Even If Saving You Sends Me to Heaven

Zane shook his head when the nurse said Mara would have to leave the room. He sensed that the news about him would be bad, and he didn’t want to have to repeat it to Mara. “No, Mara needs to hear whatever you need to tell me.”

Mara glanced at Zane nervously, and the nurse pursed her lips. “You uncle had already been contacted and signed papers that will allow us to proceed with whatever we feel is best,” she told him.

Zane swallowed. “Go on.”

“On your MRI we found what’s been causing your memory loss and other symptoms. It’s a tumor in your brain.”

Zane’s stomach dropped a millisecond before my heart did. His eyes remained glued to the nurse; he didn’t want to look at Mara. I felt the turmoil going on inside of Zane. I felt it in me. And I felt Danny’s gaze burning into the side of my head. I wondered how he had room to feel sorry for me next to all the torture he was forced to feel by Mara.

“How bad is it?” Mara brought herself to ask.

“We don’t really know yet,” she admitted, obviously unhappy about delivering this bad news. “It isn’t small, but we don’t know if it’s cancerous yet. We’ll need to perform a biopsy to find that out, and then we can proceed with treatment.”

Zane finally opened his mouth. “What’s a biopsy, and when can you do it?”

“It’s a small type of surgery. We’ll remove a tiny piece of the tumor so that we can study it,” she told him. “We can do it in a couple of hours.”

“Okay,” he said softly.

The nurse left, and stillness settled into the room. Zane was scared. He hadn’t been prepared for this. He felt so invincible; he felt too young to worry about sickness and death. All he wanted to do was be an irresponsible teenager, and now he was in a hospital.

And I was scared. It was my responsibility to look after Zane’s life, but how could I defend him from this? I was no doctor. Frustration overwhelmed me as I realized I’d been given an impossible task. Angry and bitter tears streamed down my face. I could not protect Zane.

Dismal and despairing tears poured out of Mara’s sad eyes. Her life had been so simple and easy the day before, and now everything she knew was crashing down.

Danny sat pensively on the floor, watching me. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was no longer sitting next to him. I was standing up and leaning closer to Zane. My hand was reaching out to his disturbed face.

I let it fall to my side and whispered, “It’s not fair.”

Danny shook his head and agreed, “You’re right. It’s not.”

“Stop crying,” Zane commanded Mara so loudly that she jumped. He was suddenly done with feeling sorry for himself. He was overflowing with rage and fury.

His tone only made her cry harder. It made me cry more too, and Danny stood up to try and comfort me.

“Stop it!” Zane yelled at Mara. “It’s stupid! You heard her. They don’t know how bad it is yet. It could be nothing.”

Mara bit her lip and tried to calm herself down. Zane softened at the sight of her effort and motioned for her to come to him. He scooted over to make room for her on the bed and held her shaking body in his arms. “Sh, everything will be alright,” he assured her.

Mara started to quiet down, but I still heard sobbing. I didn’t realize it was me until I felt Danny’s hand on my shoulder and heard him murmur, “Please don’t cry.”

But some of Zane’s animosity was still left over inside of me. I tore myself away from Danny and turned my back on him coldly. I instantly regretted it, so I didn’t move away when he tried again to comfort me.

I didn’t resist when Danny let me cry into his chest. I allowed him to wrap his arms around me, and it did make me feel better. I felt Zane holding Mara tenderly; I felt Danny’s strong arms embracing me. And for a second I imagined they were Zane’s arms.

The feeling was shattered the moment Zane kissed Mara and not me. I was so shocked at the rapid change in my heart that I stopped crying mid-sob. Danny sensed the change too and let go of me abruptly.

I looked at him and felt sorry. An innocent kind of torment glazed over his eyes. The sight was so troubling that I had to look away. I wondered if Mara’s pain was getting to him like Zane’s anger had gotten to me before.

Zane was putting on a brave face for Mara, but his composure was weakening. “You should go to school,” he suggested.

She laughed. “Why?” she asked. “We cut class all the time.”

“Well, they said I’d be going into surgery soon,” he replied, scrambling for a way to get rid of her for a little bit so he wouldn’t have to keep up his confident charade. “You could come back after school and I still might not be awake.”

She sighed. “I guess you’re right. If I leave now, I’ll make it back in time for second period.”

Zane forced a smile and said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she replied. “I’ll be back before you know it.” They kissed before the got up to leave.

I looked up to say goodbye to Danny, but I only caught a glimpse of his black feathery wings before Mara closed the door behind her. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

I turned back to Zane, who let out a long breath and laid flat on his back to stare at the ceiling. It only took a few minutes of him letting his mind wander before he began to silently and reluctantly shed the tears he needed to shed.