Remember Me

It was just a headache. It's such an insignificant thing, that the thought it could destroy your life isn't really something you consider. You don't really consider anything past popping an Aspirin and curling up into a ball and wishing it away.

But then the days start to blend it to one, and the next thing you can recall is your boyfriend tugging you on your arm, telling you to wake up, please, and just go to the doctor. It's been days now. Has it? You certainly can't remember those days passing.

So you go to the emergency room, your head throbbing, and you're annoyed and slightly concerned, but still, never a thought crosses your mind that this aching pain is about to turn your life upside down, because, afterall, it's just a headache.

You smile weakly at your partner, the pain starting to try and force you back into your self-induced coma, but you resist it. You know he has work and keeping him here with you is doing no good. "Go home," you say, though really all you want is for him to stay right here with you. "There's no point you staying. We could be here hours."

He looks at you and bites his lip, as unwilling to leave as you are for him to go. "You sure?" he asks, and you nod, knowing that he can't really stay.

And so he leaves and your're alone, and when you're alone in the emergency room, with it's beeping machines and chaos, you can't help but start being scared. You worry, though you convince yourself there's nothing to be worried about, because it's just a little headache. Right?

********

It's hours later, and you're laying in a large MRI scanner. You've always hated small spaces but there's nothing you can do, and so you just grit your teeth and try to ignore the pain and worry that is lurking in the back of your skull.

But then you glance at the MRI technican and the look on her face sends your heart thudding and your mind whirling. It's clear from her shaken and worried look. Something's wrong. She gets up quickly and leaves, returning just seconds later with a doctor in a white coat behind her, and you close your eyes, because you can't possibly bare to see his reaction too, you can't bare to see their emotions as they discuss what awful thing is wrong with you.

Once your're out of the scanner, the doctor tells you to sit, and oh god, this is it, and you can tell from the grave and saddened look he gives you that everything isn't okay and it isn't just a headache after all.

You barely listen as you tells you, but you hear enough to recognize the worst, to hear the words inoperable, a year, at the most.... You hear him offer his condolences, and arrange an appointment for the next week.

Then you're stood in the hospital hallway, a nurse rubbing your back at an attempt to comfort you as you cry on the phone to your love, and babble the few terms you can remember from the doctor, and you're barely understandable through your tears, but he understands because he always does, and he tells you to hold on and he'll be right there.

You hang up and in what feels like the next moment Gerard is there, and seeing him makes the tears start again, because everything was so perfect and now it's all been destroyed in the space of a few bitter hours.

He hugs you, uttering meaningless words of comfort. "Shhhhh, it's okay. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay." You want to feel reassured, but you just feel worse, because you can tell from the tone of his voice that he's lying, and that he knows just as well as you that nothings ever going be okay again.

It was just a headache.