The Waiting Game

The Last Letter

On the eighth day of June, they gave me my diagnosis, and they told me that I had three months to live.

I had a brain tumor, they said. And it was too late.

I had been going to the hospital for months. The only ones that knew about it were me and my mother; she didn’t want anyone to worry, especially not you or Devon, and I felt the same. So, surreptitiously, my mother and I would go to appointments, and I would sit there for hours while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me, what was making me sick. I got medication that never worked. I had headaches that made me physically ill. They thought that it might be a brain tumor, but they didn’t know for sure. They gave me an MRI, but I had to go back and get another one—there was a glare on the screen and they couldn’t tell for sure.

It was agony, waiting to hear those results. I wanted to know just about as much as I didn’t. I didn’t want them to tell me that my life was over, but if I was going to live, I wanted them to tell me as soon as possible.

On the eighth day of June, the first day of summer, my mother and I were called to the hospital. They made us wait in a room that smelled nauseatingly like a hospital, so much so that it made my head spin. My mother was gripping my hand so hard that she cut into the skin, her nails leaving marks when she pulled away. I hadn’t even noticed. I had been too busy watching the door, waiting for the doctor to walk inside.

The moment that she had, I knew what she was going to say.

I knew she was going to tell me that there was a tumor in my brain.

I knew she was going to say that it was too big for them to do much of anything with it.

I knew she was going to tell me that it was going to start killing me methodically, mentally deteriorating me until there wasn’t much of me left inside of my own mind anymore.

I knew she was going to tell me that I was going to die.

I didn’t expect it to be in three months. No, I didn’t expect that time limit at all.

I expected a year, but I knew that would have been generous. The doctor told us that she wouldn’t lie, and that she would do something if she could, but it was too late. My mother was so broken by the news that she was hysterically sobbing into my shoulder, holding me so tightly that I would find my arms covered in bruises from her grip. I just sat there for the longest time, absorbing what the doctor was telling us, numb.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like when you know that you are going to die.

I told my mother not to tell anyone, not yet. She reluctantly agreed; Devon was at his apartment in Orlando for the next week so she would have time to control herself a little bit before there was someone around to notice something was wrong. I didn’t know how I was going to be able to look you in the eye and smile the next time I saw you. If you remember, I avoided you for three days. I sat in my room and stared at the wall, wondering, Why me?

It’s selfish, isn’t it? I was dying, and there was no way to control it or change the outcome, but all I wanted to know was why I was the one stuck with this fate.

I still kind of want to know. But I’ve made my decision now.

When I saw you again, I thought about breaking up with you, ending it right then and there. Kind of like a band-aid. I wanted to give you some time away from me so you would have already started moving on by the time I was six feet under. But I couldn’t do it, Gia. Every time that I convinced myself to say those words I would look into your eyes, see you smiling at me, and the words would die in my throat. I would look at you and I would fall in love with you again and I wouldn’t be able to let you go.