Butterfly

45. This Is Goodbye.

Chapter Forty-Five: This Is Goodbye.

♡ Jessica Washington ♡

"Make way for Prince Ali!" I finish singing along to Aladdin, my favourite film. My dad rolls his eyes at my appalling singing, before the door opens, most likely my mum coming home. She was called into work early, apparently they were understaffed. 

"Hey," my mum says, and I turn around to face her, expecting to see my usual smiling mum, the woman who can always put a smile on my face, on anyone's face. Except this isn't who I see when I turn around. Instead, I see a woman who's face is pale, apart from her eyes which are red and sore. A woman who is not the woman I expected to see, not the mother I know. 

"Are you alright?" I ask, worriedly. My dad looks up from his newspaper, hearing the worry in my voice. My dad immediately puts down the newspaper and rushes over to my mum when he sees her, and they sit down next to me on the sofa. My dad has his arm around his wife, but this seems to make the tears start flowing down her cheeks again.

"I need to talk to you...both of you," my mum informs both of us, and I frown, confused. The last time that I remember she said this was when she surprised us, telling us that we were going away on holiday to Estonia. My dad knew, obviously, but he played along nonetheless. This time, I doubt that we're going on a trip to Estonia.

"What is it?" my dad asks, frowning.

"I lied to you both this morning. I wasn't at work, I was at the hospital. I went to do some tests a few days ago, and I was getting my results from these tests today," my mum informs us, and I watch her, still confused. Whatever reason did she have for having tests done at the hospital? Is she sick?

"What's wrong?" my dad questions, his face turning a shade of grey. I watch my mum, almost crying at the sight of her crying.

"The tests were positive...for cancer," my mum tells us slowly, and I'm thrown into a state of shock, especially when I have to watch my dad break down before my eyes. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, tears that my mum tries to wipe away, although she's crying more than me. My dad grips the glass of water in his hand tightly, suddenly seeming far away.

"What cancer?" my dad asks, his hand shaking nervously. 

"Non-small-cell lung cancer. I can have treatment, there are a lot of options for me. They said it might be due to repeated exposure to smoke, or I might have just been unlucky, they weren't too sure because they expected me to be a smoker due to the scale of it. I'm already at a late stage, but they said I can start a course of treatment. I'm not sure if it will work though," my mum explains quickly as I hug her, crying into her shoulder. My mum doesn't deserve this. She's never done anything bad in her life, so why does she deserve to go through something like this? It's wrong, it's unfair. 

"This is my fault," my dad whispers, his voice shaking like a bad opera singer's vibrato or a beginner violinist.

"No it isn't, this is no one's fault, just hard luck," my mum reassures him, but it's too late, the thought has already embedded itself into my dad's head just as the cancer has embedded itself into my mum's lungs. Now my mum is doomed to a life of illness while my dad is doomed to a life of guilt. And me, I'm doomed to a life without my mother.