If I Die Young

If I Die Young

A Novel By QueenOfClubs

 

I never did do the things I really wanted to do. Sky dive, meet a celebrity, fall in love, go to Paris, have children, grow old. Other kids just don’t appreciate what they have: a whole life ahead of them. However, I, Hailey Woods, only have a year to live.

I don’t have enough time to fall in love, or see the Eiffel tower. I can never experience the love and happiness that explodes inside you when you hold your baby for the first time. I can never watch my baby grow old with my husband, while we grow old together too.

The closest I’ll ever get to any kind of wedding is a high school dance at the end of year. I can only ever baby sit my two year old cousin, instead of looking after my own child.

I already wrote my will, planned my funeral and prepared myself for death, all at the age of sixteen. I suffer from Acute Myeloid Leukaemia; the doctors call it AML.

I decided I want to spend the last year of my life normally. School, friends, homework, just ordinary life as usual. Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem real. I’m lying in my white sheets in my room, thinking about how short life is, and I wonder what’s waiting for me on the other side.

Heaven? Hell? My face crumples as I think about the whole idea of ceasing to exist. The idea makes me throw up, just knowing that you aren’t even able to think, to move, to breathe.

“Hailey? Hailey, are you okay?” My Mum’s worried voice sounds from the landing, and I hear her bare feet padding across the carpet towards my room. She yawns and rubs her eyes. “Everything ok sweetie?” Of course nothing was okay. I’m going to die at age seventeen, before I’ve even started living. But I don’t say any of that, I just nod my head and give her a weak smile in the dim glow coming from my bed side lamp. A look of concern spreads across her pale face, and she sits down next to me on the bed.

“I just threw up, is all.” She nods. Being sick was no big deal any more, we’re both used to the symptoms. Infections, bleeding, weakness, fevers.

“Dad asleep?” I croak. She nods again.

“You know he can sleep through anything. We could knock the house down to find him sleeping soundly in his bed,” She jokes. I give a small, feeble giggle and pretend to yawn. She notices straight away and gets up from the bed. “Okay sweetie, sweet dreams. Just try not to think about it.” We both know what ‘it’ means. And I couldn’t stop thinking about it if my life depended on it.

I hate saying that. ‘If my life depended on it’. I used to say it all the time – you know, when I was normal.

Normal.

How nice it would be, to feel normal again; to not have to worry about the little things like taking my medicine and remembering to pack my inhaler – not that any of these things even begin to help. Mum just says they do, clinging on to the last shreds of hope as if there were no tomorrow.

There might be no tomorrow.

Stop it. Just stop thinking about things…Go to sleep. That’s another thing they tell me. ‘They’ meaning the doctors. I have to get lots of sleep, they tell me every time I go for a check-up. They don’t even know how it feels – no one does. No one can know. No one can even explain… Out of nowhere, I burst into tears. I do it a lot; Mum says it’s okay, to let them all out. I bet another teenage girl my age is crying somewhere now too, but I’d bet a million pounds it would be over an argument with their parents, or those high heels they couldn’t afford, that hot guy who just rejected them.

What a waste of tears.

At that moment, Mum and Dad come in together, looking almost as pale and weak as me.

“Oh my little flower…” I sobbed into Dad’s shoulder. He hadn’t called me his ‘little flower’ for years now. It felt nice; like I was seven years old again. I tried to kid myself: I had tripped and fell in the garden and fell onto a sharp rock – he was kissing it better, rocking me in his arms, wiping away the tears, being careful as you would with a flower’s soft, delicate petals.

“Daddy…” My bedsheets were soggy from tears and sweat, sticking to my skin.

“What is it, flower?” Dad held me, stroking my damp golden hair, Mum on the other side.

“I’m scared.”  

 

QOC: Hey guys! Yes, I know it is short. No, I don't care :D

So if you enjoyed it, vote, comment, fanning won't hurt and if you can do all three, you get a special prize! 

...Okay, maybe you don't get a special prize, but still, it would make my day! Thank you all so much :) Love all of you muchly :*

~QOC