Will I?
Without You.
Two months later
Caleb’s eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady. Every so often it would dip slower and he would have to be woken up just to make sure that he wasn’t going into a coma. At this point to him, he didn’t care what happened to him. He was constantly in pain, not even the high dose of medicine the hospital would give him would even do anything. On his request, he was taken off of chemotherapy. It hadn’t been doing anything to him for the last eight months, the cancer cells too strong, so why would it still be doing anything now? A month after being taken off, he was doing right as he had planned. Horribly.
Most of his hair had thinned out and he took to wearing a beanie constantly. Every few days or so, Austin or Kyle would bring him a new one so the previous wouldn’t get too worn out or dirty. Also at his request, there was always someone in his hospital room with him, albeit one of the guys or a family member. His worst fear in all of this now was dying alone. He wanted someone there with him constantly, trying to erase that fear. There was a stretch in the middle of the day where he would be left alone for an hour, and in that hour he would stay wide awake and grip at the side rails of the bed, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. He was so scared that in that one hour, something and everything would happen. So far, it hadn’t yet and when someone would come into his room after that hour was over, he would instantly fall asleep from the exhaustion of keeping himself up and awake.
He was also turning into a bitter, angry person. What used to be a sweet, kind, fun spirited individual turned into a spiteful being full of hatred. He hated that this was happening to him. Why now? Why me? Why this? He always asked himself and others those question, often times yelling them out to the first person who happened to walk into the room. He didn’t care if it was his doctor or his nurse or his mother, he wanted to ask and he wanted his answers though he hardly ever got the answers that he wanted. After those yelling events, he would start sobbing at his actions, ashamed and confused at what was going on. Those too would drain him of any energy that he had and he would sleep for hours, sometimes going into days. He was usually confined to his bed anyways, having no energy or will at some points to get up. He would sit and sulk, staring out of the window out to the parking lot to watch the cars enter and leave the hospital.
A few weeks after stopping the chemo, Austin brought by one of the redhead’s many acoustic guitars, hoping that that would at least break his from his down spirits for at least a couple hours. It did as Caleb played it softly, his fingers moving slower than what they used to. He actually smiled and cleared his voice, singing along with whatever he was playing too. Doing that made him happy, it was what he had wanted to do ever since he was little and now it was never going to happen. That day while playing, his voice eventually got stronger and he got louder. He played like that for hours, suddenly having a new spirit and new happy outlook. But those happy things always had repercussions. He started to get sores along his mouth and the inside of his mouth, making him unable to sing and more importantly unable to talk. For a week and a half, it was painful to talk and it only made Caleb go back into his recluse, bitter state. His guitar now sat alone in the corner of his hospital room, untouched since that day.
That brought him up to now. He was asleep, his body shaking slightly from the pain that would shoot through him every time he breathed. His doctor’s explained that one reason for the pain was because of the cancer cells were pressing against his lungs, where most of the cancer had set and spread itself. They weren’t exactly sure what it was from or what had caused it, though his smoking was one part of that reason. When the doctor’s had first found the cells, they were already spread everywhere, it already in a serious stage. They immediately put him on chemotherapy and radiation, hoping with the new technologies and the new ways, it would knock some of it out quickly so then they could go in and take the rest out through surgery. But when neither of those two things worked and it only spread to larger portions over both lungs, everyone knew that surgery was now impossible. He was waiting to die.
His breathing suddenly became staggered in his sleep; dipping lower than it had ever been and making the monitor go off. Nurses were instantly in the room and at Caleb’s side, working on the monitor and also trying to make him wake up. Talking to him, saying his name over again, even slipping pain medication into his IV to see if that would cause the upset to stop. Slowly, he started to calm, and the one nurse finally got him to wake up. Caleb looked around at them, confused at first then seeing the looks on their faces, then drew in a hitched breath to keep from sobbing.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was going on. He could hear his parents out in the hallway talking with his doctor or one of the nurses, saying how he didn’t look so good that day or he didn’t take well to the medication he was given or even that he didn’t eat as much as he did the day before. They were saying it looked like it was going to be within a few weeks, reading by the new charts that were updated almost every other day. MRI after X-ray after scan were being done to check up on him, to make sure nothing jumped too far ahead. The last stages were always fast, always unexpected. You weren’t sure if you had one day or one week left. You could be fine one day and gone the next.
When they could see he was having difficulty accepting what had just happened, one nurse stayed in with him the rest of that hour. She sat in the chair beside his bed, watching Caleb as he struggled to get himself to relax and to sleep again. Looking up to the clock, she knew that dinner was going to be soon and by the looks of him, he wasn’t going to be eating anything at all. In the back of her mind, it looked like it was going to be one of those nights where he slept until the next evening. Those types of nights were becoming more frequent than they used too.
