Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Liam
My leg bounces against the cold tiled floor of the waiting room, a dull thud in the otherwise quiet space. I’m not even sure why I’m so nervous. It’s probably nothing. Everyone gets headaches. Everyone gets a little dizzy sometimes. I’ve been a little stressed lately, so maybe that’s it. Maybe.
Maybe. Maybe.
But I don’t need a “maybe” or a “you’re probably overthinking it”. I need a real answer so that I know what exactly I’m dealing with here. And yet, no one’s telling me. It almost seems like everyone around me knows something I don’t—and what was with that look the doctor gave me before?
I’m sweating now, the thin fabric of my shirt clinging to my back.
My hands tremble slightly as I clasp them together, tight enough that it begins to hurt.
It’s nothing. I keep telling myself that.
But the more I repeat it, the less I believe it.
Like peeling back a layer of ignorance I didn’t know I had. Maybe it’s not nothing.
I see the door to the office open before I hear it, mostly because I’ve been staring at it for the past eleven and a half minutes.
“Liam Grey?”
I look up, and he’s already meeting my eyes.
His expression is calm, but there’s something in the tightness of his mouth that makes my stomach churn.
I rise from my seat, my legs embarrassingly stiff, the walk to the room feeling longer than it should.
When I sit down in the chair opposite him, I notice how comfortable it is, and I wonder if they intentionally made it this way.
Like they designed it to make bad news feel a little less bad.
It’s a solid attempt, I guess.
The doctor sits across from me, his eyes scanning my face for something I can’t quite identify. Then he looks at his computer screen. The sigh that follows is quiet, but it’s the kind of sound that twists your gut. My mouth goes dry.
“Liam,” he starts, “I’m going to be honest with you. We found something in your scan.”
He pauses, flipping the monitor around to show me the image. It’s a mess of grey and white, and then he points to a darker area nestled in the centre.
“This is a tumour,” he says, and I’m not sure I’m breathing. “It’s located in your thalamus, which is a critical part of the brain. Because of its location, surgery isn’t an option. Attempting to remove it would risk severe, potentially life-threatening damage.”
My chest tightens, my hands gripping the arms of the chair, and I watch my knuckles pale into a ghostly, sickly white. “A… tumour?” I repeat, the word tasting foreign and salty in my mouth.
“It’s a low-grade glioma,” he continues, and before I can ask him what that means he says, “that means it’s slow growing, but these types of tumours can be unpredictable. They can transform into more aggressive, high-grade tumours over time.”
I blink at the screen, my vision blurring slightly. “So… what does that mean for me?”
“Currently, the tumour is stable,” he sighs.
“But because of its size and location, it’s causing significant symptoms. You’ve likely already noticed some of them: severe headaches, nausea, mild hemiparesis—weakness on one side of the body.
Difficulty with motor tasks, blurred vision, episodes of confusion, trouble concentrating. ”
I nod slowly, because that list is so accurate it makes me want to vomit again. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. And the headaches had been so excruciating at some point… I thought I was dying.
I guess I was right about that.
But I’ve brushed those things off for months. My family too. Stress, dehydration, anything but this.
“And it’ll stay that way?” I ask, my voice small. “Stable?”
The doctor hesitates, and the pause is louder than any words. “If we’re lucky, yes. But the symptoms will remain and require ongoing management. If the tumour starts to grow, even slightly, the symptoms will worsen.”
“Worsen how?” My voice cracks.
“Your current symptoms would intensify,” he explains.
“But new ones could also develop: seizures, significant cognitive decline, difficulty swallowing. If the tumour grows large enough, it could compress the brainstem and other critical structures. That can lead to respiratory failure, loss of consciousness, even a coma.”
I stare at him, my pulse roaring in my ears. “And if that happens… how long would I have?”
His eyes meet mine then, unflinching. “If the tumour progresses to that point, the prognosis would be one to two years, at best.”
Death. I’ve not put much thought into it before, not really.
Sure, there were the occasional moments—late at night when the world was quiet—the thought would creep in.
What if? When? How? I’d watched people die before, seen how it impacted other people.
But it seemed so far off, so abstract. I had barely lived, why should I think about death?
But it’s here now. At the door, debating whether or not it should knock. And the truth is right there, staring at me through the screen. It’s here, sitting on my shoulders, pressing into my ribs until I’m choking and I can’t breathe.
I’m not ready. I’m not ready.
I lean back against the seat, running my hand through my hair, and squeezing my eyes shut. What if it gets worse tomorrow? Next week? How do I know it’s not already worse, that something’s not happening in my head right now while I sit here?
It’s the not knowing that’s driving me mad.
