Pain Like No Other

• Rebekah Sarre, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2016

Bella sat on the hard wooden chair breathing in the stale air of antiseptic as she held his hand beside the hospital bed listening to the steady bleeping of his heart monitor. The cancer had gripped his brain long ago with fingers of unbreakable steel. He would die. The knowing that you will only see this body alive for twenty four more hours is a pain beyond description and like no other. Bella would have rather him die suddenly to end his constant hurt and to fill the emptiness on her inside of knowing death has caught up to him faster than he could run.
Nineteen months ago blue eyed Bayley Jones was just a normal starry eyed 8 year old with hopes that reached beyond tomorrow. Now the only hope was hope for a miracle. She sat holding the hand of her sleeping brother wishing that she could continue to hold it forever. The hole left in her heart would never be filled as he left forever. Death was a concept Bella had yet to grasp. She knew what it was and what it meant but the pain of losing your loved one forever was unbearable and something Bella had never felt before now. It couldn't be put into words, the pain of loss was something you could never describe until it happened to you. People say to treat someone as if it’s their last day on Earth, leaving Bella to wish she could rewind and love Bayley so much more. She wished she had fought less and laughed more. It made Bella feel as if the amount of time you spend with a person will
never truly be enough, especially someone you love. The wish of wanting to redo her life was burden that weighed down her heart.
The hum of the machines keeping Bayley alive echoed around the room creating a silence like no other. Then it happened. The silence fell to pieces as the speed of Bayley's heart quickened. The monitor let out an alarming siren as doctors and nurses spilled into the room, white shoes sliding across the tiled floor. Bella was pushed away beyond her brother now unable to be with him in his last moments. Bayley's eyes shot open bloodshot and still as ice as his arms and legs violently shook up and down in different directions. The beeping of his heart had now tripled the speed it should have been as nurses hurriedly stabbed him with needles and fed him tablets of fluorescent colour into his almost lifeless body. Then it stopped. The nurses dropped the lifesaving tools they held, failing at what they attempted to do, as the now silent heart monitor showed a straight line. Bella's brother had gone
forever and there was nothing she could do to save him. Bayley Jones was dead and he wasn't ever coming back.