Jacob
He knew the knock would come. It took longer than he thought, but that was probably thanks to his mother plying the poor girl with tea and cake.
The sound of her voice made his already broken body hurt a little more.
‘Can I come in?’
He tried to shift further up the bed, running his hands through his matted and dirty hair. He didn’t need a mirror to know how terrible he looked. How the man Olivia once knew had disintegrated to leave a withered, gnarled and bitter version in its place.
‘Fine.’
‘I won’t stay long.’ The door creaked open and in she stepped, tentative, almost fearful.
And you wonder why, after you shouted at her like that?
‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’
Her voice cracked on the final word, sending guilt tearing
through him. He watched as she finally allowed her eyes to lift, fully taking in the surroundings of his bedroom.
‘Don’t judge.’ He nodded at the cartoon posters tacked to every available piece of wall. ‘I was a big Spider-Man fan.’
Olivia hovered awkwardly, shuffling from one foot to the other, while Jacob stared down at his frail hands, shrivelled and shrunken like an old man’s. He tucked them neatly under the covers and out of sight.
‘You can sit if you want.’ He gestured to the end of the bed, still unable to meet her gaze.
‘Thank you.’
He felt Olivia perch, very tentatively, on the edge. She was like a frightened animal waiting to run at any given moment. Away from him. Because
of him.
‘How … how are you feeling?’ she whispered.
‘Really?’ Jacob finally met her eyes, his glare incredulous.
‘Yes.’
‘Look at me, Olivia.’ He ran his hands up and down the length of his body. ‘I’m like a walking corpse that hasn’t showered in days. How do you think I’m feeling?’
‘I get it.’
‘Do you?’ he snarled.
He knew he was being difficult, snapping and fighting her kindness as violently as he could, but how could he not? How could he sit there and look at her face without feeling some kind of resentment? Some type of anger at the unfairness of it all.
‘In a way, yes.’ A single tear fell from her eye.
He took a deep breath in, remembering all too well how much she’d seen of this herself. This wasn’t her fault; none of it was her fault. It just hurt so much to see her.
‘How am I feeling?’ He let down his defences momentarily. ‘I feel tired. To the core of my bones. I feel depressed. I feel angry. I feel embarrassed that I shouted at you. I feel guilty that I didn’t reply to your email. I feel …’
Say it. Say it now, while you can.
‘I feel happy to see you.’
He saw Olivia visibly relax at his words, sinking more fully into the mattress.
‘How about you?’ he asked.
‘Well, I also feel embarrassed because I turned up without you knowing. I feel guilty I didn’t know you were sick, and …’ she added shyly, ‘I feel happy to see you too.’
‘Even after my wonderfully welcoming hello?’
‘Yeah, even after that.’
The sound of her laugh lifted his weakened heart.
‘I think I was in shock – mainly at the fact my mum knew how to send an email, let alone organize a secret rendezvous behind my back. But also’ – the truth dawned on him – ‘seeing you meant I had to face up to the reality of my situation. And you know me: never one for real life.’
The echoes of their argument hung heavy between them.
‘But I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your email, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on.
I guess I didn’t know how. Every time I tried it sounded weird and wrong, and then it got really bad, and I didn’t want you to see me like this.
Plus, knowing what you’d told me about Leah, I just … I couldn’t put you through that again.’
‘I understand.’
‘Really?’
‘I understand why you didn’t tell me, but I don’t understand why you aren’t accepting help.’
It seemed his mother had got her up to speed quickly.
‘Is that the reason why my mum brought you here? As another persuasion technique? Bravo, Helen. I bet she’s been filling you in on all the details.’
He turned his face away from her. He knew it wasn’t fair, but a part of him felt betrayed.
‘She only told me a bit.’
A small relief, but not enough for him to return her gaze.
‘And look,’ she continued, her voice more insistent now, ‘I know it’s scary, and I know everything feels unbearably hard right now, but don’t you deserve to give yourself a chance
to live?’
Jacob knew what was coming. He’d heard it a thousand times from his mother, and his doctors and the random family members that seemed to descend on the house in a constant stream. It was the same every time, and quite frankly he was fed up with it.
‘You know what it feels like, do you?’ Rage, fiercer than he’d ever experienced, raised its head from the depths of him. ‘You know how scary it feels to be walking around with a death sentence hanging over you? A ticking time bomb lodged in your own damn head?’
