The Death of a Year Chapter 4

 

         It was two weeks later before I finally got the nerve to do something about the note that Kai had put in my sweatshirt. I had thought a lot about it, thought a lot about him. I tried to imagine what it would be like to fall in love. I’d dated before, quite a lot actually, but I never allowed myself to look passed my own future far enough to see the possibility of love. Love was something that I just always imagined would “happen” one day, that I would see a face across a crowded room and my brain would send signals to my body that would tell me it was time to let my guard down. As strange as the idea was, it did happen that way with Kai. From the minute I saw him something changed inside of me, and whether or not it was the vulnerability of my position or true love actually staring me in the face, it was a feeling that I had never actually experienced. 

            I decided fairly early on that I couldn’t allow myself to fall in love with anyone. No matter how wonderful Kai was, how often his eyes made my stomach tumble, it just wasn’t feasible for me to allow myself, or him for that matter, to fall. Still, there were some things that I did crave, despite the growing darkness in my future, and one of those things was companionship. I wanted to feel something other than sorry for myself or afraid of what was happening; I wanted to talk to someone about a stupid movie or about the new best restaurant in town…I wanted to feel normal. 

            The decision to write him a letter rather than call him on the phone was something I agonized over in the quiet of my bedroom. Though I was sure his intentions with the note were nothing less than an attempt to reach out to me, there was still the fact that I was a sad, sick girl and he was a kind-hearted guy who may have just been trying to be nice. Calling him on the phone could be awkward, but writing him a letter would give him an “out” if he wanted one. 

            Sitting in my bedroom with a fresh pad of paper in front of me, for the first time in a long time I was at a loss for words. I was a girl with a brain tumor who probably only had a year to live, and he was a young, beautiful, dark-haired guy with his entire life ahead of him. Dwelling on my own reality was like treading water in the ocean, it made my heart weak; I could float for a little while when I needed rest, but I couldn’t continue forever, one day I would drown. After an hour of agonizing, the only thing that I had accomplished was a few wadded up drafts in the bottom of a wire trashcan. 

            “Hope, are you okay?” My mother had come in the room without my noticing.

            Trying to hide my pad of paper, I answered, “Sure, I’m okay, why?”

            “Looks like you’re working on something.” She walked toward the desk and I tried to cover the latest draft of my letter. “What’s that?”

            “Nothing, just a letter,” I responded, but the secretive tone of my voice set her mind to work.

            “Who’s Kai?” She quizzed.

            “Nobody.”

            “Come on, Hope, what’s going on?”    

            “Nothing. Can’t I get any privacy anymore?” I blew up. “It’s enough that I’m a prisoner in this house, but now my own letters aren’t even my business?”

            Throwing the uncompleted letter on bed upside down, I walked to the nightstand and grabbed a bottle of my pain pills. My mother watched as I dropped two pills in to my hand and swallowed them without water. Her eyes were on my back, and I could feel them like hot knives cutting through my buttery skin. A sense of panic welled inside of me and I felt the sudden need to escape, to get out in to the air and put some distance between myself and the house. 

            “Where are you going, Hope?” She sounded worried.

            “Anywhere but here,” I muttered. 

            I didn’t like feeling so angry, but I also had very little control over the emotion. Taking the stairs two at a time, I headed for the door. The doctors had deemed that driving was too dangerous for me after passing out in the park, so the only transportation that I had was my own feet and an iron will. I was unraveling in the crisp twilight, my head was full of thoughts and my mind was racing faster than sense could keep up. 

            Walking out of the door, I had no real destination in mind. I just got out on the street and started walking. I got to the end of my block and followed my feet around the corner, and by the time I got to the end of that street I was too inside of myself to even really pay attention to where I was heading. It’s hard to imagine the sense of urgency that one can feel when their life is falling apart. There’s a moment between having an attack of pure emotion and calming down in to reality when it feels as though you are going to jump out of your skin. I tried to separate myself from the feelings, tried to remember all of those things that I had been taught in my second year Psychology class about reasoning with someone in a fragile mental state. It’s funny how simple something can seem when you aren’t actually “in” it, when you are separated by circumstance. Finding myself inside of my situation without being able to look at things from an outside perspective was frightening, and that terrible and reoccurring feeling of drowning washed over me yet again. 

            By the time that I looked up and tried to get a bearing on exactly where I was headed, I had been walking for nearly a half hour. It was completely dark and the stars shone like glitter in the night sky. A milky moon lazed in the darkness, and for the first time in a long time I found myself really marveling at the distance between its white surface and my fragile body. Looking around I realized that I had walked all the way in to the city, nearly three miles, and I was only two blocks from the hospital. Kai immediately leapt in my mind. I had no idea if he was working, or even if I would have the nerve to speak to him if he was working, but my feet again started walking, as if with a mind of their own, and was helpless to stop them. 

