Some hours pass by since Mark collapsed on the floor. He begins to wake up in the nearest hospital. He looks around, trying to get sense of his surroundings as the light blinds him.
"He's up!" Tyler yells and repeats as he leaves the room. Mark jumped, quickly sitting up as he's startled by Tyler's shouting. Amy, Ethan and Katherine run in after Tyler, happy to see him up.
"No no no no, sweetie. Lay back down" Amy insists, sitting beside Mark to help him lay back.
"Wh-what . . . happened?" Mark asks with a puzzled expression. He starts groaning and clings to his stomach again, feeling the sharp pain.
"Ugh! Why does my stomach hurt so much?" Mark whimpers and whines. He's never been in so much pain, not since the tumor he had removed years ago. Amy grew shaken, trying to gather some courage to tell him as subtle as possible what was going on.
"W-well the uh . . . doctors examined you while you were out, . . . The-they um, they-"
"You have cancer." Tyler blurted out, cutting off Amy's sentence. Everyone looks at him with surprise at the fact that he's interrupting , everyone but Mark. After all, they did grow up together. He was more shocked at what was said. This is the quietest Mark has been in a long time.
"Th-the doctors" Amy starts back up, her voice rattling as she continues "they found tumors inside you." Amy hugs Mark, soaking her tears into his sleeve.
"They formed where the original one was." Katherine says, trying to hold in her emotions.
"Th-they said" Ethan stutters "th-that there's little ch-chance f-for you t-to sur-survive." Ethan runs over and kneels beside Mark, hugging his leg.
Mark is of course horrified by the news, yet he felt he knew this would happen. He felt the need to panic, but he's afraid to. Undesirable questions and emotions he never wanted to remember return, filling his thoughts to the point where it's the only thing he can think of.
"How much . . . time . . . do I have?" Mark asks softly, afraid of what the answer would be. *Did they even know?* he thought to himself
"They said a little more than a year" Tyler answers. Mark kinda smiles. It isn't much, but at least it's something.
"Then we make the best of what we have"
YOU ARE READING
The Last Life
FanfictionApril 21, 2017 This is a story I'm writing for my English class. We are supposed to write a story about the American dream and I thought this was a good idea. It's also a tribute to my mom, who was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer back in De...