I try to think about the tumour that’s apparently inside of me, but somehow all I can picture is a black, creeping mess, spreading out and choking everything it touches.
I can feel it there now, like some kind of parasite burrowing deeper into my brain.
It makes me wonder how on earth I haven’t noticed it before.
I thought I had time. God, I thought I had all the time in the world.
I’m eighteen. Eighteen. People don’t die at eighteen.
They go to college, then to university or get an apprenticeship.
They go to parties, make new friends, and hook up with random people because it’s fun and they’re bored.
They don’t sit in hospital hallways wondering if they’ll even make it to twenty.
I take a short glance at the doctor again, who stares back at me with serious, pitying eyes. It can’t possibly get any easier to deliver news like this, to tell them and prepare them for the inevitable.
Because how the hell do you prepare for death when it finally decides to pay you a visit? You can’t. You can only hope that when it does, it’ll give you a light tug, not drag you into its depths screaming.
***
104 days ago, I found out I have a brain tumour. And that my chances of living a long, healthy life are significantly lower than the average person. A lot lower.
I’ve learned that time moves differently when you’re counting it backwards, and when every day feels like it’ll slip through your fingers when you least expect it.
It’s not that I’m dying—not yet. But I also don’t know if I’ll live.
I don’t know if I’ll have a next birthday, or next Christmas.
Or if I’ll see Ava become a famous actress, or my friends grow old. I don’t know anything at all.
When I first found out, it was almost like everything seemed more fragile. Time especially. Like a thread stretched too thin. I wake up each morning and wonder if it will finally snap.
I’ve spent the last 104 days learning the shape of fear.
It’s softer than I thought it would be. Wrapping around your ribs like a vine and squeezing so gently that you almost don’t notice it until you’re already at the brink of death.
Spluttering and choking and hoping the thing you last looked at won’t be your last.
I’ve started looking at everything differently since that day, like it’s all glowing faintly at the edges. Ordinary things feel extraordinary now. And that’s the tragedy of it all, isn’t it? You don’t realize how beautiful something is until you’re scared it might disappear.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “forever”.
It’s a cruel word, I’ve realized, and one that unfortunately, doesn’t apply to me.
Everyone uses it so casually, like it’s a promise we can actually keep.
“I’ll love you forever.” “We’ll be friends forever.
” But forever is a lie we tell ourselves to feel safe.
A kind of internal reassurance. I used to believe in it.
Now I realize how absurd that was. How na?ve I had been.
Some days, I’m angry. Because it’s easier than being sad all the time.
It makes me feel alive in a way that’s almost comforting.
I get angry at the universe for giving me this broken body.
I get angry at myself for the time I wasted when I didn’t know I was running out of it.
I never thought I’d be jealous of strangers.
People walking down the streets, sipping their coffee, checking their phones.
They don’t know how lucky they are to feel bored, to feel like time is endless.
I’d give anything for another day like that.
I get angry at everyone else for living their lives so casually, so carelessly, like they have all the time in the world. They don’t. None of us do.
But most days, I’m just tired. Tired of thinking about what I can’t control.
Tired of trying to find meaning in something so senseless.
Tired of pretending I’m okay when I’m not.
There’s a kind of exhaustion that lives in your bones, and it doesn’t go away, no matter how much you sleep. That’s the kind of tired I am.
The idea of death never affected me much.
Dying is dying. Now it’s all I think about—obsessively almost. Will death be cold?
Will it hurt to perish? Will I see anything, hear anything?
And what really is death? The moment your heart stops beating?
When your cells shut down? But not all cells die with the person, not immediately at least. So, are we really dead?
The moment your soul leaves? But where would it go?
It’s strange, isn’t it? How we accept the inevitability of something we hardly know about. We know the body dies, but is that all we are? Just a collection of cells, electrical impulses, blood and bone and breath? We’re scared of death, but we don’t even know what it is we’re afraid of.
I think the hardest part is that I don’t know how to say goodbye to a life I’m still living.
How do you let go of something you’re not ready to leave?
The people you aren’t prepared to let fade.
My closest friends don’t even know, I haven’t told them.
Because how can I even begin to explain something like this?
How do you tell someone that you might be dying, and look them in the eye after that?
I know I probably should, but I also don’t want them to look at me like I’m already half gone.
Like I’ve seen others do already. With so much pity it makes me want to scream.
Don’t they know I’m still here? Don’t they know I still want to laugh, to argue, to feel alive, even if it’s just for a little while?
I keep wondering what people will remember about me. Will it be the good things? The bad? I don’t know which is worse—being remembered for my mistakes or not being remembered at all.
104 days ago, I found out I have a brain tumour. Today I’m still breathing, but it feels like I’m holding my breath.
Is it so bad to want to live, not just survive?