Dreaming Up A Secret

~ Yet Again, TIME SKIP!!! ~
~ Alice’s Point Of View ~
Four months since I was told I have cancer.
Three months and one week since I listened to Cancer by My Chemical Romance for twenty four hours.
Three months since I told Ronan about my cancer.
Two months and three weeks since I told Aiden about my cancer.
Two months and two weeks since I told Tom about my cancer.
Two months and one week since it had taken a turn for the worse.
One month since I had been admitted to the hospital.
And here I sat still.
I was laying on the overly hard hospital bed where I had been for what seemed like ever. Tom, Ronan, and Aiden had been skipping school to stay with me, no matter how much I told them it was ok for them to leave, they stayed. Currently, Aiden and Ronan were off getting food from the cafeteria, one level down from my room, Tom was sitting by my bedside, starring out the open window, his hand in mine, as he often did. There were IV tubes in my arms, not keeping my alive, but “helping my current state of health,” according to the doctor.
A cold end of November wind blew in from the slightly ajar window, making the ugly gray, dirt stained, curtains blow up and down. I shivered under his hand and Tom jumped up.
“Tom,” I spoke softly, trying to calm him down, “sit down its fine.”
“No, no, are you cold? Should I get a doctor? I can get you something… blanket? Soup?”
“Tom, really. Its fine.”
Tom had been like that since I was admitted here; The slightest movement from me and he thought I was dying. I could just hear what must be going on in his mind. ‘Oh shit! She rolled over! Get the doctor! She’s dying!’ Of course, getting a doctor would not be much help considering they couldn’t do any more then they already were for cancer. Let me tell you, chemo sucks major ass.
I cracked my knuckles in amusement of Tom; I loved him, but he was the funniest person I knew. He always over reacted… to everything. I caught his hand and stopped him as he started to pace.
“Tom. Calm down. Its fine.” I told him again.
He looked down at me, eyes screaming ‘fine? Fine? No!’ but took a deep breath and nodded slowly.
Aiden and Ronan walked back through the door, holding hands, smiling. I was glad at least some people could figure it out; I hate being treated like this was terrible, even if it wasn’t great, it was like I had some foreign, childish hope that maybe if I didn’t think about it, maybe if no one though about it, it would go away. Of course, that was stupid, but I had nothing else left to cling to, so I was stuck on that.
“Hey Alice! Guess what?” Aiden shouted excitedly.
“Hey Aiden,” I laughed, “what’s up?”
“I finished my Nanowrimo before Ronan!”
“Your what?” I was suddenly confused and worried I’d missed something because of chemo.
“Nanowrimo!” He yelled again, laughing as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Nanowrimo, nation novel writing month,” Ronan explained, “you start on the first day of November and work til the last trying to write at least fifty thousand words, not worrying about editing or anything like that. Aiden just hit his fifty thousandth word.”
“Oh, congrats,” I nodded in a new understanding.
“OH! And guess what else!” Aiden screamed, loud enough to wake everyone else in the fucking hospital.
“What, Aiden?” I starred at him, wondering what could make him this hyper.
“I LOST THE GAME!”
For those of you that don’t know, The Game only has four rules.
1.)If you meet someone who doesn’t know what The Game is, you must tell them about it
2.)If you think about The Game you must say aloud “I lost the game”
3.)There is no way to win The Game
4.)Once you know about The Game, you are forever playing The Game, there is no way to stop
“I lost The Game,” Ronan, Tom, and I said together.
Aiden smirked and started skipping around in a spazy little circle, making us all laugh. It was moments like these that I loved. Moments like these I’d miss most.
Lately I’d been thinking a lot about death, or rather, I’d been thinking a lot about the after life. Questions such as ‘was there one?’ and ‘which one would I end up in if there was one or more to end up in?’ were quite common. I don’t know is worrying would be the correct term for what I was doing as well, or interchangeable with ‘thought about,’ but I knew that each thought had a light tinge of worry somewhere in it.
