terrible things - ashton irwin

twenty nine

The bitter irony of my life was that two years after my sister, Carole Ann, died in a paediatric ward in Portland, Oregon, I became a patient in the same wing. I recognised all the nurses, who'd shaken their heads in disbelief.

"Both Moore babies?" they'd whispered "Both?"

If God or fate or karma has decided you're going ti get cancer, though you cross your fingers for a kind like mine.

Mine is common, which means that doctors know a lot about it, and by now they're pretty good at curing it. That's the glass half-full.

"Yeah, the glass half-full...of shit," Ashton used to say.

I'd met him for the first time in that place, and every time he'd curse, I'd sort of punch him in the arm, because I didn't like it. But i did like him, which made it being there a little bit easier.

Don't get me wrong. Even a highly curable cancer is no walk in the park. Yes, the hospital walls were painted pretty colours, the nurses wore Winnie-the-Pooh scrubs, and some of the older kids pretended the ward was a boarding school complete with uniform of thin blue gowns, fuzzy slippers, and bald heads covered in colourful scarves. But being there and being sick totally sucked.

Until the day I met Ashton. Until the day he found me.

If like were a movie, we'd have had what they calla a "meet cute" Sort of like this: I'd knock into Ashton while carrying a giant stack of magazines I'd borrowed from the waiting room. And all those good, trashy weeklies like Us, People, and Life & Style would slide everywhere on the floor. I'd make a joke about studying for my pop culture quiz, and he'd laugh as he helped me pick up the mess. By the time the magazines were back in my arms, we'd realised we were totally hot for each other, and hilarity and romance would ensue for the next ninety minutes.

In real life, it went like this: in a narcotic haze from a bad reaction to a chemo treatment, I was staring at the TV, convinced that Barney the purple dinosaur was speaking directly to me. When i failed to decipher his message, I fell asleep, waking later to see a beautiful brown-haired boy sitting next to my bed. I knew then that I had died, because unless I had been transported to heaven, there was no way a guy that was hot was smiling at me.

But I wasn't dead. It was Ashton, and he was real. He said to me, "You look like shit. I feel like shit. Let's be friends."

And just like that, we were. That's how magnetic Ashton was: he could tell you that you looked terrible, and you'd still adore him.

Ashton was sicker than I was, but he didn't act like it. He had a rare kind of cancer. Non-Hodgkin's lymohoma or Burkitt's. The non means it's worse.

But they were only words. My mum could predict rain by the dull ache in her knee. My childhood dog, Sadie, could sense the mailman when he was still two blocks away. In this weird, quiet way, they knew what was coming.

And now, so did I.

Now, in the cold, cold waiting room. Ashton leaned against me. I could feel his breath. I imagined I could see the faint, precious pulse of his heartbeat, fluttering beneath the skin. He was so beautiful, so alive.

But for how long? I didn't need a doctor to tell me what I already knew. Ashton, my better self, my heart, my life, was very possibly dying.

Our luck would not run out? Please, Lavender. Everything runs out eventually. Everything.

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word count - 638

shorter but maybe my fave chapter so far