Terminal

• Ashleigh O'leary, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

Hope. Hope is the one thing that keeps me going. The one thing that never fails me; never ceases to push me forward even when all I want to do is give up. It’s the one thing that keeps me alive. It’s the hope that, one day, I will be reunited with my family, and this dreadful nightmare will be gone forever.

Yet, the wall of hope is slowly crumbling, and the fight that has seemed so perfectly clear for all these years is starting to fade. The dreaded question that has hovered right outside my mind for so long is beginning to find a way in. When do I stop? It’s such a simple question, yet the meaning is far too great for my brain to register. I have no idea what to do. I need guidance; I need my family. I have never felt so alone in my life.

It’s funny. I say I am gone, but I’m not. Not really. I am always with my family, at least my body is. My mind can never seem to find them. It’s like a barricade that gets stronger every time I push against it. The barrier between my conscious self and my unconscious self, that keeps me from communicating with my family. To them, I am in a coma. But I can always feel their presence, I know when they are beside me, at the hospital bed, and I know when it is just the nurses around. I just can’t reach out far enough to speak to them.

****

Terminal. It’s the word every patient, every mother, every father, every family, dreads to hear. And when you do hear it, you wish you heard you heard wrong, that the doctor actually said .‘Terrible. Your cold is terrible’. But after the doctor says a second time, with less sympathy in his voice than the first, reality hits you fair and square. You are going to die.

My mother told me to let go. Not to worry about anyone, that I could stop fighting. But for once in my life, I am not going to be the perfect child; quiet, modest, obedient. I will keep fighting. I will keep fighting this horrible disease that has impacted so my life so greatly; I will not let it win. I will not let some stupid, tiny cancer cell take over my body. I will not.

****

The next day, I awake from my coma. And at last I realize that you don’t need to see your loved ones to know that they love you. Love is deeper than that. We don’t realize how much we love them until it is all too late. ‘Goodbye, family. I know I have fought long enough now. I love you’, I think for the last time. And finally my wall is broken.