Cancer With A Care

• James Nelson, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2017

I woke up early this morning. Why?
My heart was racing. A rapid rhythmic drum buried deep within. Sweat beads on my eyebrow and upper lip, like water condensing on a cool drink. I contemplated my future. Questions filled my head, like white noise, they swirled and churned as I struggled to decipher them.
My future would be determined…
But I don’t know when…
A cold chill, shivered down my spine, as if someone was watching over me. It was an unusual, sort of feeling. They wanted me to be a highly qualified doctor of some specialty. I would hate to be a disappointment to them. I slowly got out of bed, and I realised something wasn’t right?
I walked into the kitchen and saw my Mum and Dad sharing a cup of tea. I know that they wanted me to succeed in life. I sat down and ate breakfast. My Mum looked me in the eye and started to talk…
“Your… Aunt… she passed away earlier this morning…
“My eyes started to water… “How?” I asked.
“Cancer…”
This wasn’t what shocked me. I had known about my Aunty for a while now. It was what my Mum said next…
My vision started to blur, tears fell down my face like a waterfall. I, almost collapsed. Terrified, I stood. Paralysed, unable to move, locked in place like a sculpture frozen in time…
My Mum also had, cancer, Lung cancer. Every aspect of me was being sucked out like a vacuum. I couldn’t get past this. It would not leave my mind. No matter how hard I try, it wouldn’t go away. I was traumatised. I couldn’t do anything… We spent every second of every day at the hospital.
My Dad said that she’ll be ok. I know that’s not true. Every day we visited her, and every day she got worse. It’s not getting better…
It’s a few days later and it did get worse. Much, much worse. She died… My Mum died of cancer… Everything around me fell apart, as if someone continually hit it with a sledgehammer. I couldn’t see the happy side to life, I couldn’t feel any cheerful emotions. Only the worst.
Out of all of the things that could have happened. It had to be that. By this point I kicked the walls, I screamed with such pain, I wished the ground could have swallowed me up there and then! My anger escalated, to an emotion that I have never experienced.
ABSOLUTE RAGE!!!
Why did this stupid world hate me? Why did…
I knew that I still had to move on in life, but I couldn’t…
I now knew why…
Why they pushed me so hard in school, why they wanted me to succeed. Why they wanted me to be a doctor.