The Fourth Fall (Sequel to Boy In My Class) Gerard Way

Chapter 20: Finale Pt. II (The Final Chapter)

An arduous two weeks followed that night, where Gerard and I sat and watched the sun go down on one of the last beautiful days we would experience together. That sounds terribly morbid, but that is how I felt. Brain tumour? That instantly makes you think of an inoperable, stage 4 malignant cancer that would rapidly eat away at my husband like a wild animal would eat away at it's prey. My husband, in my eyes, was dying. Counting the days we had left together made it feel to me like he was already dead- every moment we spent together was sad, melancholic and ultimately timed. At the end of each night, I would lie facing away from him, my eyes tightly shut as I tried to embrace the feeling of him holding me, thinking about how it could be the last time he would ever hold me. Now that I knew about the cancer, he didn't hide his symptoms from me, and they progressively got worse. He began vomiting frequently. He felt dizzy all of the time and most of the time we spent together was wasted as he just needed to lie down, his head in agony and his body weak. Three things happened during those two weeks that made me feel sick to my stomach and would remain imprinted in my head like when somebody sees a vicious car accident and can't bear to look away, so they stare directly at it and then instantly regret doing so for the rest of their lives. Here's what happened

1. Gerard insisted on making me dinner. I sat down at the dining table and watched him preparing food, admiring how upbeat he was being that day. He was trying hard to make sure the final days or weeks we spent together were good. As he brought the plates of food over to the table, he all of a sudden dropped them both on the floor, with himself shortly following suit. He fell to the ground and I watched in pain and fear as the man I loved thrashed around on the floor amongst the broken ceramic of the plates and the warm food that he had so lovingly prepared. He was having a seizure. I lay on the floor beside him and held his head, trying to still his writhing body. When he came around, I cried so hard. Not because of what I had seen, but because he stood upright, dazed and confused, and claimed he would prepare dinner again. He was trying so fucking hard to pretend like everything was normal. I had no appetite, but I ate every single bite of food that he prepared as I watched him across the dinner table, his forehead bleeding where a piece of broken plate had cut his face.

2. He forgot the name of our daughter. We were sat together, cuddled up in front of the fireplace under a blanket, listening to the sound of birds seep in through the open window and the sound of his gentle breathing. Immy began to cry, and Gerard said "...she's crying." He sounded uncertain and scared, so I asked him what was wrong. He replied "She...my baby....Isabel."

"That's my name," I told him, and he cried. He cried very hard, and I knew he was reaching the end of his ability to pretend like everything was normal. He went to check up on Immy and he spent hours in the bedroom, cradling her and apologizing softly to her for forgetting her name. I watched him silently from the doorway, imagining how strongly I just wanted to put my hand through his skull and rip the tumour out, curing him, curing our marriage and our family. I could not possibly imagine that I would be able to function without him. He was my rock, my soulmate, the love of my life. I needed him more than I needed water or air. I would rather have died first than have to live the rest of my life without him.

3. The third thing that happened will have to wait until the end of this story.

The day after he forgot Immy's name was exactly two weeks since he had broken the news to me that it was pretty damn certain that I would be losing my husband, at best, in a matter of months. I was sat in a hospital waiting room, whilst Gerard was talking to a doctor about his condition. He had been diagnosed a month prior to this day, and he had not gone back to seek any medical help. He had insisted that I stay in the waiting room, as he didn't want me to hear anything bad or frightening such as how he was going to have seizures, hallucinations and forget the name of his children. Basically, he wanted to hide from me everything that I already knew. After a good two and a half hours, he came out of the waiting room, looking pale, sickly and afraid.