❝Who're you?❞
❝Fallon. I'm your candy striper for the next two months. Who are you?❞
❝I'm a lonely, incredibly depressed, cancer-inflicted, dying, nineteen year old boy.❞
❝Nice to meet you, a-lonely-incredibly-depressed-cancer-inflicted-dying-ninete...
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luke.
Believe it or not, for a teenage boy with stage two brain cancer, I still thankfully had days where I could run around or jog a lap or two or have exhausting paint wars with exhausting brown-headed girls and go to bed with a lot of energy still pent up inside of me. I called those my good days.
Surprisingly enough, a lot of my days were good days.
Unfortunately though, that didn't mean that I didn't have days where I could barely get out of bed because of how badly my limbs hurt. My good days didn't eliminate the days where I could actually feel the way each of my muscles pulled and stretched every time I moved and the way my head seemed to squeeze in on itself like I was having a brain freeze even when I wasn't putting anything cold into my body. There were days where I'd suddenly just spike up from ninety-eight degrees to a hundred-two degrees without any warning, days where I'd sweat right through my clothes even in a room with top-notch, expensive, rich-person air conditioning. There were still days where I couldn't even lift my arm without wanting to cry in pain. I'm a pansy, I know.
Amongst the good days, there were still days where I would overall feel like a bag of shit hidden in an alleyway behind a ninety year old pub in Brooklyn. I called those my bad days.
Today happened to be a bad day.
I winced as a wet towelette was placed overtop my forehead, the coolness of it making contact with my warm skin. The sting felt like wiping over a wound with rubbing alcohol and I wanted to kick my sister out of the room right then and there.
Jaclyn pursed her lips together after seeing me flinch, "Sorry. Just trying to cool you down."
I pushed the towel away from my face, finding that the burn of it on my skin hurt even more than the migraine I was having in that moment, "I'm okay."
"Are you hearing yourself? You're like a hundred and two degrees right now, Luke."
"I would tell you if I wasn't okay. I'm okay."
"You've never been above a hundred and one degrees before. Do you know what a one hundred and two body temp could potentially mean? Infection. Infection, Luke! I can't afford to pay for more of your meds right now! What if I end up having to contact Mom and Dad? What if they don't agree to lend us any money? What am I supposed to do if you-"
