HOURS MINUTES SECONDS

ONE

I remember running and playing. I remember climbing trees and falling back down . I remember rolling down hills and playing house and believing in magic and wishes.

All those memories float through my mind as the doctor explains to my mother how long I have left and I'm just trying to remember the defining moment that put me in his office. I'm just trying to work out why this is all happening to me . What stars aligned to make me the victim of cancer? What did I do to deserve this disease to eat away at me until my bones are weak and I'm bed ridden for days? It's a question I'll never understand and I find myself contemplating why a god , if he does exist would allow such a disease to kill children. No one deserves to experience what I do. The weekly treatment that doesn't help you , just wears you out until all you do in between treatment is sleep and you take any drugs they offer for the pain and all the trial drugs praying this will be it . The one that kills of the cancer flowing through my blood.

Since I was two I've had three types of cancers , two I've beaten but my body is slowly and inevitably braking down and losing strength to fight . I am proud to have over come a timer in my leg  and a tumor in my lung before the age of 12. But now the unseen remains of these cancers have formed into a deadly concoction poisoning my blood.

The doctor keeps rambling on about everything we can try , but in his eyes I can see the fear he has and knowledge that he knows I will die , in one year or less I will be sprinkled into the ocean or buried in the ground. My cancer has reached stage four and there is no turning back.

We get up and walk out , I don't notice all the nurses pitying me, or the colorful posters . My head just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning out of control as everything around me turns into a blur.I don't notice the car pulling into the drive way until I feel the light breeze of spring flowing through the car .

Mum has dispersed into the house no doubt trying to cook away my problems and to cry to my father over the phone while he pretends to care about me when all he wants to do is work far away from us . To pull down the blind and hide us and to ignore our problems.
Soon my little sister will step    off the bus and we will pretend that everything is okay and I'll put on a fake smile and laugh with her. My whole life has been a series of pretending for the sake of others , I've never actually had the chance to be happy myself.

I drag myself up and walk up to the red door and slide my way inside. As I suspect my mother is balancing her phone and a bowl of batter in the kitchen to my left. I head straight for the stairs lining the hallway ahead and make a bee line for my room. My dressing table is covered in pill bottles and my walls plastered with motivational posters and depression help lines and photos of me and my best friends Alex and Luika . My white board is filled with lists of how to take each medication . My room has transformed since I was thirteen when my desk was full of lip balms and perfumes . My walls once filled by twilight posters and my bed piled high with pink pillows.

I fall back onto my bed and let the doona absorb me deep into is grasp where I feel safe and comforted it's like a hug made of fairy floss.Just as I feel the weight of sleep begging to overtake my I hear my phone ringing and answer the FaceTime call from Alex.

"Hey  Avery maybe you are deaf but the whole street can hear your mother sobbing" Alex bursts out through the phone.

Alex is my best friend and we have been neighbors since birth we were born in rooms across the hall on the same day and our mothers became friends only to come home a week later and see each other standing at two houses next to each other too.

"Sorry about her you know what's she's like Alex ,What are you doing home ? Shouldn't you be at school?" I hamper him.

"I have a cold and a sore throat and everything else that goes along with that"

"So I'm going to have to rely on Luika to pick up my homework then?"

"Pretty much you know she'll be freaking out without us today"

"She is a worrier"

"So what's up with you mum I've never heard someone cry so loud?"

" We had some bad news from the doctor today"

"Shit Avery what's going on? Are you okay? Should I come over ? I'm coming over" Alex spits questions anxiously at me when I should be the one worried not him,  I'm  the one going to die, he gets to live and to grow up.

"Wait Alex its okay, well I'm not exactly going to be okay I mean no one recovers from stage four leukemia but for now I'm alive"

"What the hell! Stage four ! You can fight it!" Alex screams through the phone and in the background I can see his mum enter his room no doubt to yell at him for waking his little sister Marley from her sleep.

" I have a year Alex that's all" saying it out loud, makes it real, its like if I jut keep it in my head that's all it will be a thought but saying it makes it all too real and I feel my cheeks start to swell and my eyes begin to water.

"Avery I'm coming straight over" Alex announces noticing the salty liquid seeping from me.

I snuggle into my bed and cry. For the first time in a while I don't even try to control myself I just cry and whimper . I let the tears roll out and for a moment I don't think or worry,I just exist , I just be and let myself cry.

At last I hear Alex running up the stairs ,and he dives into my bed next to me and holds me close.

"It will be alright you know Avery' Alex attempts to reassure me.

"For you Alex not me, there are so many things I'm going to miss out on, and the worst part is I've got until my 18th.Can you imagine people surrounding me while I'm in a hospital bed dying?"

"No but I can image you at your fullest dancing and eating cake and that's what will be happening"

"Promise?"

"Promise"

I once again feel sleep tugging at me until I give in and drift away and my best friends embrace.