A year to remember

7. Jake

It was a weird thing, to be ready to start your final year of high school in one country and then suddenly uproot your life and start it on the other side of the world. I'd had good life back in Australia. Good friends, a school I actually enjoyed going to, and a girlfriend, Emily. We had been dating for almost ten months. It hadn't always been easy, but I had tried my best to stick by her, right up until I was leaving the country.

Mum had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just one month ago. She had gone to the doctor simply because she had been experiencing a bit of indigestion for a month, and then she started to feel a little bit more tired and short of breath than usual. She had convinced herself it was all secondary to the stress of her job, so it was a shocking blow when they told her she had cancer. It was even more shocking when they told her how progressed it was and that it had spread to her lungs; she otherwise felt quite well. It was a fast moving and deadly cancer, and based on her scans, she had been given six to twelve months to live. 

At first, dad stubbornly denied that it would beat her, regardless of what the doctors had said. But mum felt brave and accepted she would pass. I didn't really know how to feel. The only thing dad and I were certain of, was that we knew we would do whatever she asked of us.

I hadn't really processed everything yet. There was a lot to take in. But I understood why we made the move over here, even when dad and I didn't really want to go. It wasn't about us though. Mum had fallen in love with this very area when she had travelled through it, eighteen years ago. Her dying wish was to return here. She wanted to make the most of her time left. For her, this would be a year to remember. For dad and I, most likely a year filled with grief and loss, a year we would rather forget.

So here we were, half way across the world. I had ducked out to pick up milk. Mum couldn't sleep and she wanted a cup of tea, and since I couldn't sleep these days either, I happily obliged. I hadn't been driving long before I got flat tyre. I had pulled over and heard a cry for help. I looked up and saw something odd in the park; it had looked like a girl being dragged off a path by someone. I sprinted towards them, without even thinking, my body leaping into action.

I had tackled the guy off her and beaten him to a pulp in the process. I guess I had a lot of pent up rage to process. Not just about mum, but about Emily too. Guys like this were the scum of the Earth. Whether they acted out of aggressive power or just pure sexual perversion, I didn't know. Whatever it was, they didn't give a shit about the person they were hurting. They didn't think twice about how hurt and haunted that person would be for the rest of their life. All it took was one moment, one terrible decision and Emily's life had been forever changed. She hadn't been the same after the incident, nor had our relationship. I couldn't let the same thing happen to someone else.

The girl- Alyssa Vanderbilt- had been lucky all things considering. She would carry the emotional scars for the rest of her life, but she had sworn she sustained no physical ones, unlike Emily. I was thankful for that. I could see her shock, her distress. She was hardly able to speak; she just looked at me, trying to understand. It wasn't until afterwards that I had remembered why I was out in the first place. I had relocated my dislocated shoulder myself to try and get back home to mum. I had done it before, it really wasn't that hard to do, but the problem was I ran the risk of trapping a nerve and doing further damage. The ambulance had insisted on taking me to the hospital to have my shoulder x-rayed for further damage and to close the wound on my head. 

I had tried telling the hospital staff to call my mum- to let her know where I was- and the nurses assured me they would, but somehow the message got passed along to too many people and no one had actually called her. They scanned my shoulder, told me it was relocated adequately but I had strained my rotator cuff muscles in the process. I was ordered to wear a sling for six weeks and then to start rehab. I knew the drill, it wasn't my first rodeo, I just didn't care. I threw my sling in the first bin I walked past.

Mum had been worried sick about me. I left for milk and didn't return home until 5am. I didn't want to cause her unnecessary stress. I felt awful. But mum hugged me tight and told me she was so proud of me. She said she knew we were here for a reason; that I was at the exact place, at the exact time I was meant to be there. It was fate, in her eyes. Mum was a big believer that everything happened for a reason. 

I was just trying to figure out what all of these so called 'reasons' were.