A Rather Grave Love Story

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

I know how I’ll die; I’ll merely fall asleep and never wake up again. Quick. Simple. Painless.
She never even knew it was coming; the doctors would assure my parents.
The doctors are wrong; I did know it was coming. Sometimes, I close my eyes and see a bright, shining light, and my body becomes so cold I know it can’t be long. I am fading, like a flower decaying in the cold shadows of death, like mist being pierced by the heat of the day.
Even now I can feel my soul escaping, like a kite being tugged higher and higher by violent gales of wind. Soon, the string shall be wrenched from my fingers and I’ll be free to ascend towards the stormy heavens, liberated from pain, but banished irrevocably from the earthly realm. Free to bob across the bruised clouds in a wild and savage dance, yet confined by my loneliness.
Tears spill down my cheeks as I finally accept that my dreams will simply remain as that; empty dreams that never came to pass, that withered before they could reach fruition. This disease is a life sentence. This bed is my prison. And I shall never escape. There will be no appeals, no reprieves, no early release through good behaviour; I’m destined for the lethal injection. But before despair can sink its claws into me I’m consumed with thoughts of Niall… my first and only love.

You would think our first meeting would burn in my memories, a shining beacon of joy and optimism. Instead, I only have disjointed recollections of that day, a series of blazing images that play before me, as brilliant and quick as a dragonfly’s wing. The sharp crunch of ice beneath my boots. The hot rush of pain and embarrassment as I fall on the sidewalk, reminiscent of an uncoordinated spider. Niall’s radiant, slightly crooked smile. Eyes like jade and hair of burnished gold. Then I’m left grasping at elusive flashes of colour and sensation that slip through my fingers like a half-remembered dream. Empty inside, because I’m only eighteen and have lived most of my life without truly living.

Our break-up I can remember with astringent clarity. The bitter accusations, the shattered photo frame, my despair at finding him in bed with another woman. His hand reaching towards me, his voice desperate as I stared at him blindly, feeling like I was dying, as if my heart had been cleaved from my chest and left me with a gaping hole. My last of glimpse of him, slumped in misery, his face drawn with defeat and despair.
Does Niall know I’m dying? If he knows, does he care?
Now, as Death stretches its cool hands towards me, I selfishly, desperately hope he’ll never forget me, and that his heart will break when he discovers I’m dead.
I’ll surely go to hell for that alone, I thought sleepily.
I close my eyes and allow sleep to claim me, unable to know if I’ll ever wake up again.

*****
A receptionist at St Constantine hospital watched as a tall, vibrantly handsome male burst into the foyer and made his way towards her. His pale green eyes were wet— with what, tears?— and overflowing with a deep and abiding grief.
“Luciana Hargrave’s room, please?” he asked, his aristocratically handsome face white with anxiety.
She typed the name into the computer and looked up sympathetically.
“I’m very sorry…”

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