Ashes of the Heart

Ch.1: The fire burns out.

          I remember it all like it was yesterday. Her amazing smile lit up the whole room like fire. She was the purest girl I've ever met in my life. Today marks 4 years since I last saw her... My sister... my Phoenix. I've had cancer since I was 12 Rayn volunteered to help at the hospital and we met on her first day and we became closest. We constantly played and chatted every day she was there. I hated the hospital without her. The doctors would poke me and constantly bother me with tests. I just wanted Rayn. I couldn't imagine my life any other way. She helped me forget my parents that left me because they "couldn't afford my bills" when they could afford everything after they left me. They never loved me. I was always a bother to them. Rayn would draw me amazing drawings daily and bring me things she made. She was 17 but she was like a big sister to me and a mother that I never had. I can still hear her words deep inside me... "You will light up the world with your heart and smile, no matter what". I always believed her until I learned the heart wasn't mine that shined like fire.

           The beginning of learning that I had terminal cancer. I was only 12 years old when I was told the news after so many tests and months of wondering if I was dying....Turns out I was. My parents looked so frightened but also unsure after hearing I would need extensive treatment and surgery to be able to live a mostly normal life. They took me home after debating what to do. MY father didn't want the pressure and bills of my treatments and surgery. My mother..she wanted to save me but also agreed with my father. She thought we could ask for help and they could work more but they already barely made enough with the jobs they were currently at. They worked days, nights, saved as much on anything they could to try and help me, thinking they could. But once they learned the price...they grew furious. The price would be years of them spending nothing to help me. My father snapped and said he'll be damned to waste all the money just to have me die on him. My mother tried to make him see reason in helping me but from being so sick I could barely do anything myself and working so much, soon she gave in to. I could see the pain and remorse on her face after she told the nurse they wouldn't be coming back and that I was snow on my own. I just stared at her as tears streamed down my face and cried out to her to not leave me here...here to die alone and forgotten. But she left without looking back. I could tell she was tired, but she didn't love me enough to at least say goodbye or kiss me one last time. For months I would sit in my room crying, refusing to eat, and begging to see my mom. The nurses and doctors seemed to start giving up on me too. They would tube feed me just to make me eat so they couldn't be blamed. A few even gave me injections to make me fall asleep so they wouldn't have to hear my cries anymore. But who could blame them. Months of hearing an ill child beg for their mom even though She's not coming back. The cold dim room became my forever home. I prayed one day my parents would get rich and come back for me or one day for this hell to be over so I could be free again. Either by death or by cure. I would just stare at the ceiling, numb waiting for the release to come until she appeared one day...Rayn, the girl full of fire.