heart like yours / phan

2 / everything

D.

He's my everything.

That's the only way I can explain Phil, really. He's my best friend and it's tearing me apart to watch him as the life is slowly being taken out of him.

Watching Phil is like watching a sand timer, or a countdown to something which you dread. I have to keep every second in my heart, because I know that time is running out, the sand is falling and I cannot do anything to stop it; sand always ends up slipping through one's fingers.

I remember when I first met Phil, on my first day of school. He was in the corner, drawing on paper with a basket of colouring pencils beside him on the scratchy, stained classroom carpet. He had his ginger hair, which he grew to hate and then excessively dye over with black, a secondhand, too-big school uniform and a blue pencil clutched in his tiny hand.

I'd walked over to him, sat beside him and asked what he was doing. He told me he was drawing, as if I couldn't already see that for myself, and then I drew with him, and never really left his side again.

He was my best friend, and one of my only. My life wasn't the happiest, most normal or average. My parents spend a lot of time fighting, which would often take a toll on me. Having grown up surrounded by violence, it tended to rub off on me a bit .

Phil was my calm, my happy place, my 'count to ten in order to calm yourself down'. I came to rely on him for support, whenever I needed what my parents would often forget to give me. I leaned on him, and he was always there for me to lean on.

That was, until he was sixteen and a half, and he began trying to cut me out of his life. I was hurt, at first, until I realised why, the dreaded six words which hit me harder than a meteorite at full velocity; he's not going to make it.

Phil couldn't die, not when he still has so much to give to the world. I wished with my whole heart that it could be me instead. Phil saved me, became my world, and now I have to stand by and watch as a fraction of his life leaves with every goddamn breath he takes. It's killing me. I need Phil - when he's not here, who will I have to lean on?

I've never told Phil exactly how much he means to me. He's always been there, and I've always been grateful for that fact, but not once have I actually been able to put into words to Phil exactly how much he's saved me, breathed life back into me.

I look down at the small, plushy lion in my hand. I found it when I was cleaning out my room; it had fallen down the back of my shelf. I remember when Phil gave this to me, the first time my parents had fought violently.

"This is Lion, he was mine but now he's yours. He's very brave," Phil had said, smiling with his childish grin while his ginger hair fell into his bright blue eyes.

"Um, w-why are you giving him to me?" I'd replied in a whisper as fresh tears still rolled down my red cheeks.

"Because, he's brave Dan, and you're sad. Lion will be brave for you, so you don't have to be," Phil had said.

I took the small lion and, for the first time since his parents' fight, smiled.

I hadn't realised back then how wise my friend had been, even at that young age. I wish I could be that wise even now, nine years on.

I push open the hospital room door to see Phil lying in the bed, his eyes glassy and empty, his chest rising and falling systematically, his skin pale, body barren of any hair. Seeing him like this breaks my heart, and reminds me of the fact that he's sick - too sick.

"Phil," I manage to choke out, "I bought something for you."

Phil blinks and sits up, giving me what is supposed to be a bright and cheery smile, but he doesn't know that I can see the single tear rolling slowly down the left side of his face.

"Hi Dan," Phil says as I walk closer, Lion clutched tightly in my hand behind my back.

"I want to give you back this," I say, passing Lion to him, and I see tears pool in his eyes, as they already have in my eyes.

"Dan... But I gave him to you," Phil says, looking at the small toy, full of emotion, "why are you giving him back."

"Because Phil, Lion is brave," I say with my heart pounding almost painfully in my chest, I then swallow the lump in my throat, "and this time, he can be brave for you."

Phil doesn't say anything more, he just stares at the lion in his hands as tears roll freely down his cheeks and mine too.

Although no more words are being spoken, emotion is ripping through each of our hearts and minds, filling the air around us. When I look at Phil, holding the lion and crying, a thought surfaces in my mind; a command, almost.

I need to tell this boy how much I love him.