73 Memories

The Sixty-Ninth Memory

When the hospital called me in so they could tell me my results, we drove in silence.

"Will you come with me to the meeting?" I asked.

"I was going to go even if you told me not to," you replied, and I gave you a humorless laugh.

"They said they would contact me over the phone. What if it's bad?"

You sighed, pulling into the hospital parking lot.

We didn't have to sit in the waiting room long before our last name was called. "Parker?"

You and I both stood up, following the doctor in front of us, the one that performed my scan, as he led us into a room with a desk and two other chairs, where we sat.

He took a seat in his.

After an awkward amount of silence had weighed down the room Dr. Halk finally spoke. "This is a very hard thing to tell you," he started, making my heart drop to the floor. "But you do indeed have a tumor."

"When can you remove it?" You asked, eyes wide and fist clenched.

"That's the bad part. Your tumor has been a part of you for so long, I suspect since you were a child, that it's grown far too much and become far too attached to you for us to be able to remove it. It would kill you instantly."

The horrible part about this whole situation is that after I got the scan done, a part of me already knew that I wasn't going to be able to be fixed.

"So what happens now?" Your teeth were clenched, you had your ankles crossed tightly, and I knew you already knew the answer as much as I did. I put a hand on your shoulder, but you wouldn't look at me, and I understood.

"Look, this is hard to say. But she'll slowly start to lose herself in the tumor. You won't be able to walk anymore, you'll have raging headaches, and you'll become very tired. You'll throw up more, vision may blur, and sooner or later you might lose the sense of feeling. It'll be like that feeling when you've sat on your foot too long, the pins and needles feeling. We can give you medication to slow it down, to reduce pain, but we can't stop it."

I swallowed hard, determined not to cry.

"Thank you, Dr. Halk," I attempted a smile but I knew he saw right through it.

"There's nothing to thank me for."

We didn't say a single word on the way home, but when we parked in the driveway, we didn't get out of the car.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, and I let the tears silently fall down my face.

"Why are you sorry?" You asked. "It isn't your fault."

"I should have known something was wrong with me."

"How could you know?"

"I just should have! I'm going to leave you! I'm going to die!"

You grabbed my face and put it in your hands. "I know! I know, okay? I'm sorry. But we can't change it. I know you're going to leave, but I love you, and I won't. I won't leave."

"Why not? It's just going to hurt you more in the end."

"That doesn't matter. All that matters is that I love you."

I whimpered, hating those words now. Those words meant pain to you. But I returned them. "I love you, too."