53. Zoey
53
Zoey
I t’s a stormy Sunday afternoon, and I sit in my living room with my family. Allie sleeps soundly on my lap, and Hazel is beside me, curled up with a blanket as a movie plays, but truth be told, I haven’t taken in even a second of it. When I woke up this morning, I just knew . . . I’m not making it through this, and it’s all I can think about.
It’s been a little over a week since my birthday, and if I’m honest with myself, I’ve known this for a while. I keep declining, too rapidly to be able to fight it much longer. My radiation therapy is due to start next week, but I just don’t think I have the strength to go through it, nor do I want to spend what little time I have dealing with the discomfort that will come along with it.
I’m dying.
It’s as simple as that. And when I go, I don’t want to be in pain. I don’t want to be locked in a treatment facility having my body constantly blasted with high doses of radiation for the small chance it might actually work.
I want to go on my terms. I want to be happy. I want to go in my own bed, holding Noah as I take my last breath and fade away from this magical life. I want to be surrounded by love and happiness, not the incessant beeping of machines and clinical smells of the treatment center.
The clock is ticking painfully fast, and I’m running out of time. A week, two, maybe three? I don’t know, but I think it’s time to start asking those hard questions. Time for me to sit down with Noah and tell him that I’m not getting any better, that this is going to be the end of the road for me.
He holds so much hope that I’m going to somehow magically survive this, but deep down, I think he knows just as I do. He’s been watching me fade each day, watching me getting further and further away.
Tears well in my eyes, and as a shaky whimper escapes my lips, my family all stops what they’re doing, their eyes coming right to mine. Hazel pauses her movie, her brows furrowed as Dad glances up from his phone. Mom though, her eyes search right through to my soul, and as if being on the same wavelength, her heart breaks right in front of my face, big tears forming in her eyes.
She quickly hurries across the room, throws herself down beside me on the couch, and pulls me right into her arms. “Oh honey,” she cries, gently rocking me back and forth. “It’s going to be okay.”
I cry into her shoulder as Hazel scooches in closer. “I’m not going to make it,” I tell them, absolutely terrified, breaking into deep, heaving sobs. “I’m not going to make it. I’m dying.”
“Shhhhhh,” Mom soothes, holding me so damn tight, it hurts, and yet she doesn’t tell me I’m wrong or beg me to hold on just a little while longer. Deep down, we all know it’s true. We all know this is the end of the road for me.
Hazel scooches so close that she’s practically in my lap, shoving Allie out of the way, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t want you to die,” she wails, and the agony in her tone is the most excruciating thing I’ve ever heard, tearing me apart from the inside out.
“I’m sorry,” I cry, desperately wishing there was another way. “I can’t . . . I can’t do the radiation like this. I’m not strong enough. It’s only going to kill me faster, and I don’t want to die like that.”
“It’s okay,” Mom murmurs, her hand brushing down my hair as Dad sits forward in his chair, his elbows braced on his knees as he silently weeps into his hands. “It’s going to be okay. You don’t need to be scared, my sweet girl. I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
I cry into her shoulder, the despair, fear, and uncertainty crippling me as we all fall to pieces in our home—the very home that holds so many memories, so many good times, the home where I had my very first kiss from Noah and he whispered in my ear, telling me how much he really did like my stupid girl kisses.
How can I possibly leave this place?
I have so much more I want to do, so much life I want to live. I want to graduate high school and spend years at college with Noah. I want to fall so much deeper in love with him, every day falling harder until he’s down on one knee, asking me to spend the rest of our lives together. I want to walk down the aisle and throw myself into his arms. I want to travel the world and be there for Noah as he accepts a contract with the NFL. I want to have a million little babies with Noah’s dark eyes, and I want to watch as they grow and call him daddy. And then once our babies are all grown and moved out, I want to spend every day of the rest of our lives loving each other until we die of old age, only after living a full life, knowing it couldn’t have possibly gotten any better.
Hours pass where I mourn the life I’m never going to have, the grief overwhelming me, and when the tears have finally started to ease, Mom promises that first thing tomorrow, we’ll talk to Dr. Sanchez about our options and where to go from here.
None of us move even an inch, too afraid to let go, and just when I start to fall asleep on the couch, the door opens, and Noah strides in, his eyes so bright as he looks at me with that single orange tulip in his hand. But taking in the devastation in my eyes, the tulip drops to the ground. “Zo,” he breathes, shaking his head. “No. No, no, no.”
Pushing myself up from the couch, I shakily make my way across the living room and right into his arms, reaching up and cupping his face. “Come on,” I whisper. “Let’s go talk.”
Fear flashes in his eyes, his chest heaving as I take his hand and pull him toward the stairs, not having the strength to pull him along like I used to, but he follows nonetheless, and every step up the stairs kills me, knowing what I have to tell him now.
I get halfway up the stairs when Noah sees just how much I’m struggling and scoops me up into his warm arms, holding me close against his chest before taking me right up to my room and lowering me into my bed.