 

            It was nearly 8:00 pm when I rounded the corner of Central Avenue and Jasper Street, where the hospital was located. There was a park across the street from the entrance to the hospital, and I could hear the sound of boys playing basketball on the public courts. Taking a seat on a bench near the park’s central fountain, I had a good view of the entrance to the hospital. I’m not sure exactly what I expected, that Kai would come walking out of the front doors and I would run over and speak with him. Maybe I was just hoping for a look at him, reveling in the normalcy of a girl having a crush on a boy. I wanted to get lost in the feeling of anticipation and exhilaration, escape in to the sweet fields of desire. Hugging my thin shirt a little closer to my chest I took a deep breath and watched as my breath came out in soft white wisps of steam. 

            “Hope?” 

            I knew the voice immediately, and my heart nearly stopped. Suddenly I realized how absolutely ridiculous I must look sitting in a park at night that just happened to be directly across from the hospital where he worked. I squinted my eyes and dropped my shoulders in an attempt to disappear…it was no use.

            “Hope? I knew it was you,” Kai said with a smile as he sat down beside me.

            A wave of dark hair washed across his eyes, and his pale skin gleamed in the moonlight. He was wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants and tennis shoes…he’d been playing basketball; if only I’d looked at the courts before I sat down.  At that moment I was teetering between wanting to lean over and bury my head in his neck and feeling as though I should get up and briskly head toward home with my proverbial tail between my legs.

            “It’s me,” I said brightly, trying to hide the blush in my cheeks. “I’m surprised you remember me.”

            “Really?” He seemed serious.

            “Well, I just thought maybe you were being nice that day…I don’t know…”

            “I was being nice,” Kai said frankly. I felt a quick pang of embarrassment at the possibility that I had read his kindness in the wrong way. “Of course, I don’t make it a habit to write notes to all the patients that walk through the hospital doors,” he added.

            Relief swarmed in my chest like a group of angry honeybees. “That’s good to know.”

            Kai laughed. “ So, what brings you here tonight?”

            The one question that I didn’t want to have to answer… “I like to walk at night,” I said. 

            “I can tell, you certainly wear the right clothing,” Kai laughed again. “Here, take my jacket, you look like you’re about to freeze.”

            The air was quite chill, and I gladly took his jacket, both because I was cold and because I couldn’t help wanting to wear something he had worn. A sudden realization that I was acting like a swooning high school freshman in love with the Quarterback, hit me like a runaway freight train. Kai put the jacket around my shoulders, squeezing them a little as he did so. 

            “Thanks, I was a little cold.” I wished that I could come up with something a little more interesting to say. I imagined opening my mouth and dazzling him with my quiet sophistication and deep intellect, but what actually came out was something I was far from being proud of. 

            “So…do you live nearby?” Kai asked.

            “A few miles away…”

            “A few miles, huh? You must really enjoy walking.” He looked at me quizzically.

            “Well, I do like walking, but I suppose that’s not the real reason I’m out here…but I’ll save that explanation for another time.”

            “Mystery…I like that.” Kai flashed his perfect smile again, and I could feel myself melting from the inside out. “You like coffee?”

            “Coffee…uh…yes, I do like coffee,” I said. The truth was that I hadn’t had a cup of coffee or a soda in months, even before my diagnosis, but something at that moment told me that I should follow the famous saying “Get busy living, or get busy dieing”, and that meant that a cup of coffee with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen wasn’t anything if not completely healthy. 

            “So, you want to get a cup?”

 

            Kai sat across from me at a table outside of a coffee house that I hadn’t been to since I had left college. A year before, that coffee house had been at least a twice weekly hangout. I would sit with my books spread across a table in the back, my laptop open and my mind tuned away from anything except what was in front of me. Maybe Kai had been there then…he could have been sitting at the very next table and I wouldn’t have noticed. My immersion in all things “responsible” was a truly incredible thing. I had always done what I thought was “right” and “safe”, just so that I would have that perfect future that was expected of me, and now none of it mattered. 

            “I really like you Hope,” Kai said somewhat unexpectedly. “It’s because of how much I like you that I need to get these questions out of the way, okay?”

            I knew what questions  he was talking about even before he asked them. What’s your disease? Why are you dieing? It’s like the normal parameters of dating were oddly stretched for “girls like me”, girls with “diseases”…when the “normals” where all sitting around chatting about where they grew up and what kind of music they liked, the “diseased” have to talk about their diagnosis and how much time they have left.

            “I’ve got a brain tumor. They say it’s inoperable. I’m almost done with my first round of Chemo, I still have all my own hair, though,” I tried to laugh, but it sounded dry. I could see he was uncomfortable. “Dr. Rob says theirs hope, but I may have as little as a year.”

            Kai reached across the table and grabbed my hand, which was unconsciously clenched in a fist. I could feel the soft burning of tears welling in my eyes, and it took all of my strength to keep what little composure I had left. 

            “Hope, you’re an amazing woman…” His voice trailed off.

