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I shake my head, pointing to the phone. “Can you tell her?” I croak. “Please.”
It’s the chicken way out, but I just can’t cope with Rhia’s inevitable upset.
“Is this Rhia?” he asks.
I nod.
“Tell me what?” Rhia shouts through the phone. How she heard what I said is beyond me.
“Will somebody tell me what’s going on!” she demands.
Aiden takes the phone from my trembling hands and walks to the small sofa in one corner of the room, just as a nurse hurries in. Monique passes me a box of tissues before adjusting the medication in my IV. She sits down in the chair next to the bed, taking my hand and patting it lightly. She doesn’t say everything will be okay. She doesn’t say anything at all, but just having somebody else here helps.
I don’t dare look at Aiden. Just thinking about what he’s telling Rhia tears my insides apart.
Gradually, my heart rate slows, and the pressure in my chest eases. After a few minutes, the lump in my throat disappears and I take a deep breath.
“You’re feeling calmer now?” Monique asks.
I nod, and she gives my hand a reassuring squeeze before getting up and leaving the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
Why does it feel like it’s the closing of a door on so many things?
Aiden’s muffled voice reaches me. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but his tone is full of pain… yet there is strength too.
I need his strength… need it so much. I’m not sure how to face my mortality without it.
There is silence now, and I know he’s letting Rhia have her moment.
I can feel her heart breaking, her despair, even though she’s thousands of miles away.
Fresh tears roll down my face. I want to curl up in a ball.
There is fucking heartbreak everywhere. I’m hurting the people I care most for in this world, and I hate myself for it.
I know this isn’t my fault.Still, the weight of it is crushing me.
The prospect of saying goodbye to everyone who is dear to me has me choking. New sobs rip through my body.
Tiero. I need to tell him too. And soon. He deserves that from me. A chance to say goodbye—forever. But how do I break it to him?
His hazel-brown eyes appear in my mind and the love he has for me shining in them. I broke his heart twice already. And now I’m going to do it all over again.
How will I get through that conversation? It’s not one I can hand over to Aiden. I wouldn’t do that to him… or Tiero. It’s bad enough he has to tell Rhia.
I hear him speak again, soothingly this time. I close my eyes. I’m in pain… my soul, my heart, my body—it’s all-consuming.
But it will be all over soon enough.
Strangely, in this moment, the thought doesn’t scare me.
Maybe my heart will stop beating now and I won’t have to face any of this anymore. I won’t have to say goodbyes, see the distraught faces of the people I love, and then have to live with the knowledge of their pain for as long as I’ve got left.
Ma, Da… soon we’ll be reunited again.
I’m so tired… tired of all this.
Just when things seemed to go right… perhaps I’m cursed… why would all this shit happen to me otherwise?
