One Last Breath

Skylar

I knew this day had been coming upon me fast, and it would have been an idiotic move to have thought otherwise, but with the way things had been going with my stay here, it made everything easy to forget. When I was with Anthony, I could push the twitches away. When I was with my parents, I could hide the winces. When I was with Noah, I could hide the pain.

This, however, was something that couldn’t be pushed away; something that could be ignored by no one, including myself. No matter how much I wanted to ignore everything but my family around me, those blissful times were gone.

Because as of this morning—a beautiful Saturday morning—both my legs had failed me.

I was glad that no one had been there to see me cry when I woke up and discovered this fact. I never wanted anyone to know that I was so worked up about what was happening to me. I was Skylar, the strong and independent woman who didn’t care about her muscular dystrophy. It was hard to keep that mask when you had fat tears falling down your face.

Though my arms were as weak as my legs had been a month before, I found the strength to use them to pull my legs closer to me, curling up in a ball. Every now and then, I would stroke my legs and pray that they move, even if it was to straighten out. Sometime I got a centimeter of movement, upping my hopes, only to have them crushed when nothing else happened.

Now all I could do was lie here until someone came to see if I was okay. I sure wasn’t going to yell through my door for help, because that would only alarm the household, but the minutes felt like years as I sat in that bed, waiting. Even though there wasn’t a clock in my room, I felt that I could hear the ticking of the seconds go by, and it was enough to almost make me cry again. Luckily, the door opened before I could get too worked up.

“Skylar, time to get up,” Noah’s voice said gently, coming closer to me. I tensed slightly, not knowing if it would be better if he knew first, or worse.

“I’ve been up for a while,” I said quietly, biting my lip. I wanted to pretend I was fine, something that I had done since the time I was thirteen, but this was too big to cover up. I couldn’t stay in bed forever; I couldn’t hide from the facts.

“Is there something wrong?” he questioned, placing a hand on my shoulder. If he felt my tense muscles, he didn’t say anything, and I let out a slow breath.

“Noah, I can’t—I can’t move my legs.

His hand turned to marble against my bare shoulder, every single muscle in that hand tensed as if ready for action. My back was still turned to him, and I was glad for it, because I didn’t want to see the expression on his face. I didn’t want his reaction to something we had been trying to hide from in the beginning.

“And it’s not like the time in the hospital?”

I shook my head against my warm pillow and felt tears prickling at the corners of my eyes. Damn it, I had to be strong. I was not going to cry. I wasn’t going to cry until I had no control over my tear ducts.

“I can still feel them, if only a little, but I can’t move them Noah. I know there is no coming back from this.”

I heard a shaky sigh leave his body, and that almost sent me into another fit of crying. My own emotion I could handle; I could take myself breaking down. But having the same thing coming from Noah? I don’t know if I could take that.

The man moved his hand from my shoulder, leaving me without touch. However, it was soon replaced as he lay behind me on my bed, wrapping one arm around me while his face buried itself into the back of my neck.

“Noah…”

“I love you Skylar. I know it probably sounds stupid, seeing as we haven’t even known each other that long and I am picking this moment to tell you, but it’s true. I should have realized it the moment we met and you told me your name.”

McKnight came a little closer and smiled at me, causing dimples to form on both sides of his face. He then reached out his hand to shake my own.

"You can call me Noah."

I nodded and shook his hand, smiling myself. "And you can call me Skylar."

I felt something catch in my throat and I wanted to curse at the man for doing this to me. I was going to cry, a mixture of sad and happy tears, and it was his fault. I would have been fine if he hadn’t told me he loved me.

“I love you too Noah,” I sobbed, letting the tears fall and burn a trail down my face.

I didn’t feel so bad when I could feel wetness on the back of my neck.

//////

Maybe forty-five minutes later, Noah was helping me sit up in my bed, which wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. The brunette helped me scoot to the edge of my bed and into the wheel chair he had ready for me. It would have been easier for him to just put me in it, he had told me, but I was stubborn and was going to do this for myself. Until I was forced by my own body to stay in a bed, I wasn’t going to just give up on life. No one was going to keep me down, not even a fatal disease.

My mom had had a late night last night, which explained while she was coming down the stairs as I was being strolled out into the living room. She has gotten her day off today and had headed here to fall asleep so she could spend the day with her daughter. I felt kind of guilty ruining that illusion for her, and I wished that this would have happened a day when it would only be Noah and I.

She had just rubbed the last bit of sleep from her eyes when she saw my doctor and I in the middle of the room. She gave us her usual happy smile that she usually would have given us, but it changed into a blank face when she saw the metal chair I was sitting in.

“Noah?” she questioned, asking for a conformation to what she was seeing. The man was behind me, so I couldn’t see him or his expression, but seeing as he said no words, I could only assume that he had nodded his head when my mother crumbled to the floor.

And that was the exact moment that my father and Anthony walked through the door, chuckling about some unheard joke. Everything stopped the second my mother’s sobs broke through their laughter.

“What’s going on here?” my dad asked, stepping forward.

Noah turned me to the side so that both my mother and father could have my profile, though my attention was on my father at the moment.

“Oh god,” Anthony whispered, clasping his hand over his mouth while his eyes glittered with tears. This was the second time I had seen him cry over me, and it killed me inside. But I had cried out everything when Noah had wrapped himself around me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said quietly to everyone in the room. They really had no idea how sorry I truly was.

Noah

It was understandable that Skylar wanted to be alone after a moment like that. Who wouldn’t want to be left to their own thoughts when tears were shared from everyone in the house? Skylar’s family was as red eyed as I had been this morning, and now they were all gathered in the kitchen somberly as I was about to explain her condition.

“As of this morning, Skylar’s legs have failed her. She still has the ability to feel them somewhat, but the muscle in her legs is so deteriorated that there aren’t enough neurons for her brain to send signals to. In a couple of days, she will more than likely lose all feeling in her legs.”

“How is everything else doing?” Mr. Arkin asked, trying to keep strong for his ex-wife and son.

“Without an EKG, I can’t give you a straight answer to where the rest of her body is right now. From what I have seen so far, her arms are following the path of her legs. She’s lost maybe 35% of the muscle that was there when she was healthy, which isn’t very good, but she can still feel and move them. Hopefully, she’ll go through another one of her ‘dry spells’, and that will postpone anything major.”

“What if she doesn’t go through one of those?” Anthony piped up, looking like a lost puppy as he searched my eyes for an answer that would cure everything.

“Then her muscles will keep dying. At the rate everything is going, it won’t be too long until it reaches at least her lungs, if not her heart.”

“Oh my god,” Ms. White moaned in agony, putting her face in her hands as she cried again. I bit my lip to keep myself strong and shook my head, mostly to get rid of the tears that were pooling in my eyes. I had to be professional in front of her family; I was her doctor in their eyes. No matter how emotional I got, I had to stay a doctor in front of them.

“I’m so sorry, I wish it wasn’t this far along.” They really had no idea how sorry I truly was.