He was close to shouting now, but he didn’t care.
‘I made a promise to myself to stop fighting.
To stop putting myself through the operations and the chemo and the recovery.
To stop beating up my body for – what? Maybe a couple of years more, at best?
And what will my life be like after the operation, hey?
More hospitals, more medication, more fucking pain
for me and everyone around me.’
Hot, salty tears were burning his eyes, his brittle hands clutching each other as tightly as they could.
‘I don’t need another lecture. And I don’t need another
person who doesn’t understand what this is like telling me how to live my life.’
Abruptly, Olivia shot up to standing. Her eyes were wild with fury, and he could see the tension gripping her body.
‘I understand more than you give me credit for. And I know that my little sister would have given anything
for another minute on this earth. Another second with the people she loved.’
She let out a snort of derision, the resentment pouring out of her so freely that all he could do was watch in awe.
‘You preached to me for so long about making the most of life. Throwing caution to the wind. And yet you’re just going to give up? Put up your hands and surrender when you don’t have to? When there’s a chance that you can live? You took a chance on so much. Why won’t you take a chance on yourself?’
‘Because I’m fucking terrified
,’ he cried, the truth surfacing at last. ‘I’m so scared of trying and dying anyway. Putting myself through all
of it again for nothing. I’d rather die on my own terms. As my own man. Not cut up and pulled apart on an operating table, or attached to machines in a hospital ward.’
He didn’t know when the venom turned to grief, but before he knew it, his whole body was racked with sobs, and Olivia was there. Holding him. Pulling him closer to her.
‘But what if you got more time? What if …’ She whispered now, her mouth so close to his ear. ‘What if we
got more time?’
Carefully, he pulled away, lifting his face to meet hers. Her blue eyes were ringed with sadness, but just as dazzling as he remembered.
‘Olivia, how can there be a we
with me like this?’
Her grip slackened a little and he felt her start to move away.
‘Not because I don’t want there to be.’ He held on tightly, forcing her to stay with him. ‘But because you deserve more than this. So much more. You’ve already watched one person you love go through this; you don’t need to subject yourself to another.’
‘That’s not your decision to make. What about what I
want?’
‘Olivia, there wasn’t a sick boyfriend in the plan you recited to me back in Goa. All those things you wanted to do, that you are going
to do – you don’t need anything holding you back. And that’s what I will do. I will hold you back and I will become a burden. Maybe not straight away, but eventually I will.’
She tried to argue, but he cut her short.
‘Don’t you see? You can’t plan
a life with me, Olivia. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing at all.’
‘No,’ she replied firmly, decisively. ‘That’s not true.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘No, it’s not.’ She placed a soft hand on his cheek. ‘Because what if I plan
on being by your side for as long as we’re both here? And what if I can guarantee
that I will love you every single second we’re together, and for a long time after that?’
At her words, the world around him dissolved.
All he could see were a thousand shades of blue in her eyes, and all he could feel was the touch of her skin against his.
She leant in, so close that he could taste the sweetness of his mother’s baking on her lips.
His body, which had become a barren wasteland devoid of anything but suffering, suddenly came alive, sparkling with a delicious and intoxicating feeling of hope.
‘You love me?’
Her cheeks blushed in that beautiful, coy way they always did.
‘I thought that was obvious.’
Jacob looked at her, a reel of images flashing before his eyes.
Him rolling Delhi for the third time, wondering why he was being brought back there again.
Him literally crashing into Olivia on the street.
Seeing her again at the market. Their dinner together.
The emails. Him rolling Udaipur. Their snippet of time together.
Snatched moments, leading to something more.
Building to something bigger. And then the final throw.
The die that lay undecided. A fork in the road.
And what did he choose?
Who
did he choose?
‘That’s good to know.’ He nodded solemnly, feeling the final, stubborn, ingrained piece of resistance melt away. ‘Because if I’m even going to consider
going through with this operation …’
Olivia’s entire body froze in his arms.
‘I’m not doing it for anything less than love.’
He pulled her face the final few millimetres towards his and kissed her.
It was a kiss that he hoped conveyed everything he felt in that moment. Everything he hoped they would feel for as long as they possibly could. A kiss that took his breath away. A kiss that meant if he were to die right there in that moment, it would have all been worth it.
For her.
Every hard, scary, terrifying thing that might come his way would be worth it – for her.