Soon Austin and Kyle came in for the night shift of keeping Caleb company, giving the nurse worn out but friendly smiles as she stood from the seat and slipped from the room. The two other boys knew that she wasn’t really supposed to do that but what with Caleb always freaking out by being alone and it was her job to make sure her patients were happy and being taken care of. They appreciated what she had just done, and they also knew that Caleb probably did too, even if he wasn’t going to vocalize it. Lately, his emotions had been splashed all over his face more than usual and it was becoming simpler to pick up on what he was thinking and feeling, letting him save his voice and his energy with trying to speak.
Caleb looked up to the two boys as they came over to the chairs by the bed, gulping with difficulty but managed to give them a weak smile. He was exhausted now but he didn’t want to give in to sleep. He wanted to spend time with two of his best friends, not let them sit and stare at his sleeping body like they usually did. He always felt bad for making them do this, the other guys as well but he was just so scared. Whimpering to himself lightly at the thought, he looked back to Austin and Kyle.
“How have things been?” he whispered to them. He wanted to be as normal as possible and that included speaking.
“The same old, you know? Working, family, coming and seeing you,” Kyle smiled. “Man, I tell you this every time but it’s so empty in the apartment without you. I don’t like living by myself,” he admitted with a short laugh. “You need to get better and come back home,” he added in softly. He looked over to Caleb, giving him a sort of look like he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud and it was only a thought.
Caleb opened his mouth but closed it soon after. He had no reply to that. He wanted with all his heart and everything to get better and to go back to the apartment he and Kyle shared. That was normal, it was his life. A starch, white, clean hospital room sure wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle stammered out. “That.. that..”
Caleb shook his head. “I know, Kyle. Every day,” he said, raising a hand to tap at his head, indicating that he thought the same thing every single day since he’d been admitted to the hospital. “I would go back and give up smoking sooner if I could just get better and go home,” the redhead chuckled lightly. That light laugh turned into a cough which in turn became more and more violent as he coughed. His heart monitor started beeping but not going off and Austin quickly got up to get a cup of water for him. Within a few minutes he had stopped coughing, laying back against the bed with his eyes closed. The water cup sat on his tray with only a small sip taken from it, the indication that a once strong and healthy as a horse man was now as weak as a newborn.
The two men watched his monitor and everything else for the majority of the night, taking turns of drifting off to sleep, knowing Caleb wouldn’t mind. They flicked on the television that was settled on a mount on the wall opposite the bed, and since they were in a private room, the volume didn’t matter but they didn’t have it loud enough to wake him; the two both knew that it would take a herd of elephants to wake the redhead, past and now. Dinner came and they ordered, also getting something for Caleb though in the back of their mind’s plus the same nurse, they all knew he wasn’t going to eat. Austin even dared to pick up the acoustic guitar in the corner and dust it off, playing softly as Kyle tapped his legs and the night table in rhythm to whatever the brunette was playing. This was the usual routine for their nights there with their best friend, sometimes bringing magazines and puzzle books to keep themselves entertained at three or four in the morning.
It was a little after midnight when something changed.
Caleb’s breathing suddenly sank, it becoming more difficult for him to even get a breath of air to keep the next one coming. The monitor’s went off, loud and bursting to do their job, jolting both boys from a light doze. They watched helplessly as two nurses ran in, fixing the monitor and trying to get Caleb to wake up; trying to convince themselves and the two men in the room that it was just another scare and nothing was happening... yet. Fifteen minutes went by and usually at that point, they would have him up, talking to him soothingly and in soft voice, telling him that they would bring him some water and whatever else he wanted. But this time, the redhead had slipped into unconsciousness.
Austin and Kyle sat there stunned, unable to think, speak, and do anything except stare at their best friend. Austin started to shake a little; the realization of it all was too much. He was really dying now and he might not wake up from this. He excused himself from the room, leaving Kyle with Caleb and before the nurses could call his parents, Austin did it himself. He knew they would rather have one of the other boys tell them this news rather than someone they didn’t know.
Within the hour, his parents arrived, his mother taking Kyle’s seat closest to the bed, moving the chair as close as she could get. She held his hand the entire time, gingerly stroking his hair and his face while talking softly to him, holding back the tears for now. The nurses put in double the pain medication so that he wouldn’t be in any type of pain, coming in every half an hour to check on how things were going. Every breath for Caleb looked like a struggle, gasping for it every single time, which seemed to be every few seconds and then started to get longer. His dad stayed in the back of the room, talking quietly with Austin and Kyle, observing what was happening between his wife and his son. He shouldn’t be watching this right now, this shouldn’t be happening. Parents shouldn’t have to bury their kids, right? He should have sixty, seventy more long years ahead of him, but yet it was stopping at twenty-two. All he wanted was for someone to finally deal his son the ace for once.
