I'm just a girl (with cancer)

 I am just a girl, a typical 16-year-old girl how want's to live and have fun with her friends and laugh out loud. But I can't cuz I have cancer. Stage 4 lung cancer, yea that's me. The girl who spent most of her childhood in hospital, on surgeries and chemotherapy, missing out on growing up and going to school and going on vacations with her parents and brother because of stupid cancer.

 I love my parents but sometimes they are harder to deal with than with cancer. I know it's hard for them to see me like this. I know they argue in front of my room in the hospital. They think I'm asleep and that I can't hear them when they send Nick to the cafeteria to get them coffee. But I can and I feel responsible because they are only together because I have cancer. I want them to be happy, but lately, they don't make each other happy as they used to. I remember dad would buy mom red rose and her favorite chocolate on Valentine's day, he doesn't do that anymore. She doesn't look at him the same way, they have grown apart. I want to tell them that I know but then I remember Nick, what would happen to him if they divorced. He's only  10 years old. He's my little baby brother, I don't want him to go through that, with me being in the hospital and constantly being afraid for me, he doesn't need that shock and problem too. 

 

 Today my best friends in the whole universe are coming to see me.  Lucy and Derek. We are best friends ever since all three of us had our first chemotherapy together. Lucy has kidney cancer stage 3 and Derek has a brain tumor. Lucy is the funniest and the most caring person in the whole world she makes me laugh so much and  Derek, Derek is not your typical teenager, he's down to earth, real good guy, sometimes a bit too serious but he is 2 years older than me and Lucy. Tho lately Derek and Lucy have been acting kinda weird. They can't keep their look of each other and the touching, I mean it's so freaking obvious that they have a thing for each other, tho I'm not sure why they wouldn't just come clean about it. Honestly, I couldn't be happier for them. They deserve a special person and they do look so freaking cute together.

    It's lunchtime, yea again the hospital food that makes me wanna jump out the window,  but there is also another reason why I am so excited for Derek and Lucy are coming to visit me. They always bring me my favorite pizza, Fat Luigi's pizza from the West 46st Street, The best pizza in whole New York.  As nurse takes out the leftovers of my lunch, which practically I didn't even taste, Lucy and Derek come into my room holding hands and bringing me my pizza. 

I just smile and say. "Well, it was about damn time, you two." Lucy blushes and smiles, Derek just says "Hey to you, too."

"Give me my pizza, you lovebirds," I say to them while looking at the pizza like it was my last meal.

"Yea, yea keep mocking us, at least we are not in a hospital and we can eat pizza 24/7 unlike you, miss hospital." Said Derek with a mocking voice. I didn't resent it, we joked about our health all the time, I guess it made it easier and bearable to go throw this crap.

"F**k you, Derek. You're just jealous because I don't have a brain tumor, by the way, how can someone have a tumor on something they don't have?" I said with a bit of remorse cuz he was actually really smart guy. He just laughed at it. Like he always does. 

"So, how are you, Alex?" Asks me Lucy with a serious voice, but also worm and carrying at the same time.

"I'm okay, the tests are still the same, tho I don't worry about it too much. " I said trying to stay calm as I can and not being too whiny about it. 

"Hope you'll get better sone so we can hang out somewhere else." Says Derek with a smile that woke up a hope in me that I'll actually get to leave this hospital one day and not in a black bag. We talked for 2 hours or so and then they left.

 I didn't eat my dinner. I couldn't eat. I wasn't hungry. I did miss it, being able to go out with my friends, the fresh air, not the hospital smell, almost death-like. I don't know if death has a smell, but some nights it was like I knew how it smells. I'm not talking about body decomposing smell, but death being so near that it's like you could almost smell it. I always had a tough spirit or at least I lead everyone to believe so. I didn't want to make this even harder form them, cuz, after all, I was dying. I knew it, no matter how much doctors believed in the opposite. I knew that my end was coming. I know, I  sound dramatic and theatrical, but I am on my deathbed. I have the right to be so. So don't you dear to b***h me about it. Having cancer often means getting depression too. But I'm not depressed, no matter how much I sound like it, I'm just being realistic. And yea I could be all positive and little miss ray of sunshine, but why would I be like that when I'm all alone, in my hospital bed, knowing that I won't  have any chance at living more than just a couple of more months? I put on that face every morning, I'm really getting tired of wearing it, at night I don't have to pretend. I can cry as much as I want and fell pity for myself when no one else sees me. And I'm fine with it. 

  As days passed nothing changed, my results stayed the same, no matching donor for my new lungs, my parents kept arguing, I kept dying. And then I meet him. Lucas, a smart, pretty funny and handsome rock star (not a real one, but a rock star in my mind).  With his big brown, warm eyes, messy dark brown hair with his sides cut off and the middle up, he really looked like a rock star. He got the room next to mine. We become friend immediately. We talked for hours and it wasn't about our health, it was about our dreams and hopes and what kind of life we imagine and at the end hope to have one day. And that was the first time since I was here that I didn't cry at night and that I actually had hope for a better tomorrow. We started to spend every second together. And we fell in love. I know it sounds cheesy, but we were everything except cheesy. Fine, maybe just a little. And so seconds, hours, days have passed and they found a matching donor for my new lungs. That day I cried with joy, pure joy. 

But as everything tumbles down in my life so have my new lungs and shot at living did too. Lucas came to wish me well before my surgery. He walked in with such a big smile and confidence written all over his face. He walked to my bed, took my hand and said: "I love you, Alex. And you are gonna rock this s**t out." I laughed and looked at those big, warm,  brown eyes and said: "I'll see you soon, rock star." He leaned in and kissed me. That was our first and last kiss that I'll cherish forever.  He was all I ever needed it, he's present would make me feel alive even tho I was dying. I died happily. I was Alex, just a girl(with cancer).