Was god a jerk? Was god real? Did he have any concept of how sucky it was for him to give me cancer? What was satin like? Was he real? Was he really the nice one and was just a poor, misunderstood soul? What if there was no afterlife? Would I just be buried and dead? Dead and gone? Gone and forgotten?
“Alice!” My mother popped into the room. “Oh my god! Alice why aren’t you asleep? Aiden! Ronan! Tom! Out!”
Only Tom remained.
Out of everyone, my mom was the worst. She had changed the most. She was never the most lenient parents, but now more then ever, she treated me like a seventh century women. No rights. She came in and made Aiden, and Ronan, and Tom leave all the time, though they would stay in the waiting room and return as soon as they saw her leave; She would take my book while I was in the middle of a page and tell me to sleep, no matter what time of day it was; She would stop me mid sentence after asking me a question, telling me I was using to much breath; This last one was perhaps the most annoying. I knew my mom loved me and just wanted me to be safe, but this was getting to be a bit much. I knew she was struggling with this way more then I was, still having trouble accepting it, which is why I went easy on her. I didn’t fight much, sometimes requested more time to read, or asked if I could finish my sentence, but always did what she said after she would respond with her usual no.
Tom, on the other hand, hated being sent away and often refused. He would stand still and stroke my head while I fell asleep; My mother not wanting to yell and wake me up, would sit silently fuming in the corner, fallen into Tom’s trap.
I starred at the room I so often looked at, going over it over and over again in my mind. The walls, their finger print marks evident, felt like a box, growing smaller and smaller by the moment. The other bed, vacant since I had arrived here, though occasionally Tom would end up sleeping in it, was a constant reminder of death, a picture of what my bed could look like the next day. The curtains were always blowing up and down from the winter wind that often seeped in through the cracked window, annoyingly out of place. There were a few potted plants sitting around the room, mostly dismal and dead, or close to, not helping me feel any happier. A couple of cards sat on the small night table next to my bed, which was made out of plastic, gray plastic of course, making it possible to see through to the ground, if you really wanted to. On top of the table was not only the cards, but also the book I was currently reading, a black flash light with an orange top and orange slider that turned it on, my silver eighty gig iPod classic video, and a small water bottle, as I was instructed to stay very well hydrated. There was one big blue padded chair sitting bolted to the left corner of the room, across from my bed, right in my line of vision, if I turned my head. Two other chairs, blue plastic, like the kind they had at middle schools, to cheap for them to even bother to go out and buy bolts to bolt them to the ground, were placed differently each time I looked up. Usually, one sat right by me, where Tom almost always remained, the other next to the foot of my bed, where Aiden and Ronan would take turns sitting on the bed and sitting on the chair.
Tom stroked his hand against my cheek as I stared up into his black eyes.
“Shhh,” he whispered, “try to sleep, you have chemo tomorrow.”
I sighed, knowing he was right. I can’t even start to explain how much I hate chemo in words. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I’d have to draw a thousand pictures to begin to explain my hatred for chemo. Surprisingly though, I had not lost any of my hair. The doctors who were doing my chemo told me that I should start to expect hair loss, which was totally normal, but I hadn’t yet, though it should have started to affect me after only the first chemo session.
“Tom,” my mother muttered, her voice sounding tired, from the corner, thinking I was asleep, “may I talk to you in the hallway for a second… privately?”
“No,” he cooed back, still talking in the voice he used to get me to sleep faster.
I could hear my mother’s weary sigh as she gave in without a fight. She had learned quickly that Tom had devoted himself to never, ever leaving my side. He didn’t leave for food, though Aiden and Ronan always brought him some back, or water; Not for exercise, or fresh air. Absolutely nothing made him leave, not even my mother, who lately, had been a lot less willing to say anything, a lot more tired. I hated making her feel like this, all worn out and tired, busy worrying about me twenty four seven. I tried again and again to tell her everything was fine and that there was no need to worry about me, because I would always be there the next day, though that, in my mind, was an obvious lie as I was to die eventually, cancer or no cancer, but though my mother agreed and nodded along whenever I told her these things, each time I saw her, she looked worse then the last.
I sighed deeply in frustration, returning to my questions.