A Spine-Tingling Story - TDG Fanfic

Your Sudden Death Answer

What would you say to someone who had just told you that their father had died from cancer and now they had that selfsame cancer?

Finn certainly didn't know the answer to that question, so naturally he didn't say a word. Instead, he reached out and wrapped his chubby arms around the sick teen next to him, keeping his grip near the top so that he didn't hurt his back.

May-Li squeezed Ryan's shoulder briefly and stood up, making to leave. "No matter what happens, Ryan, we're all gonna be here for you - whether you like it or not," she told him, adding a slight stern edge to her last point,

Ryan glanced up at her and saw the glint in her eyes. With a deep sigh of resignation, he said, "Fine, you can tell her I'm sick, but not the bit about Dad. She really is better off without that hanging over her head."

May-Li nodded, and left the room.

"Can't you at least give me a clue?" Chloe complained, as she and Bailey travelled down the landing.

"Fine," Bailey said. "He hasn't done anything bad this time."

"That's a first," Chloe muttered, just as the door to Ryan's room opened and May-Li walked out.

"Ah, just the person I was looking for," she greeted, with a hint of surprise at finding Chloe so early.

"Is he finally going to tell me what's going on?" Chloe huffed, folding her arms.

"He's given me permission to tell you," May-Li explained.

"What, so he can't even tell me himself, and yet he told everyone else?!" Chloe yelled. "Is he really that much of a-"

"Look, do you want to find out or not?" Bailey interrupted, leaning on the wall and pressing a hand to his face in exasperation. He himself wasn't even sure how he felt about his rival's potentially fatal sickness. Sure, he and Ryan had never been best buds, but that didn't mean he wanted him dead.

"Yeah," she grumbled. "What's happening with him then?"

May-Li swallowed and looked down briefly. "You might want to prepare yourself for this."

"I'm ready, please, just tell me," Chloe pleaded.

"There's no easy way to say it, so I guess I'll just say it," May-Li sighed. "Chloe ... Ryan has cancer."

All at once, Chloe understood why Ryan had been so determined to keep this from her. She herself wasn't sure whether she'd really wanted to know anymore. She'd suspected he'd been developing a certain health condition ever since she'd noticed his weakness and the discernible winces of pain that he'd done a rather poor job of hiding, but she definitely hadn't expected it to be that.

She felt her eyes widening and her jaw dropping, while her larynx stopped functioning. She was stunned, unable to vocally react at all.

Nonetheless, May-Li continued anyway. "Not long after you left, he collapsed in the living room, screaming his head off, complaining that his back hurt. Like someone had dropped an anchor on him, he said. We had to get him to the hospital ASAP. When they examined him, they found a Stage 3 tumour in his spine."

May-Li opted to stop at that point, noticing how Chloe's face had adopted a rather unpleasant pallor upon finally receiving the news about her brother's affliction.

"Do you want to go back downstairs?" Bailey asked.

This finally elicited a response from Chloe in the form of a sharp shake of the head, as though she was shaking herself out of a trance. "No, I-I need to talk to him, right now."