Around three thirty in the morning, his mother finally let the tears slip through, shining in the rims of her eyes. She brought his hand up to her mouth, kissing it a few times and holding it to her cheek, the back of his hand soon wet from her tears. “It’s okay, Caleb,” she whispered to him, but loud enough for his father, Austin and Kyle to hear. None of them dared go to sleep in case something had happened. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid any longer. We’re right here with you, baby. We all love you and we want you to no longer be in any pain. If you want to go on, it’s alright Caleb, do what’s best for you. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be okay,” she whispered to him. She kept brushing her fingers against his cheek as if reassuring him as if her words weren’t enough.
Fifteen minutes later, Caleb’s monitor started to beep again and his mother took a staggered breath, holding it all in. He gasped to breathe a few more times until his chest slowly started to rise less and less, his heart rate dropping on the screen. Two minutes later, he took his last breath, going off, now assured by his mother’s words.
The funeral was two days later, the sun as bright as ever and perfectly warm, the redhead’s favorite weather. Everything was set up like none other, all coming by to pay their respects to their family member, best friend and mentor. He was buried in [definitely not a suit!] his favorite pair of nicer jeans and a sweater and tie, all per his request.
While cleaning out his belongings in the hospital room, his mother found a note that he had written months previous when he first was admitted into the hospital:
Dear world,
When you find this I hope it’s all in good measure. I hope I’ve already died and you all can now be happy and not worried that I’m here alone and in pain any longer. Because once this cancer finally takes over me, I know that I won’t be in pain anymore. I will be healthy and strong and happy again, just how I want y’all to remember me. Don’t remember the Caleb Turman that was laying in a hospital bed the last few months of his life, remember the one that was full of life and spontaneous energy. You’ll miss me the first few weeks, months, years even and it’s going to be hard but it’ll get better, I promise. Everything happens for a reason and at the end I know I might not come to grips with it, but I probably will. Just trust and believe and it will all be okay.
Love you all,
Caleb.
Caleb’s eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady. Every so often it would dip slower and he would have to be woken up just to make sure that he wasn’t going into a coma. At this point to him, he didn’t care what happened to him. He was constantly in pain, not even the high dose of medicine the hospital would give him would even do anything. On his request, he was taken off of chemotherapy. It hadn’t been doing anything to him for the last eight months, the cancer cells too strong, so why would it still be doing anything now? A month after being taken off, he was doing right as he had planned. Horribly.
Most of his hair had thinned out and he took to wearing a beanie constantly. Every few days or so, Austin or Kyle would bring him a new one so the previous wouldn’t get too worn out or dirty. Also at his request, there was always someone in his hospital room with him, albeit one of the guys or a family member. His worst fear in all of this now was dying alone. He wanted someone there with him constantly, trying to erase that fear. There was a stretch in the middle of the day where he would be left alone for an hour, and in that hour he would stay wide awake and grip at the side rails of the bed, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. He was so scared that in that one hour, something and everything would happen. So far, it hadn’t yet and when someone would come into his room after that hour was over, he would instantly fall asleep from the exhaustion of keeping himself up and awake.
He was also turning into a bitter, angry person. What used to be a sweet, kind, fun spirited individual turned into a spiteful being full of hatred. He hated that this was happening to him. Why now? Why me? Why this? He always asked himself and others those question, often times yelling them out to the first person who happened to walk into the room. He didn’t care if it was his doctor or his nurse or his mother, he wanted to ask and he wanted his answers though he hardly ever got the answers that he wanted. After those yelling events, he would start sobbing at his actions, ashamed and confused at what was going on. Those too would drain him of any energy that he had and he would sleep for hours, sometimes going into days. He was usually confined to his bed anyways, having no energy or will at some points to get up. He would sit and sulk, staring out of the window out to the parking lot to watch the cars enter and leave the hospital.
A few weeks after stopping the chemo, Austin brought by one of the redhead’s many acoustic guitars, hoping that that would at least break his from his down spirits for at least a couple hours. It did as Caleb played it softly, his fingers moving slower than what they used to. He actually smiled and cleared his voice, singing along with whatever he was playing too. Doing that made him happy, it was what he had wanted to do ever since he was little and now it was never going to happen. That day while playing, his voice eventually got stronger and he got louder. He played like that for hours, suddenly having a new spirit and new happy outlook. But those happy things always had repercussions. He started to get sores along his mouth and the inside of his mouth, making him unable to sing and more importantly unable to talk. For a week and a half, it was painful to talk and it only made Caleb go back into his recluse, bitter state. His guitar now sat alone in the corner of his hospital room, untouched since that day.
