Rescue Me || Jeamus

1. Cancer.

"Call my Aunt Marie and help her gather all my things and bury me in all my favorite colors. My sisters and my brothers, still, I will not kiss you. Because the hardest part is leaving you.
Oh, my agony, know that I will never marry. Baby, I'm just soggy from the chemo. But counting down the days to go, it just ain't living."

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My heart monitor and needles hooked into my veins have become something  that I have adopted and grown used to. I've been blessed with a curse and I've been in and out of this bleak little hospital room for over 25 years now. As if it's becoming attached to me, I visit so often it's my second home. Though I can't say I love it here, and I can't say much of my actual home, either. The only thing that keeps me going is the man that has stopped by to check on me every day for three years, more or less. 

My boyfriend of three years. James Wilson Jr. 

I know he hates to see me like this, but I can't really say that I enjoy watching him mentally suffer either. My cancer is something that's been holding us back from really doing much of anything. 

From going out regularly, celebrating each other's birthdays, the holidays. Even falling asleep at night has become somewhat of a challenge for he and I, and it's depressing. It makes the situation so much harder than it should be already.

And throughout the years of our friendship that we watched blossom into so much more, he has never given up on me. James' never-ending battle to find a heart donor for me when everyone else had given up hope, gives me hope. 

Even if it just gets me through another session of therapy, it helps in the slightest of ways.

But he's been putting it off for far too long and he and I both know the outcome of this situation. No one wants to lend a hand, and it's diminished any form of relief left in my weakening body.

The rough tendrils of his beard rub against the soft skin on my neck, a burning sensation building it's way up to my cheeks. He's bigger than I am, physically. His shoulders are wider and he's taller than I, so his body leaning against mine with no form of extra support is mildly crushing, although I don't push him away. Instead, I engulf him because I don't know how much time I have left. And I know that I want to spend it all with James.

The constant sound of the monitor is sputtering, my heart pounding inside my chest is irregular, and it never forms a normal pattern. The pulsating organ never has the will or capability to be anything other than abnormal. I guessed that's why it's shutting down. 

I tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear and try to focus on my boyfriend's steady breathing, as I try to do the same, and failing. 

My blond locks have too much grease in them and I never wash it anymore. Once a month, if not at all. And my skin feels like paper, nothing feels real to the touch anymore. The bags forming under my eyes are hanging lower than they ever have and I never sleep at all. I know this is all a sign of dying, but I'd rather accept that fact that deny it. I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of anything, anymore. The only things that worry me at all is what will ever happen to my dearest James, when I am gone? He depends on me like a son would to his mother, and I won't be here for too much longer.

Oh, James, why can't you accept the inevitable like I have? 

He stays up all night, searching for temporary cures that cease to exist. He is slowly breaking on the inside, it's a sad sight to watch. Watching him fall apart though, is both amazing and horrifying, and I can't seem to look away. 

The lines and sags under his eyes are deeper and wider than before, as they grow every day. I can sometimes here him silently sobbing when he thinks that I'm sleeping. He mutters things, inaudible, to himself. His fans see the same old, happy, James Wilson, although I can never look at him the same. His attentive to his channel, but all he sees is a sick boy. 

Why doesn't he leave me like everyone else?

Why won't he let me be happy and free again? 

The answer lies within his eyes. I see it, all of his friends do, and he's depressed and sad and denying the truth all at once and things within his expression are never again the same. 

Just leave the sick boy, we'll both be happy. The warmth that I used to feel with him, under his gentle touches and soft kisses, were what kept me going. Now my crumbling mental state of depression and sadness is all that I have left, and James. 

Oh God, James. 

When I am gone, what will he do? He'll slowly die, just as I am. He'll lose himself and go back to being a raging, depressed, alcoholic monster. 

I don't want that to happen, though all I ever long for is to be free. To be happy. To escape this damned cancer. 

I am not afraid of dying because James is what is keeping me alive.