Lucidity

St. Augustine's hospital smells like a curious mix of piss, puke, and pansies. You wrinkle your nose, disgusted; you never did like pansies. But you can smell them, from somewhere down the ward, and it makes you retch with its saccharine sweetness. The piss and puke you can stand. But not the pansies. You can't stand the pansies.

St. Augustine's hospital doesn't look much better than it smells. The walls are white, a bleached, bland bone-white that's filled with an aching nothingness that sucks all the happiness out of an already cheerless room.

The only good thing is you've got the place to yourself, since whatsername in the bed opposite recently vacated the premises. The silence suits you; it's a dull throb, ceaseless and repetitive.

Something draws your gaze to the window on the other side of the room. You don't make a conscious decision to throw off the covers, venture out of the relative safety of your bed and cross the room to the window, yet somehow you find yourself there, peering out of the stained panes at the world beyond St. Augustine's.

Outside, life goes on. It's a harsh realisation for you, seeing a blur of colourful cars whooshing past and the people milling through the streets. Life goes on without you. It was inevitable, really, but you don't want to accept that you could be forgotten so easily.

But life goes on. It has to go on.

You search the crowds for a face, any face. You're not even sure what you're looking for until you find it: the face of a youngish, fairly attractive woman striding purposefully down the street.

That could've been you. That should've been you. But this monstrous thing inside you put an end to that.

The envy, the jealousy, the sheer need to have what you cannot hits you so suddenly and forcefully it leaves you reeling. It's an aching, draining need, exacerbated by your unquestionable knowledge that you can't have what you want the most.

You turn away from the window, unable to look any more. A whimper escapes your lips and you hug yourself so tightly it feels like you might suffocate. Reluctantly, almost, you release yourself. Automatically, your hands go to your head to rake through your hair but find only fine, prickly stubble.

The tears almost come then. Almost. But you've held back the dam for longer than you would care to remember; you're not going to let it burst now. You've been fighting off this sickness for years. You can fight off a few tears.

But this thing, inside you. It's killing you. As sure as the sky is blue and life is a nonstop rollercoaster of disappointment, you're dying. You just don't know when. You have this life sentence, constantly hanging over your head, but your executioners haven't finalised the date yet.

Every morning when you wake up, you wonder if it'll be your last. You wonder if today is the day it all ends. And you wonder if any of this, the indefinable stuff that makes up a life, matters, when it could be snatched away from you at any second without warning.

Everybody knows they're going to die. One day. That day could be tomorrow. That day could be next year. That day could be in twenty years. But for you, you have months, maximum. Mere months until your pitiful existence is cut short, over before it really began.

You want to scream that it's not fair, that this shouldn't be happening to you. But who would listen?

Someone'll be in later. To visit. Family, friends, it doesn't matter. They all wear the same awkwardness, the same obligatory sympathy, the same desire to be anywhere but where they are. You don't blame them. If you were them, you wouldn't want to be here either.

Someone'll be along soon. To check on you. A doctor, a nurse. Maybe both if you're especially lucky. You don't want to see them. You don't want to see the pitying smiles hidden at the corner of their mouths.

You hate this. You hate it so much it’s almost tangible. Sleep is the only time you can kid yourself this isn't real, when you can lose yourself in a dream world where none of this matters. A world where healthy, twenty-something people with their whole lives in front of them don't suddenly get diagnosed with cancer.

Cancer. It's a horrible word, don't you think? It works its way up out of your throat and spits itself out of your mouth in two harsh, blunt syllables. Cancer. No one says it. No one mentions it. No one even dares skirt around the subject. You wish they would. It might make this whole thing that little bit easier to deal with.

Cancer. You say it again, louder. It tumbles out of your mouth like an accusation. You like the way it sounds. You say it again, louder still, and keep on repeating it, the single word spewing from your mouth over and over again in a constant stream of garbled nonsense until you're screaming and sobbing all in the same breath and all of a sudden someone's holding you down, telling you to calm down, telling you that it's all going to be okay.

They're lying. Nothing's going to be okay. Not now. Not ever. Not any more.

Someone stabs you with something - a hypodermic syringe most likely, squirting the toxic sedative into your veins. The effect is instant: a lid closes on your mouth and your mind feels foggy, your vision blurry. Your eyes start to roll back in your head and one clear thought struggles to the surface: must... hold... on.

But then the darkness advances, filling the deep recesses of your mind with its hazy, relieving smoke and everything fades away except the dull, ceaseless throb of silence.