That brought him up to now. He was asleep, his body shaking slightly from the pain that would shoot through him every time he breathed. His doctor’s explained that one reason for the pain was because of the cancer cells were pressing against his lungs, where most of the cancer had set and spread itself. They weren’t exactly sure what it was from or what had caused it, though his smoking was one part of that reason. When the doctor’s had first found the cells, they were already spread everywhere, it already in a serious stage. They immediately put him on chemotherapy and radiation, hoping with the new technologies and the new ways, it would knock some of it out quickly so then they could go in and take the rest out through surgery. But when neither of those two things worked and it only spread to larger portions over both lungs, everyone knew that surgery was now impossible. He was waiting to die.
His breathing suddenly became staggered in his sleep; dipping lower than it had ever been and making the monitor go off. Nurses were instantly in the room and at Caleb’s side, working on the monitor and also trying to make him wake up. Talking to him, saying his name over again, even slipping pain medication into his IV to see if that would cause the upset to stop. Slowly, he started to calm, and the one nurse finally got him to wake up. Caleb looked around at them, confused at first then seeing the looks on their faces, then drew in a hitched breath to keep from sobbing.
It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was going on. He could hear his parents out in the hallway talking with his doctor or one of the nurses, saying how he didn’t look so good that day or he didn’t take well to the medication he was given or even that he didn’t eat as much as he did the day before. They were saying it looked like it was going to be within a few weeks, reading by the new charts that were updated almost every other day. MRI after X-ray after scan were being done to check up on him, to make sure nothing jumped too far ahead. The last stages were always fast, always unexpected. You weren’t sure if you had one day or one week left. You could be fine one day and gone the next.
When they could see he was having difficulty accepting what had just happened, one nurse stayed in with him the rest of that hour. She sat in the chair beside his bed, watching Caleb as he struggled to get himself to relax and to sleep again. Looking up to the clock, she knew that dinner was going to be soon and by the looks of him, he wasn’t going to be eating anything at all. In the back of her mind, it looked like it was going to be one of those nights where he slept until the next evening. Those types of nights were becoming more frequent than they used too.
Soon Austin and Kyle came in for the night shift of keeping Caleb company, giving the nurse worn out but friendly smiles as she stood from the seat and slipped from the room. The two other boys knew that she wasn’t really supposed to do that but what with Caleb always freaking out by being alone and it was her job to make sure her patients were happy and being taken care of. They appreciated what she had just done, and they also knew that Caleb probably did too, even if he wasn’t going to vocalize it. Lately, his emotions had been splashed all over his face more than usual and it was becoming simpler to pick up on what he was thinking and feeling, letting him save his voice and his energy with trying to speak.
Caleb looked up to the two boys as they came over to the chairs by the bed, gulping with difficulty but managed to give them a weak smile. He was exhausted now but he didn’t want to give in to sleep. He wanted to spend time with two of his best friends, not let them sit and stare at his sleeping body like they usually did. He always felt bad for making them do this, the other guys as well but he was just so scared. Whimpering to himself lightly at the thought, he looked back to Austin and Kyle.
“How have things been?” he whispered to them. He wanted to be as normal as possible and that included speaking.
“The same old, you know? Working, family, coming and seeing you,” Kyle smiled. “Man, I tell you this every time but it’s so empty in the apartment without you. I don’t like living by myself,” he admitted with a short laugh. “You need to get better and come back home,” he added in softly. He looked over to Caleb, giving him a sort of look like he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud and it was only a thought.
Caleb opened his mouth but closed it soon after. He had no reply to that. He wanted with all his heart and everything to get better and to go back to the apartment he and Kyle shared. That was normal, it was his life. A starch, white, clean hospital room sure wasn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle stammered out. “That.. that..”
Caleb shook his head. “I know, Kyle. Every day,” he said, raising a hand to tap at his head, indicating that he thought the same thing every single day since he’d been admitted to the hospital. “I would go back and give up smoking sooner if I could just get better and go home,” the redhead chuckled lightly. That light laugh turned into a cough which in turn became more and more violent as he coughed. His heart monitor started beeping but not going off and Austin quickly got up to get a cup of water for him. Within a few minutes he had stopped coughing, laying back against the bed with his eyes closed. The water cup sat on his tray with only a small sip taken from it, the indication that a once strong and healthy as a horse man was now as weak as a newborn.
