Chapter 7

It's actually kind of a reprieve that Sam knows now. He has someone he can rely on, because he knows his mom isn't up to the task. The next week is like a reaffirmation of their friendship, they spend almost every waking moment together.

He spends that week almost entirely in the present. He doesn’t seem to be as paranoid as before. Sam gets that now, it's only a matter of time before the rest of them find out. And he can finally admit that he's ready for them to know. Ready to lower the mask and tell them the truth behind that sunken eyes and school absences.

Not that he does it right away. He waits until after they've gone to the doctor, gotten the test results back. Ryan knows exactly what they'll say though, he can feel it. So he's not surprised when the doctor calls them in to talk to them and he looks incredibly somber.

His mom's already on the brink of tears, but Ryan is the calmest he's been in months. He's ready for this now, ready to begin letting go and stepping back. Sure, he's still a little angry, but he has the right doesn’t he? So when the doctor says that the chemo hasn't done anything, that Ryan has actually gotten worse, he takes it without flinching and tries not to cry for his own state but for his mother’s who was shutting down in front of him. " the chemo isn't working and keeping it going is just going to put Ryan through hell for no reason."

“I’ve read about experimental drugs right? They have worked before.”

The doctor opens his mouth to answer but Ryan cuts this conversation off before it begins. "No. How long do I have without these trials?" His mom's kind of looking at him like he's gone crazy, but the doctor's got this understanding look on his face. He knows that Ryan has made up his mind.

"Not very long. Maybe six months, seven at most. It depends on how fast the cancer progresses once you stop taking the chemo. Normally, for this kind of leukemia, you undergo chemo therapy for a few years, not months and Ryan that’s still an option it might give you some more time"

"I know," Ryan replies, trying not to look at his mom, who has gone paper white. "I want to stop all treatment. I want to live, for however long that is, as myself, I won’t live out my life in a medical haze. I want to see everything, feel everything. It’s all I got left.”

His mom and the doctor try to argue that he's young, he's still got his whole life ahead of him, he should try at least one of the trials, but he shoots them down. He'd already made his decision months ago. He didn't want to linger for years in pain like his dad, it was bad enough that he'd linger for months, now he is tired. He just needed to find the right words to say goodbye.