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“Do you mind if we get something to eat first?” I ask. It sounds stupid after getting into his car and leaving with him, but I’m wary of giving him my address. I don’t know anything about him.
How am I going to get away from him? The last thing I want right now is company, especially his. I’m embarrassed and ashamed that he saw me at my most vulnerable. I can only imagine what he’s thinking about me.
“Sure,” he says. He sounds surprised. “Burgers okay?”
I nod, and he swings into the twenty-four hour Burger Barn we are passing. The thought of food is making me feel sick, but I have no intention of still being here when he gets back.
I glance down at myself with a sheepish smile. “I’m kind of a mess. Would you mind going in?”
“What do you want?” he asks.
“A cheeseburger and a Coke,” I reply.
He nods and opens the door. I wait until he disappears from my view before I inch open the car door and step outside. Quickly, I jog towards the sidewalk and detour down a side street, only slowing down when I’m confident I’m safe. I’m barefoot, but I don’t even acknowledge the pain searing through the soles of my feet as they hit stones and God knows what else.
I’m still a few miles from home, but the brisk air feels soothing as it blows gently on my face. The sun is just starting to rise as it breaks through the clouds, lighting the sky a beautiful orange. I stop for a second to take it in, goose bumps forming on my arms. I should be up this early more often. I swallow past the lump in my throat. How many sunrises do I have left? For a second I almost forgot that I’m dying. Almost. Then, just like that, reality comes crashing down on me and I can’t breathe.
There is so much I need to organize. My funeral. Hospice care for when things get too much. Who will get the few assets I have? All the little things I don’t want my family to have to deal with. But none of that compares to having to tell my parents and my sister that I’m dying.
They knew it was a possibility, but we all thought I could beat this. On the days when I was really sick, we would talk about the future. Life after cancer. It’s that hope that got me through the hardest days, and now that’s gone.
It’s not over yet.
I didn’t even get his name, but his words stay imprinted in my mind, because he’s right—it isn’t over yet, especially for my family. I’m dying, and that sucks, but there are people I’m leaving behind who I need to put ahead of myself. I need to think about their future, even if I don’t have one of my own.
Life after Erin.
Because, just because it’s ending for me, it doesn’t mean it finishes there for them. Life still goes on, and there will be a hundred little things that remind them of me that I can’t do anything about. I hate that I won’t be able to take that p
ain away from them. Don’t think about that. I have to focus on the here and now, or I’m going to fall apart.
And if I fall apart, they will too.
Chapter One
Erin
“Craigslist?”
I nod and smother a smile at the look of horror in my sister’s eyes. Under any other circumstances this would be quite funny, because I’m supposed to be the straight-laced one and she’s usually the one doing crazy stunts like this. Any other circumstances…meaning if I weren’t dying. My heart pounds. Dying. Yep, I’m actually dying.
After a few seconds, the sweaty palms and the difficulty breathing begin to subside and I start to feel better. The mini panic attacks I have whenever I think about where my life is at right now are actually a big improvement from how I was even a few weeks ago. These days, I can actually say the word dying without bursting into tears, but the fear is still there.
There was a time I when thought things were going to be okay. Then I heard the words that no cancer patient actually expects to ever hear. Terminal. Exhausted all options. I mean, it’s always in the back of your mind, but you fight it off because if you don’t have hope, what do you have?
What keeps you going—what kept me going through all the treatment—was the small chance that I could still beat this. Every night following chemo that I spent with my head over the toilet bowl or passed out in a pool of my own vomit in my bed because I couldn’t make it to the toilet was with the thought that it was worth it. It had to be worth it, because life couldn’t be that cruel, could it? Not only am I going to die but I get to waste my last few half-decent months feeling like death would be an improvement? Nice.
“Ez, are you insane? What the hell are you thinking?” Calli’s voice cuts through my thoughts. She throws her hands up in frustration, her dark eyes blazing. “Do you want to wind up dead—” She stops, her hands flying to her mouth as she realises what she has just said.
“Top of the list of things you shouldn’t say to the girl dying of brain cancer,” I tease her. Her eyes begin to water and I groan, pulling her into my arms and burying my face in her thick, blond hair, the same shade as my own. “Calli, it’s okay. I’m just messing with you.”
“Well don’t,” she growls, hugging me tightly. “I know you think you’ve made peace with all of this, but I haven’t.” Her lip quivers as she pulls away long enough to kiss my cheek. “I’m the one you’re leaving behind.”
Instantly, I feel guilty. I really need to stop trying to make light of the whole dying thing, at least around my family, but I can’t help it. If I can’t joke about it, then I have nothing to get me through this. They say when you lose someone you go through five stages of grief, but what about when you lose yourself? In the last few months, I’ve been really fucking angry. I’ve been sad. I’ve tried to pretend this isn’t really happening, and at my lowest point, I gave up. I gave up on everything, because what’s the point if it’s all going to be taken away?
I’ve been fighting for over three years, and look where it’s gotten me. I’m sick of fighting. Nothing has worked, and my doctors are at a loss of what to try next. Chemo, radiation, drug therapy…it’s all just prolonging the inevitable, and I can’t live like that. I’d rather die next week, having lived life to the fullest, than be around for another year but too sick to enjoy it. I want the chance to do this on my terms, but how do I explain that to people who just don’t get it?
People—my family, especially—don’t understand why I don’t continue to fight. They’re clutching to the false hope that miracles happen, because they read a post on Facebook about a woman whose sister’s cousin’s brother’s fiancée was given a week to live and is still alive ten years later. They think I’ve given up, but there is a difference between facing reality and giving up. They don’t get that I’m still fighting this. I’m fighting to keep this disease from taking the only thing I have left. All treatment is going to do for me now is maybe buy me a few extra months of feeling too shitty to lift my head off the pillow. I can fight to be someone, to do something, and somehow leave a mark on this world. I can fight to be the one to decide my own fate.
