Cheers

Part Five

Gone. What did that word mean again? It meant not here anymore, right? Then surely I must have heard wrong. He didn't say the word gone. That meant she was dead, because that's the only meaning the word gone has in a hospital. But that simply isn't possible.

No, it's not true. Any second he'll laugh and it'll all be a cruel joke. Raven will come out of the OR and hug me, and I'll get to hear her say my name in her bell-like voice one more time.

A moment's petrified silence filled the air, a silence so thick and suffocating that noise couldn't shatter it. Light and anxious chatter still surrounded us, from other people waiting to hear the same words, but it suddenly sounded far away, as though I was underwater.

Didn't the doctor just say something? I think he did, but I can't hear him anymore. My heart is so loud.

All I could hear was the dull pounding of my slow beating heart. Air became hard to find as a lump formed in my throat and a knot in my stomach while I tried to register what had just been said to me. However it proved to be too difficult and the world began to sway beneath me.

"I think I'm gonna throw up."

I choked those words to a concerned doctor before my vision went blindingly white.