In Love with the Prince (of Darkness, That Is)

After two days of Mannitol, Dr. Barker performed the Gamma Knife procedure for a few days, and then the surgery to remove the rest of the tumour. After a day of recovery, Taylor started the chemotherapy, and it was not kind to him. Within only a few days he had lost all of his hair, as well as five pounds and flat-out refused to look at food for the most part. The doctors gave him whatever they could to control the side-effects, but, to Dreama, it didn't seem to be doing much.

Although Taylor slept most of the time, she spent the majority of her days at the hospital, playing cards and talking with Rick, who was starving for human contact. Rick was eighteen and itching to graduate high-school with the rest of his friends, so Dreama also did her best to tutor him in her best subjects.

"My girlfriend dumped me when I told her," Rick confided one afternoon. "About the cancer." He grinned wryly. "Not that I blame her, really. I mean, I don't think I'd be all that eager to get attached to a guy who wouldn't make it to twenty, let alone who couldn't walk and was going blind."

"So you know then? How long you have?"

"Short of a miracle, there's no doubt. I don't know why they're even bothering to send me to rehab anymore. This one's not going away."

"Miracles happen."

"To people who deserve them," Rick shot back glumly. "And I'm not proud to say that I am not one of those people."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you believe in karma?"

"I never gave it much thought."

"I was kind of popular at my school, you know? Football team, cheerleader girlfriend, scouts just waiting for me to be a senior... the whole nine yards. And I wasn't really happy about it." He smiled nostalgically. "And then along came Jazzy." He sighed and sat back in his pillows. "I've never seen anyone more beautiful than she was the day we met, and I'm pretty sure I was head over heels from the second I saw her. But she wasn't really the kind of girl I was supposed to like. I mean, yeah, she was gorgeous, but she was also a year younger than me, a ballerina, and widely known as the smartest girl that had ever graced the halls of our high school."

There was more, Dreama knew, and Rick offered the information after a second. "And she was pregnant."

"That could alienate some people."

"Yeah. I didn't know that when I first met her--she didn't even know it. And I never thought that I was the type to cheat before that, but suddenly I was spending every waking moment with this girl, and skipping practices to spend more time with her, and dropping passes whenever I saw her in the stands watching. And then a month in she shows up at my door and tells me that a week before she met me she was date-raped at some party and she's pregnant."

"Whoa."

"That's what I said. I wanted to leave my girlfriend then and there, but I was too much of a coward to face what everyone would say about me if they found out I was breaking up with the most popular girl in school for one who was having a baby that wasn't mine. I was especially afraid of what my dad would say. So we kept sneaking around, and she got more and more pregnant, and I was with her at every doctor's appointment and ultra scan and interview with adoptive parents, because I was mad about her."

Rick fell silent for a while, and Dreama could see that he was trying to work up the courage to say what he wanted. "We were coming back from an appointment, and it was dark and raining, and I was mad about something. I don't even remember what it was, but I was driving way too fast."

He didn't need to tell her what had happened. "Did she make it?" Dreama asked.

"No. The baby did, but he was so sick from being born early that he's brain damaged and the adoptive parents wouldn't take him--said they signed on for a healthy kid. His name's Devin. He lives in a group home about eight blocks from here, and I walk over to see him every once in a while. I came clean to my girlfriend after Jasmine died, and, like I expected, she broke up with me. So in the space of about a week I went from being in good with my parents, my coach, my girlfriend, and the girl I was cheating on her with, and suddenly Jasmine's gone, the couple that wanted to adopt couldn't have the baby they were promised, my girlfriend was whispering rumours about me to the whole school, Jasmine's reputation and memory were totally destroyed because of my stupidity, my coach bumped me to second string to make an example of me, and my parents weren't talking to me. I tried to apologise to Jazzy's parents, and they all but kicked me out of their house. They also didn't let me go to the funeral, and they still don't talk to me if I see them around. Needless to say, my reputation never really recovered. "

"But you started dating again."

"About four months ago. And I almost had my heart in it when I found out about the cancer." He shrugged. "Clearly I'm not the kind of guy who's going to be deemed worthy of a second chance."

Dreama disagreed. "I think you're exactly the kind of guy who needs one."