If Today Was Your Last Day

Once my mother knew about my condition, she went ballistic. She started asking if I did drugs or smoked or did things I wasn’t supposed to. I told her that I did none of that crap but she didn’t believe me. I wasn’t surprised. She never blamed herself for anything. What she didn’t know though, was that this was all her fault. If she hadn’t brought my sister and I along for her late night poker games with those other rich-ass families, I never would’ve sucked in so much fumes. The smoke that came out from each tobacco in the room practically fogged up the whole vicinity and I always smelled like smoke the moment I came back home. She brought us in every Saturday and Sunday since I was six. My sister never stayed in the room since she stayed with the other kids in the other room. I never got to play with them because they always thought I wasn’t cool. My sister didn’t care because she always wanted to feel accepted and she hated my guts. But as we grew older, we became more mature and she learned to care for me and stand up for me when she needed to.

When my mother stopped going to late night poker games, she started smoking wildly in her bathroom while she was supposed to take a bath. The negative thing about this was that our bathrooms were right beside each other and her bathroom wasn’t ventilated. The smoke just went out her window and diffused into my room. The smoke was always so strong that it burned my lungs. I prayed that one day she’d eventually stop but that day never came.

The only person I told this to was my doctor and she told me that she was going to speak to my mother about it but right when she did, my mother scolded me for making the doctors’ think that she was a bad mother – which of course was evident in the way she raised me but she was too full of herself to admit it. She always thinks that she’s got everything right.

Days passed and I’ve learned to call the hospital my new home. Every day I went through different tests since my mother didn’t believe that it was lung cancer. She told me that no one could diagnose cancer that quick and I guess it was sensible but with each result came the same illness: Cancer. I gave up hope and refused to take anymore treatment. Chemotherapy and radiation were just too much for me and what’s worse is that I wasn’t getting any better.

Most of my friends came to visit but none of them ever got me to really fight my way out of the mess that I was in. All my life I wondered when my death would come and I never suspected it to be this early but now that it was here, I wasn’t afraid of it.

When I woke up on my hospital bed the next morning, I was feeling a tad bit better but being in a room filled with machines hooked to my body just brought down the energy I had in me. I sat up on my bed and looked outside the window. It was raining hard. My mother was nowhere to be found. I was completely alone.

“Knock, knock,” I heard a familiar voice call out from the door. I looked the side and smiled when I saw John and his friends come in.

Kennedy, Garrett, Jared and Pat came in and attacked me with hugs. They all had such wonderful smiles on their faces and I was just so happy to be around them. I haven’t had that many smiles since the day John and I went to the arcade and it’s been a week since then.

“Hey guys,” I said in a whisper. My voice sounded really horrible now. I sounded so hoarse whenever I’d talk and when my friends came in and tried to get me talking, they cringed whenever they heard my voice.

“Guess what happened today,” Pat said with the biggest grin on his face. He was practically jumping up and down the bed with excitement.

“What?” I asked with just enough voice to make myself be heard.

“We got signed today!” Garrett said tackling me with another hug.

I fell back down on my pillow and hugged all of them together – except John. He was just standing by my bed – leaning against a cabinet.

“What’s up with you?” I mouthed to him as everyone pulled away from me.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

I looked at the boys right in front of me and they just shrugged. “We’ll, uh, give you two some privacy,” Kennedy mentioned and they filed out of the room.

I motioned for John to come over and I gave him the tightest hug I could handle but it was probably not that strong at all. He sat on my bed facing me but he wasn’t looking at me. He had his head down, looking at the sheets.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked scooting over closer to him and placing a hand on top of his.

“I don’t want you sick anymore,” he said, reminding me of a little boy.

“John, we both know that it doesn’t work that way,” I said with a smile as I played with his hair.

“But I heard that you’re not receiving any treatment,” he said calmly but with so much anger in his eyes.

“I don’t take the treatment because it doesn’t do any good. Either way, I’m still going to-”

“Don’t say it! Don’t you dare say it, Aubrey.” He turned away and bit his lip as held back the tears that wanted to rush out of his lids.

“John, I’ll only be prolonging the agony. I don’t want to see you like this. I want you to be happy,” I said placing a hand on his cheek to make him face me.

“The only time I’m happy is when I’m asleep and dreaming because when I see you in my dreams, you’re healthy and happy. We’re always just singing songs and making music like we always used to.” He swallowed hard. I saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down. I knew he was afraid. I was too, but not for me. I was afraid because I was leaving John’s life and I didn’t know how he was going to deal with it. Moving away from the house next to his to a few blocks away was hard enough.

“Oh, Johnny,” I said wrapping my arms around him. “You should know by now that the only dreams that matter are the ones you have when you’re awake and right now you’re pretty much living your dream.”

“But it’s not enough because I don’t get to share it with you,” he whispered into my ear. His breath on me felt different. I didn’t want to have to say this but it felt kinda sexy.

I pulled away from him slowly as I looked into those hazel eyes that took me in the first day I saw them. I smiled at him before completely moving away from him but he didn’t give me the chance to get really far. He connected our lips in a split second and for a moment, I just got lost in transition.

“John, I really wish you hadn’t done that,” I said immediately breaking the kiss apart even if I really didn’t want to.

“Aubrey, I want you to understand why I don’t want you gone. And when I say that, I don’t just mean because you’re my best friend. I love you as more than that and I can’t stand losing you. I don’t know why I’m only telling you now that it’s all slowly falling apart – and I feel really stupid for waiting this long – but I mean every word and I don’t want you going anywhere knowing that you will never ever come back.”

Tears ran down my face like waterfalls. I felt like he just dropped a thousand-pound boulder on my shoulders. What in the world was I supposed to say? How was I supposed to tell him not to feel those feelings for me? How was I supposed to say goodbye when the time came for me to go?

“John, I can’t do this with y-you. I j-just c-c-can’t.” My breathing started to get harsher and harsher as each millisecond ticked by.

“Aubrey, I need you to breathe, please, just inhale and-”

But I couldn’t hear what he said next. I was cut from reality by a darkness that consumed me. I thought that was it but I fought hard to make my lungs work again. I couldn’t just leave it like that with John. There was so much more that I wanted to tell him. Things like: I loved him more than he could ever imagine and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But saying those things would only hold him back.

How did a few sentences change all the thoughts in my head? How did living my life become so significant all of a sudden? Why was I even fighting to stay alive right now?