Never Say Goodbye

I was staring into space as my doctor strode into my little, cluttered ward. My family stiffened in anticipation around me as the woman came to halt at the foot of my bed, preparing for my 'final diagnosis'. By that point though, I didn't really need telling. Hushed whispers between top consultants and sideways glances from careful nurses could only point to it being serious. So as the word Leukaemia rolled grudgingly off the woman's tongue, I wasn't all that surprised. I closed my eyes and fell back into the pillows. Anyone would have guessed this was due to grief or shock, but really I couldn't bear the looks of sadness and confusion written across the faces of those I loved the most in the world.
A tear slipped down my cheek as I was told what I had to do. Chemotherapy. And even then I may only have a year left to me. One year to achieve everything I hadn't yet had the chance to do in short 15 years of life. Get a boyfriend, first kiss, first love, that’s all I wanted. That’s all I had ever wanted. All my life I had felt pressured to get a boyfriend, not by my friends but by myself. I wasn't vain, no-where near, I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I was tall with large, sparkling blue eyes back then. Wavy brunette hair reached my mid-back and I was never without a smile. I enjoyed a little fashion but mainly kept to my skater/ surfer style, making sure to shoe off my curvy figure a little. I was friendly, outgoing even, but different, exotic in the way that I could easily switch my personality from being the average chatty teen, swooning over a hot dude at the skate park to the girl in the far corner of Waterstones, quietly immersed in books.
My mates had boyfriends off and on, meeting in various places, but never me. Don’t get me wrong, I liked plenty of people but something about me always curbed their interest.
Around 8 o’clock, my family decided to get some food from the café, silently assuming that I was asleep. As soon as they had disappeared I reached over and grabbed my trusty note-book. My head began to pound as I tried to focus on what I was writing. Scribbling now, I wrote a vague list of every feasible thing I wanted to do or say or accomplish in the time I had left to me. A shopping list for my life. It was sickening seeing my whole future summed up in three lines of A4. I sighed as I began to feel the all too familiar aching weakness and irrational tiredness creep over me and as I fell back into the pillows I lost the battle, slipping out of consciousness.