            “I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming.”

            “No, there’s not ‘but’, I knew it from the minute that I saw you. Actually, this may sound corny, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt what I felt when I first saw you, it was…unusual.”

            “Unusual, huh?” I laughed, glad for a chance to change the tone in what could have been a very melancholy turn of conversation.

            Kai laughed and squeezed my hand. There was something magical about the way that his hair fell in his eyes, and I couldn’t seem to escape the feeling that I was about to wake up, lonely and cold, from a dream. Why was I being presented with an opportunity to know a person like this when I didn’t have the rest of my life to enjoy it? What kind of cruel turn of the Fates caused him and I to meet under these circumstances?

            “So, it’s getting pretty late, and you need to get your sleep.”

            “Don’t do that,” I said with a frown.

            “What?”

            “Don’t treat me like I’m some fragile patient, like I need to be treated with some kind of abnormal care,” I pulled my hand away and pushed the hair out of my eyes.

            “I didn’t mean…”

            “I know you didn’t mean anything by it, I know you can’t help it, no one can. Still, if we’re going to be friends I need you to know that I can’t be treated any different than someone who’s healthy,” I said, while looking directly in to his eyes. I needed him to understand me, to really feel what I was saying and take it to heart. Having people treat me like I was going to die would push me in to the grave faster than the tumor in my head could do on its own. 

            “I’ll remember that, Hope, I hear you,” Kai said with a smile. “But what’s this about being ‘friends’?”

            Blood immediately filled my cheeks and I had to look away. “Well, whatever we end up being.”

            Kai laughed. “Okay, well I need to get some sleep, so I’d better drive you home.”

            “Agreed,” I said with a half smile.

 

         Driving home in the passenger’s seat of Kai’s car, I allowed my head to fall back on the headrest. Lit by the subtle glow of the dashboard lights, his skin looked almost luminescent. Tracing the line from his forehead, down the soft, almost feminine slope of his nose, I allowed my eyes to rest upon the fullness of his lips. Intent upon the road, he was blissfully unaware of how beautiful that he was in the semi-darkness.    

Author's Note

Again...not sure what the problem is with the formatting...the last paragraph simply won't space correctly...

Reviews

[bluessadmood]

this is a sad and bad situation ,whatever people do to help,you think its out of pity ,and its our nature that do not accept pity ,so what if she falls in love a very tricky situation ,is he really in love or most probably just feeling sorry for her ,so where do we go from here,i just liked these words you said..
Dwelling on my own reality was like treading water in the ocean, it made my heart weak; I could float for a little while when I needed rest, but I couldn't continue forever, one day I would drown ...
and these wonderful words too...
I was too inside of myself to even really pay attention to where I was heading. It's hard to imagine the sense of urgency that one can feel when their life is falling apart.
its really feeling alone and at loss,you just feel so light in heart and limbs ,it like blood has drained off your body ,like you are weightless all of a sudden like you are lost in time and space and really you dont belong here anymore ,i have felt like that sometimes ,a very nasty feelings she is having i am sure like losing all balance and sinking deep into nowhere...

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First, before I forget to mention it like I did last time, "dieing" should be "dying." It's small, but I wanted to point that out. Also, there are some times when you write "passed" when I'm wondering if they should be "past." Not all of them, but certain ones in sentences that have a past tense to them. You might want to just double check if you have another revision.

This chapter seems a little bit more relaxed, whereas the previous chapters were very tense. That's not a bad thing, because you don't lose focus with either issues in this story. The main shift in tension is obviously because this chapter focuses more on the love interest with Kai instead of the disease, but what's good is you don't lose the disease in the mind of the reader. In other words, you shift the focus without losing sight of the dangerous issue. You tie them together really well.

I don't know why, but when I picture Kai, I'm picturing one of those japanese guys with the really punk rock hairstyle, you know where the hair falls over their face and covers have their features? I think perhaps it's the name. Just talking. lol.

I like the last few moments, how Hope sees him in the ghostly sheen of the instrument panel. There's a certain amount of deep connection there, where there is no dialogue being spoken, but there seems to be something in the silence that is conveyed. Now that, I like. I don't know if you intended that or not, but that's definitely the feeling that I got from that ending.

I admit I was a little surprised when Hope shot back at him during their little coffee affair. It was unexpected. Especially after how weak in the knees that she seems to be for him. But that's good because that's one of the instances, perhaps THE instance where you bring the disease back into the mix to share the limelight with the growing relations between Hope and Kai.

I'm not sure how I feel about Hope blowing up towards her mom for being nosy. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but I just figured that after she had blown up in the previous chapters for the clothing issue just before the treatment started that she would try to be a little more understanding of her mother's mothering her. Even though you mention that time has passed, it still seems a little fresh in my mind. Like I said it's not bad, but I have to be honest, I feel as if it happens too soon after the last one. I don't know, I'm kind of in between on that one.

I'm still loving the story! =)