Cancer (The Blood in the Snow)

Another day. House physician in Cardiff's General Hospital, that was my job. 
I dropped my bag in the staff room, earning timid smiles from a few colleagues. I pulled my white coat on my shoulders, clipped my nametag that said "Dr  I. Watkins" on the pocket, and sunk onto a chair. A group of medicine students stood awkwardly in a corner, in their yellowish coats, looking around, surely waiting for the supervisor. 

Today I was affected to the oncology ward. Oh joy. Cancer made me fucking sad, but well, that was part of why I had become a doctor.

A few nurses walked in and I decided it would be better for me to wash my hands and go take my round.
I stood in front of the sink, looking at my reflexion in the mirror. People always said I could've become an actor, because I was fit, with black hair, dark almond-shaped hazel eyes and an oriental face shape.
Yes, people, I know I'm hot but well, I didn't chose medicine for nothing. Plus I've always been a gifted kid, I've ended medicine school at 25, started at 16. Now I'm 27.

I walked towards the lifts, saluting a few persons, and made my way to Oncology, my coat flapping a little behind me, classy, and the ward head gave me some of the instructions I hadn't received. And he asignated me a new patient, just arrived from another hospital.

As I made my way to his room, I read his info. 

"Sean Bellers-Smith 
Age 17
Born 29th December 1987"

I quickly read his almost empty medical record. A broken arm, a conjunctivitis, and a broken eyebrow bone. Benign child viral illnesses.
And a big, fine, superb tumour in the brain. Almost a study case, like I had seen in college. A living subject of the perfect glioma. Some people are unlucky. Poor boy. 17 and dying. Apparently the tumour was yet centred on the motive area of the members, and his legs were immobilised. Soon would come his arms, then his hands, then he would just be able to move his head, to end up paralysed until the tumour extended to the vital functions and his heart stopped. 

As I said, oh joy.

Also, three AIDS tests. Negative. 

I arrived into the hallway of the long-time residents. A bald kid in a wheelchair was playing on his gameboy with a little girl who certainly had a wig on her head. 
I smiled at them and arrived at my patient's room, opening the door.

He was sitting in his bed, a mass of blond hair in his hands, his pale face pimpled in pink, skin dotted with beauty spots, plump little lips, the chubby face of a teenager. He didn't see me coming and pulled the blond hair on his head-- a wig again. It had an emo fringe with a pink streak on the side, and messy hair behind. It suited him. He looked, if I can say, properly beautiful. 

"Hi Mr Smith." I said softly.

His eyes rose towards me.

"Uh?"

"I'm your new doctor."

--

The boy wanted me to call him Sean. 
He was full of life, kind, pretty. Yes, pretty. Beautiful. And kind of hot.
The deontology says no to that, I know. But I couldn't help but fall for him. It was impossible not to love that little slip of a man. 
Always laughing, always something to say with that broad Welsh accent of his. 
He told me of his life before. His band where he 'screamed like a pig', his friends, his successive boyfriends, his homosexuality, his brother Jay, his parents, the reactions of people to his cancer. 
He said the thing he regretted the most was his hair. "I miss seeing it every morning and thinking what an useless piece of shit and then go kill it with straighteners or bleach or dye.", he said about it. But the chemo had made it all fall, along with his eyebrows and his "magnificent pubic hair". 
The guy was hilarious.
Hilariously loveable.
I think he had caught on I liked him. The way I looked at him, it was quite evident. 
But I knew that forbidden attraction was returned almost one month after.

--

"Ian?" 

I turned towards the little beauty in the bed.

"Yes?"

"Ian, I think I'm in love with you."

Sincerity was something that was compulsive with my patients with cancer. Nothing to lose. I immediately trusted him.

"Sean... You're sure?"

"Almost, yeah. And I saw how you look at me. It's reciprocal."

Damn the boy.

"...You guessed... Right."

"Just what I thought."

There was a silence. 

"Ian? Can you kiss me?"

I hesitated. How taboo that was I don't know. But I loved him. I loved Sean. The sole thought of kissing him made butterflies erupt in my stomach. 
So I slowly walked over to him. 
Took a quick glance around.
And leant in to kiss him. 
His lips were soft, like marshmallow, they were the best lips I had ever kissed. They burnt through my body, my heartbeat accelerating, the butterflies fluttering in an ecstatic dance.
I felt his soft little fingers caress my cheek.

"Ian... Could you do something for me?"

"What?" I mumbled, my lips a mere inch from his.

"The Dr Orane told me the next thing that will be paralysed will be my arms, then my midsection, which means that I will not be able to... Feel anything sexual."

I already knew what he wanted.

"I...I don't want to do my last time with anyone, I want it to be with someone I love, and I happen to love you. Will... Will you make love to me?"

The words resounded through my body, sending little waves of sexual arousal down my body. 

"Please..." his hands pushed my white coat off my shoulders. "I need you. I need..." his lips attached to my neck, making me shiver. "I need someone to be strong with me. And I want this person to be you."

"Sean... Yes."

I cupped his pretty face in my hands and slipped my tongue in his mouth, pulling him into a passionate kiss. 

"Sean" I said as he reached to tug my shirt off.

"Yes?"

"I love you."

--

"...gone too soon from this world. Sean will be remembered as a young man that brought joy and happiness within his friends and family. A good brother, a good son... A good lover."

My heart shrivelled in my chest. 
We stood in the graveyard of Merthyr Tydfil, Sean's town. It was raining. It rained all the time anyway. 
It was Sean that chose my tuxedo. He had asked his brother Jay to bring his laptop and search for him for a tuxedo for me. It was when he couldn't move his arms anymore. 
In the final letter he had made for his family, he explained his relationship with me, everything. He didn't want them to hate me and I think they knew that. But still.
I stood there, apart from his family, apart from his friends, in that tuxedo he had made me put on for him to see a few weeks before he died. At the time he had smiled largely and asked me to come and kiss him. 

But now he was six feet under, and a marble headstone decorated the fresh heap of earth. 



A simple one. He wanted to go simply. 

I felt like I was going to cry. But I swallowed my tears. I have self control. I see people die everyday. Sure, Sean wasn't anyone. I loved him.

But he was gone now.
It's crazy when you think that just a anomaly in cellular reproduction can kill a strong young man in good health. 
A strong young man that I loved.

It took me several minutes to realise the ceremony was finished and only his brother, parents and the members of his band were left. His poor brother was sobbing in his hands. The boy was 15. It's too soon to see your brother go. 
His friends looked petrified. One of them, a boy that looked too skinny to even be alive, had broken down and rested in the arms of a long-haired boy with glasses.

"Hey, Rhys. 't's okay. There." the boy was saying.

His parents went at the same time than his friends, surely that hurt less that way. I went to crouch near his grave.

"Seanie... If you're hearing me I... I love you. I'll never forget you. Never. Things haven't changed. I'm yours."

And I walked away.

--

December 30th 2006 - Local news : Young man found dead on the Merthyr Tydfil graveyard

The corpse of Pontypridd born Ian Watkins, young doctor in Cardiff, was discovered this morning on the snowy graveyard of Merthyr Tydfil, wrists slit. The hypothesis of a suicide seems the only logical lead, but the autopsy revealed he had frostbites all over the body and he died of bloodloss and cold. It was indicated by the family, that the grave where the young Watkins' lifeless body was found lying on, was his boyfriend's, passed away a year before from a brain cancer. It is the possible cause of the man's suicide. A poem was found on him, but no explanation of his deadly act.    R.G.