As I reach for my blankets and pull them up, snuggling right into my bed, I catch sight of the photograph on my desk—the little six-year-old girl who pushed through the worst. She was a fighter, a freaking rockstar. She gave everything to give me the life I had, to give me the chance at a future, and I’m letting her down. She’s so much stronger than I am, and I’m so grateful for the ten years she was able to give me.
Noah sits on the end of my bed, his elbows braced against his knees as if knowing that whatever I’m about to tell him is going to change his world forever. Fresh tears linger in my eyes, and I can’t stand the distance. Throwing my blankets right back again, I scramble across my bed and climb into his lap, straddling him as my arms lock so tightly around his neck, our chests pressed firmly together.
“Noah,” I breathe, my voice breaking.
“Just tell me,” he begs, unable to bear it a second longer.
“The radiation therapy,” I whisper as I take a shaky breath. “I’m not strong enough. I can’t do it.”
He closes his eyes, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as his arms tighten around me, and when I feel his tears dropping to my collarbone, I break all over again. “What . . . What does this mean?” he asks, the agony in his tone like nothing I’ve ever heard.
“It means . . .” I start, my bottom lip trembling. “They’ll make me comfortable—”
“Don’t fucking say that,” he demands, lifting his head and looking straight into my tear-filled eyes. “There has to be another option, something else we can do. I’m not ready to lose you, Zo. You’re my whole fucking world. You promised you wouldn’t leave. I can’t lose you.”
“Noah—”
“Please,” he begs, gripping my waist so tight that his fingers dig into my fragile skin. “Please, Zoey. For me. Fuck. Don’t give up on me like this. I need you to keep fighting.”
I crush myself back into him, my arms pulling him in even tighter as I curl my face into the curve of his neck, breathing him in. “I’m not giving up,” I promise him. “I want to have another fifty years with you. I want to take your last name and build a life with you. I want it more than you’ll ever know, and it’s that vision that’s allowed me to get this far, but every day, this disease kills me just a little bit more. I don’t have what it takes to survive more treatments. I’m not strong enough, not anymore. Believe me, if I had what it took to push through and fight this, I would do it without question because I’m terrified of having to leave you, but I’m out of time. I’m going to die, whether we’re ready for it or not, and when that happens, I want to do it right here in your arms, not in some hospital, filled with drugs that are only making me feel worse. I want to live what little time I have left, and I want to do it right by your side.”
He shakes his head, taking my face and lifting it from his shoulder, his dark eyes lingering on mine. “This can’t be the end, Zo,” he murmurs, leaning in until I feel his lips brushing over mine. “I can’t lose you.”
“I’m sorry,” I cry, tasting his tears on my lips. “I’m so sorry.”
“What am I supposed to do without you?”
Not knowing what to say, I don’t respond. Instead, I crush my lips against his and kiss him deeply, letting my emotions pour out of me. Letting him feel how deep my love runs for him. How terrified I am. How crippled I am by the fear of having to leave this world and leave him behind. How I’m grieving for the life we won’t get the chance to live together, the children we’ll never have, the marriage we’ll never get a chance to screw up.
Noah kisses me right back, and I feel his overwhelming despair and agony with every swipe of his tongue over mine. When I finally pull back, we’re both panting, and I tilt my forehead against his, content to just sit here with him until the end of time.
“How much . . .” he starts before pausing and clenching his jaw, needing a second to get the question out. “How much time do we have?”
I shake my head, and he reaches up to wipe the tears off my cheeks. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “We’re going to see Dr. Sanchez tomorrow and see what she has to say, but I . . . I can’t see this going on any further than a few months. Two, maybe three if we’re lucky.”
Noah closes his eyes again, and I can almost hear the rapid beat of his heart right through his chest. “Are you going to be in pain?”
I shake my head again. “No, I’ll be okay . . . I think,” I murmur, my fingers pushing up through his hair, almost as long as it was before he shaved it for me. “They’ll make me comfortable, but it won’t be long until my organs start shutting down, and when that happens, we’ll be on the home stretch.”
“Fuck, Zo,” he breaks. “This isn’t how this was supposed to go. We were supposed to have it all.”
“I know,” I murmur, trying to soothe him the same way Mom had done for me downstairs. “But it’s okay. Fate has other plans for me, and when the time comes, I’ll be going home to Linc. I’m not going to be alone, and I won’t be sick anymore, and even though I won’t get to be in the warmth of your arms, you know I’m always going to be with you. No matter what, wherever you go, I’ll always be right here, watching over you.”
Noah holds me tighter, and as his world burns to ashes around us, he lifts us off the edge of the bed before laying me down on my pillow and following me right in, not letting me go for even a second. He curls me right into his chest and pulls the blankets up, making sure I’m always warm and have everything I could possibly need. “I love you more than life, Zoey,” he tells me. “I’m going to be right here, right ’til the end, and I swear, I’ll never let you go.”