Butterfly

2. Book Boy.

Chapter Two: Book Boy.

♡ Jessica Washington ♡

I return home from work just in time for dinner. I walk up to my house and I notice that there are lights on in the house next door. The new neighbours must have moved in today. I'll probably meet them either tonight or tomorrow.

I kick off my shoes once I'm inside my house and walk into the living room, where my dad is watching TV. He looks up when I walk in and smiles, asking me about my day, before I head to see my mum.

My mum looks tired, she always does. She shouldn't really be going to work, it exhausts her too much. But she wants to work, and nothing we say will stop her.

Two years ago, my mum was diagnosed with non-small-cell lung cancer. I remember the day like it was yesterday. She never told anyone that she was worried that she had it, she just had a cough which wouldn't go, like an endless cold. She had only ever had one cigarette, which she said she had when she was eighteen because she wanted to try it. She said she hated it, and would never do it again. She didn't.

She didn't tell us that she went to the hospital, not until when she got back. Her eyes were red, but she had stopped crying by the time she got home. I was watching a film with my dad, I think it was Aladdin, it's one of my favourite films. When my mum walked in, she said that she needed to speak to us.

When she said it, neither of us could believe it. Even my mum looked like she didn't believe it. I mean, you always hear that you get cancer by smoking, yet my mum got it, when she didn't smoke. She said that it might have been to do with being surrounded by the smoke from smoking, and that's when my dad started crying. My dad smoked, and he felt that it was his fault, even though my mum tried to assure him that it wasn't his fault. My mum told us that she was going to have surgery, but it might not work.

She was right. The surgery didn't work, the cancer came back, worse than it was before. She tried other treatments, like radiotherapy, but they didn't help. Now, she is still struggling with chemotherapy, as it is working a little, but not a lot.

The doctors said that even when chemotherapy, there is a high chance that it'll be under five years she has left. She cried when she said this. Not because she was dying, but because she was afraid of leaving us. She said she wanted to be able to see me go to prom, to see me graduate, to see my go to university, to get a job, to get married, to have children, everything. And she knew she would miss a lot of this, and that's what made her upset.

By the time I am twenty, she probably won't be alive. And I'm already nearing my eighteenth birthday. And it breaks my heart every time I think about it.

Now, when I look at her, I start to notice it before. I used to not notice it much, it allowed me to pretend that she was okay, that everything was okay. But it wasn't. It wasn't okay. She started getting breathless as she walked up the stairs to bed, she would cough a lot, sometimes coughing up blood. She started to lose some of her hair due to the chemotherapy. She cut all of her long brown hair off so it only just falls below her jaw. She changed a lot because of it.

Everything changed a lot because of it. We needed all the money for medication and treatment for her, so we stopped going out for dinner, we stopped going on holiday, we stopped buying things we didn't necessarily need. My dad stopped smoking, saying that someone needed to be there for me if something did happen to my mum. My mum started having to take more time off of work, but luckily her boss paid her still for it, knowing that she can't help it.