The two men watched his monitor and everything else for the majority of the night, taking turns of drifting off to sleep, knowing Caleb wouldn’t mind. They flicked on the television that was settled on a mount on the wall opposite the bed, and since they were in a private room, the volume didn’t matter but they didn’t have it loud enough to wake him; the two both knew that it would take a herd of elephants to wake the redhead, past and now. Dinner came and they ordered, also getting something for Caleb though in the back of their mind’s plus the same nurse, they all knew he wasn’t going to eat. Austin even dared to pick up the acoustic guitar in the corner and dust it off, playing softly as Kyle tapped his legs and the night table in rhythm to whatever the brunette was playing. This was the usual routine for their nights there with their best friend, sometimes bringing magazines and puzzle books to keep themselves entertained at three or four in the morning.
It was a little after midnight when something changed.
Caleb’s breathing suddenly sank, it becoming more difficult for him to even get a breath of air to keep the next one coming. The monitor’s went off, loud and bursting to do their job, jolting both boys from a light doze. They watched helplessly as two nurses ran in, fixing the monitor and trying to get Caleb to wake up; trying to convince themselves and the two men in the room that it was just another scare and nothing was happening... yet. Fifteen minutes went by and usually at that point, they would have him up, talking to him soothingly and in soft voice, telling him that they would bring him some water and whatever else he wanted. But this time, the redhead had slipped into unconsciousness.
Austin and Kyle sat there stunned, unable to think, speak, and do anything except stare at their best friend. Austin started to shake a little; the realization of it all was too much. He was really dying now and he might not wake up from this. He excused himself from the room, leaving Kyle with Caleb and before the nurses could call his parents, Austin did it himself. He knew they would rather have one of the other boys tell them this news rather than someone they didn’t know.
Within the hour, his parents arrived, his mother taking Kyle’s seat closest to the bed, moving the chair as close as she could get. She held his hand the entire time, gingerly stroking his hair and his face while talking softly to him, holding back the tears for now. The nurses put in double the pain medication so that he wouldn’t be in any type of pain, coming in every half an hour to check on how things were going. Every breath for Caleb looked like a struggle, gasping for it every single time, which seemed to be every few seconds and then started to get longer. His dad stayed in the back of the room, talking quietly with Austin and Kyle, observing what was happening between his wife and his son. He shouldn’t be watching this right now, this shouldn’t be happening. Parents shouldn’t have to bury their kids, right? He should have sixty, seventy more long years ahead of him, but yet it was stopping at twenty-two. All he wanted was for someone to finally deal his son the ace for once.
Around three thirty in the morning, his mother finally let the tears slip through, shining in the rims of her eyes. She brought his hand up to her mouth, kissing it a few times and holding it to her cheek, the back of his hand soon wet from her tears. “It’s okay, Caleb,” she whispered to him, but loud enough for his father, Austin and Kyle to hear. None of them dared go to sleep in case something had happened. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid any longer. We’re right here with you, baby. We all love you and we want you to no longer be in any pain. If you want to go on, it’s alright Caleb, do what’s best for you. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be okay,” she whispered to him. She kept brushing her fingers against his cheek as if reassuring him as if her words weren’t enough.
Fifteen minutes later, Caleb’s monitor started to beep again and his mother took a staggered breath, holding it all in. He gasped to breathe a few more times until his chest slowly started to rise less and less, his heart rate dropping on the screen. Two minutes later, he took his last breath, going off, now assured by his mother’s words.
The funeral was two days later, the sun as bright as ever and perfectly warm, the redhead’s favorite weather. Everything was set up like none other, all coming by to pay their respects to their family member, best friend and mentor. He was buried in [definitely not a suit!] his favorite pair of nicer jeans and a sweater and tie, all per his request.
While cleaning out his belongings in the hospital room, his mother found a note that he had written months previous when he first was admitted into the hospital:
Dear world,
When you find this I hope it’s all in good measure. I hope I’ve already died and you all can now be happy and not worried that I’m here alone and in pain any longer. Because once this cancer finally takes over me, I know that I won’t be in pain anymore. I will be healthy and strong and happy again, just how I want y’all to remember me. Don’t remember the Caleb Turman that was laying in a hospital bed the last few months of his life, remember the one that was full of life and spontaneous energy. You’ll miss me the first few weeks, months, years even and it’s going to be hard but it’ll get better, I promise. Everything happens for a reason and at the end I know I might not come to grips with it, but I probably will. Just trust and believe and it will all be okay.
Love you all,
Caleb.