I'll Be Back

Prologue - Part 2

Ayden's discharge was announced one week exactly after his chemotherapy cycles had ended.

I waited outside his room as he gathered his things up. He greeted me with a glowing smile on his face, as he rushed up and hugged me, almost knocking me down.

"I did it, Gab," he said. "I made it and I'm never coming back again! We get to have a normal life together. I get to go to school, meet new people, learn, just like everyone else."

There he was, practically bald, pulling along a ventilator machine and telling me that he was going to be normal, just like everyone else. Once I heard the words, the sinking feeling came to my heart. I knew that our life would never be 'normal' together. However, I did what I had to do and tried my best to smile, hugging Ayden back with all the strength I had, hoping that I never had to let him go.

As each day passed, the more I would find myself counting down until the day that Ayden would leave me. I knew that day by day, he'd get weaker and that there was going to be a day when he was going to vanish entirely from my sight. The hardest thing was keeping it all from Ayden - simply because I knew once he found out, it would break him, once and for all and the part I loved most of him was going to disappear. His hope.

The one thing that kept me moving forward in life was knowing that Ayden would beat this, and everything will go back to the way it was before. It had to. Because the alternative is too terrifying for me to possibly imagine. The possibility that there could've been no 'tomorrow' with Ayden terrified me.

I always accompanied him to his check-ups, even though he insisted that I didn't have to. But I didn't want to risk the chances of him finding about the truth - that he might be gone any second. I wanted to protect him no matter what the costs were. Almost miraculously, he made it to the last month his fourteenth year in a breeze without any major collapses.

But I should've known better than to think that miracles existed.

I was in the middle of an English lesson when the news reached me. He had passed out while he was in the middle of his P.E lesson. Apparently, he had lied to his teacher and told him that he was healthy enough to take part in the football match but I knew perfectly well that he was told to never do anything strenuous, taking part in an hour long football match would be out of the question.

I was pulled out of the room by my teacher. She told me that by the time the paramedics reached the school, his pulse was not increasing and he was in critical condition. She tried calming me down but the tears wouldn't stop. I knew there was going to be a day when this was going to happen but I hadn't expected it to come so soon.

I didn't believe my ears when my father called three hours later and told me that he had managed to stabilise Ayden's condition. I didn't know how this boy did it, but he managed to escape death once more.

I rushed to the hospital once I heard that he was alive. I was greeted by my father who was standing outside Ayden's room with a couple other surgeons. Once he saw me, he patted me on the head. "There you are."

"Let me go in," I said as he continued to block the doorway. "Let me see him."

"He's very tired, Gabriella, I think it's best if you don't bother him."

My hands were balled into fists. I grew hot, and my thinking seemed to have shut down. I just wanted to see Ayden. I just wanted to know he was going to be fine. Why did my father always have to stop me from doing so? "Is he going to die, father?"

He doesn't answer me for a couple of seconds and I studied the other surgeon's quiet murmurs in the background. And that was when I knew what was going to happen. My thoughts were confirmed when I saw the single thing I had dreaded to see him do. Father smiled.