Two months. That's all they gave him. "You're lucky he even made it overnight," were their exact words, how dare they? How dare they say that I was lucky? I'm not even sure I believe in luck anymore, not after Luke's diagnosis.
Osteosarcoma, that's what they said. It had started in his patella and spread to his lungs. Even after the countless times we had to take like for random visits to the ER, they never checked him for things like that because he "looked perfectly healthy". And that's why, that's why I'm watching my boyfriend, my love, my Luke, deteriorate before my eyes.
When Luke found out, I expected him to react as I did: in anger. When they told me, I was absolutely furious and absolutely shattered at the same time, so of course there was a disastrous reaction. I screamed at the doctor, telling him that he was wrong, he had to be wrong. Luke and I were so happy, we were fine, until Luke was admitted to the awful institute that they had us in now. When they told Luke, he didn't say anything at first, he just stared at his lap. For a minute, I thought that he had become mute, and that I would never hear his beautiful voice ever again. This thought caused me to fall to my knees. I began to cry, no, not cry, sob. Uncontrollably. My arms found their way around his waist, which had become sickeningly thin in the past couple of weeks. I stayed there for what seemed like hours, until I felt something on my cold, wet face. Luke's hand. He felt like home, like the countless hours we had spent together, whether he was pulling me closer to him when we cuddled under the blankets or we were singing and playing acoustic versions of our favorite songs. I looked up at him and he gave me a weak smile, revealing his dimple that I loved so much. "Michael," he said softly, "I'm so sorry."
That was the breaking point, if I hadn't seemed completely wrecked before, I was now. Just the fact that Luke, the boy dying from cancer in front of my eyes, felt the need to tell me he was sorry, was enough to unhinge every emotion I had held in.
"Shhhhhh, Michael, it's going to be okay. We'll be okay," Luke said soothingly. I replied with a shaky whisper. "Y-you didn't have to tell me that you were s-s-sorry," I wiped my eyes and caught my breath, "Luke you don't have to say sorry for anything ever again. Especially not to me." He held on to my hand and intertwined our fingers, using his left hand to trace stars and hearts on my knuckles. "But, I'm the reason that you're crying. I'm the reason that you're sad. I can't live with that without apologizing to you," he said, his eyes beginning to water.
"Oh baby," I climbed up onto the hospital bed next to him and compared my converse to the vans he had insisted on keeping on that were peeking out of the blanket, "it's not you. You could never make me sad. You're always so damn cheerful all the time," he grinned and I put my head in the crook of his neck, "it's this cancer, Luke. I always thought that you and I would be together forever. You were mine, and I swore to never let you be taken by somebody else. And I know how this works, Lukey. Soon you're going to have to be in the hospital all the time, and you won't belong to me anymore, you'll belong to the cancer." He looked at me with his sad blue eyes, his lips slightly parted in realization. Three tears rolled down his cheek and he made that whimpering sound a child makes before they start to cry. "What's wrong, Luke?" I asked him, wiping the tears off of his pale, hollow cheeks. "Please..." he said, "don't let it take me away, Mikey. Don't let it take me." He sounded like a little boy, and it absolutely broke my heart. My voice broke when I replied,
"Never."
