3652 Days of Julia

Day Three Hundred and Eighty One.
Eighteen years old,
Oli's P.O.V.

I rubbed her back as she vomited into the hospital bucket. She wasn’t facing me, but I knew she was crying. Her back arched and contracted with each sob as she convulsed with sickness.

“Babe…”

She ignored me and kept being sick. Then she stopped, sat up straight, facing out the window, her back constantly to me. The skin on her head was so clear, so shiny I felt as though I were looking at a plastic version of her. This wasn’t Julia. This sickness was killing her.

“Just go, Oli.”

“What?” I asked in disbelief.

Her shoulders continued to shake, I stared at her hospital gown clad back. This wasn’t my Julia.

“I said go.” She breathed, her voice edged with the hint of tears.

“Julia, I don’t want to go, don’t be fucking stupid.”

“I’m not!” She screamed, whirling around. “You don’t love me anymore! I see it, you don’t! I’m not who I was anymore and you know it. Why are you lying to me? Why Oliver?”

I knew she was asking a question neither of us knew the answer to. I knew she wasn’t directing it to one topic in particular, but more at everything that was going wrong.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go.” I said, not answering her and standing up from the bed.

Her eyes dropped away from me, and down to the ground. It took everything I had to swallow and begin to walk away from her. She had turned into a skeleton. Her skin was pale, clinging to her bones as whatever was left of her was slowly wasting away. She had no hair, her skin was pale and marbled, her eyes like big gapes in her face – no soul, no feeling, nothing.

To put it all simply, I was scared. It scared me to see Julia fading away like this. That’s why I walked away. It wasn’t Julia I was leaving, it was that… that thing that was slowly taking her away from me forever, and I couldn’t be around it anymore. I feared that if I stayed around it, it would take me too.

When I arrived home, Julia’s mother was at my house. She was sitting in the kitchen, her head in her hands whilst my mother hand her arm around her shoulders. I tried to walk in quietly as to not disturb them, but when my mother looked up at me I could tell I was the reason this meeting had occurred.

“Oliver, sit down.” My mother said sternly, avoiding eye contact with me.

“What is it?” I said quietly. I felt as though I had shrunk into the skin of a three year old, no control of my own actions, thoughts, feelings. I just wanted to crawl into my bed, with my Julia there, smiling and full of life.

“Hello Oliver.” Julia’s mother sniffed, her head rising from the table as I took my place on death row.

“Hi,” I said.

“Julia’s mother has come here to speak with us both.” My mother said. “I would appreciate it if you do not argue what she is about to ask, and listen to her.”

I was starting to become really worried. I was wondering why neither of them were asking me why I was home so early when Julia’s chemotherapy was due to continue for another half hour.

“I notice you’re home early.” Emily, Julia’s mother, said. Her voice was wobbling but I could tell she was desperately trying to speak strongly. “Oliver, you may not want to hear this right now, but I believe you should leave Julia alone from now on.”

I inhaled sharply and tried to clear my thoughts as to whether or not I was relieved or upset at her words.

Emily sighed and continued. “I know you may think that you love her right now, but perhaps you should ask yourself the question of whether you can handle watching her slowly slip away from you. If you can’t do that – you can’t be around to fill her with the hope and expectation that your presence with lace that you’ll be there forever. Oliver, I’ve been through this before. You think you can handle it, stay optimistic, hope for the best, but in the end, you’re going to leave her side because you can’t take it anymore. One day when you see her it feels as if she weren’t sick at all – she’s happy, she’s smiling, she isn’t vomiting or having side effects. And other days… other days it’s so bad you want nothing more than to walk away. This is hard Oliver, and to be blunt I don’t believe you’re mature enough, or respect her love for you enough, to stay – never knowing if she’ll rise above it or not.”

“You don’t think I love her enough?” I whispered. I could feel the tears pricking at the back of my eyes but I refused to cry. “I don’t expect you, a divorced woman who cares nothing about her daughter, to be a judge of that. Who are you to turn away the only person that loves her the most? Why are you even trying to take charge here?”

“You think you can be the ring leader in this situation?” She cried. “I am trying to take charge and do the right thing because Julia is my daughter. I love her more than life itself and I know Oliver, I know that you will disappoint her soon enough. And then what? I will be left to pick up the pieces, to hold her whilst she cries about you and deals with her illness. How can you be so selfish?”

“Selfish? You’re the one who’s being selfish. She needs me. I need her. Not that I would expect you to know considering you’re never around to see that.”

“How dare you.” She fumed. “I am out, trying to make a living and to pay up the debts we have from last time she was sick!” She screamed. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this with her again, and I sure as hell don’t want some lowlife like you hurting her anymore than necessary.”

“I love her.”

“Well then why are you home? Huh? She’s not due to be back for another hour, why are you home?”

I swallowed and looked away. I knew she was right and I don’t know why I was fighting for it so badly. I was young, I was supposed to be living and having fun, not staying in the cancer ward with the skeleton of the girl I love and wasting both our lives away. That person in the hospital wasn’t Julia. I should have been relieved by the ultimatum but instead I was just confused, and angry.

“I don’t have to answer that.” I said harshly, standing up from the table. “You cannot tell me who I can’t and can’t see. Julia wants me by her side and as long as she wants that, I’m there.”

With that I walked out of the house, down the path into the life I thought I would never succumb to.