I live for her

Chapter 20: Roses

We met on the bus the next day, she postponed it to Friday night: our "talk" - if you ask me, it smells like a break up... but apathy is a skill you learn to numb anxious thoughts. At this very moment in life, I'm a master in it. (Yes, I owe some of it to the genes that make up a murderer floating in my daddy's nuclei. So thanks grandad and grandma!). I pretended like the abuse of her mum didn't happen and like I didn't suspect those thin lips were ready to sink our relationship.

I got a flash of the x-ray of my mum's skull. The huge blob the size of a newly-budding rose keeps haunting my mind. It stares at me, reminding me of the irony: that I compare it to a rose - but it's actually taking my mum away.

Let me explain, a malignant tumor in the front part of the brain implies that the cancer cells are attacking the part of the brain responsible for logic, thinking and remembering. If my mum comes out of the operation dead or alive - I know I've lost her. I could see it on the doctor's face when he said, "Sometimes, boy, the tumor comes out - and like magic, the patient is unaffected. They just have a long recovery time but they're back to normal, just like before.". I ignored the lies he spewed into the atmosphere and read the pity on his face instead. Whatever he said was to console a fifteen year old boy... to paint him the image of a rose in mum's head. Yeah. I convinced myself then that it was just a rose and they wanted to remove it. The misrepresentation of the tumor was quickly rectified after I'd read enough on statistics concerning brain tumors. My mum is gone.

The lady at the hospital desk called - the operation was "successful". I laughed. I shouldn't have, but I did. Then a tear lunged down my face - it shouldn't have, but it did. My mum was dead. And she packaged the news like it was the announcement of good news like the end of world hunger, or rape or poverty. It was nothing good. It was just new news - but not good news.

I imagined walking through those halls lit by those white tubes of light again. I imagined my right hand cupping the knob, turning the knob, pushing the knob: I imagined myself reflexively closing my eyes as the rays from the hospital room's blinds hit my eyes. Then her. I imagine looking at her directly in the face; eye contact unmoving: I imagine realizing her eyes held a blank tinge. She gives me the eye contact a stranger gives another walking down the sidewalk. I imagine my lips hesitating to say, "Mum" and my legs ready to retrace their steps back to the elevator. I imagine my brain fighting indecision with my heart attempting to leap out towards mum's post-op body and my limbs trying to reach for the elevator buttons. I imagine tears streaming down my face, my mum's face confused as to why an unrequested visitor is weeping and my brain wishing so... so dearly that it was all a bad dream and that I'd wake up. I'd wake up and Time's hands will rotate anticlockwise to some time in the past when life didn't feel like a tragedy circling a fifteen year old protagonist with suicidal thoughts - who would have the most tragic of all the deaths that take place. I imagine no more. The frame stays still with my face posing as a waterfall cliff, wetting the hospital floor and my mum's face like one of the faces on Mount Rushmore: staring at me with stones that bore no life. The expected reaction that I expected my body, my eyes and my brain to display did not occur: it was the apathy that manifested instead. It was like a cold breeze hitting my eyes and telling the tears to go back in. A cold breeze beating my face and telling it to sense emotions of relief and thus facial muscles remained unmoved: there was no smile, there was no frown. I found a little box in my head to hide the new news and all the research and fears about brain tumors I had amassed. It was labeled, "Do not touch". That's what life is about sometimes. Exposing yourself to the cold breeze of apathy and locking up things you cannot face. Life went on. The box moved a bit. My brain lit up with child-like curiosity - but then I remembered and started walking. This time, I didn't know where to - but I started walking and exploring... It was the same day my dad became a murderer. (It was a good walk, don't worry, so when I received that news, I just fell onto my bed like a log and slept off midway through drilling God with questions. He did not answer and I dreamed I was in a different movie, a romantic comedy: a reminder that the tumor wasn't a rose and my dad was a murderer.).

A/N: Wow... that was hectic.

Is Leroy being unnecessary by claiming his mum dead regardless of the successfulness of the operation?

And how's that whole scene where he "imagines" going to visit his mum in the hospital?

And is it right that he shoves all his  problems into a box in his head and leaves them there?

🚉 Choo-choo! You came again  :)

Thanks :D stay blessed and forgive Leroy for his ever-pessimistic mind.