dragging it all out, making us hurt longer.

Scarlett didn't want time. She certainly didn't want more of it. She was as lifeless as it was but you could see it was making her frustrated. She couldn't do anything by herself, she was weak and in pain and was suffering more than any of us, since not only was she was sick but she had to see what it was doing to us, too.

She blamed herself for the cancer the whole time, every now and then she would gasp and her eyes would light up with realisation and she'd say something like "maybe it's because I tripped and fell and hit my head that one time..." with some stutters in between, but of course it wasn't her fault.

That's what potentially made it harder, was that there was no one or nothing to blame. There were no answers. There was no cause for glioblastoma multiforme, it just turned on in her head like a light switch and attacked with no real reason.

There was no one to scream and shout at or make feel guilty for snatching her entire life out of her own hands while she watched all her hopes and dreams and wishes fading away. She wouldn't see her seventh birthday and now there was something eerily creepy when I remembered that she said "this is the best birthday I'll ever have!" on her sixth.

But honestly, that was the best day of her life. It was bright and sunny on August 24th of last year; we had just about scraped together enough money to hire out a bouncy castle for the day. It stood proudly in the back garden and you could hear the quiet hum of the machines working that were constantly blowing air into it. 

Bright balloons of all different colours were tied to as many places as possible with gold ribbon, making it look as lively as possible despite the plants that were beginning to die. Standard party food such as sausage rolls, crisps, pizza and sandwiches were on plates that filled a table that we brought outside from the lounge and fizzy drinks and juice with a pack of plastic cups were on a smaller table that was placed next to it. 

Scarlett's entire school class had been invited and they had all turned up on time, their parents grateful that their children were going to be taken off their hands for the day. I didn't know what kind of status Scarlett had at school, so I was a little surprised when she was the life and soul of it all.

I wouldn't be able to tell you every detail of that day, after all, at the time it was just another birthday that happened every year. We did take a lot of photos though, we went through three disposable cameras and I was pretty sure the piles of developed photos were just in a cupboard at home.