Story of a Girl – Six Weeks
Photo credit: solrac_gi_2nd from morguefile.com
The room felt heavy with an air of depression.
An exploding silence lingered around the four pale walls, as if they were waiting.
In a moment of comical desperation, Suzie almost reached out to soothe the tension around her.
This is my battle, she wanted to say. Relax.
Then, the white dressed man decided to speak and the dreaded words came.
“Six Weeks”
No two words had ever sounded worse.
It was funny how six weeks was a long time for a vacation.
But to live? It seemed awfully short.
Six weeks. 42 days.
She guessed this was what people meant when they said ‘Your days are numbered’.
With a heavy heart and an inconsolable mother, Suzie walked out of the hospital, her mind lost in thoughts.
How was she ever going to get her priorities in order?
When would she ever be able to finish all the items on her bucket list?
Bucket List.
The word brought tears to her eyes.
When she had watched that movie, ‘The Bucket List’, she had thought it was beautiful. But being in that very same position now, she realized the depth of that movie.
“Your father is going to be so upset” Her mother wept as her shaky hands tried to open the lock of their door. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll take you to all the doctors in the world if it means curing this… this thing. Oh, my poor baby…”
Suzie squeezed her mother’s hand and got back to her thoughts.
Her poor mom was trying very hard to be brave for her but was failing miserably.
After a moment of thought, Suzie decided to be brave about this.
Everyone died at one point of time in their lives, didn’t they? Why should hers be now instead of fifty years later?
Wiping away tears at that frightening thought, Suzie brought herself a piece of paper and a pen.
It is going to be fun, she assured herself.
But as she sat down to write, the words wouldn’t come.
How was she supposed to put up a life of aspirations and goals on a square paper? Her dreams had once been endless. Now, she was being asked to write them down in ten lines. She couldn’t make herself.
Downstairs, she heard her mother call and tell every person in that tiny black phonebook of hers that her daughter was going to die. It seemed unfair to Suzie how every person her mother was talking to had years to live while she only had weeks left.
With that thought and with tears springing to her eyes for the third time that day, Suzie took a deep breath to compose herself and spent the rest of the day staring at the ceiling of her room.
That night, she was petrified to close her eyes.
The thought of closing them for one last time, fully knowing it would be her last, petrified her. It felt like if she would manage to keep her eyes open, maybe she’d survive this.
So, the first night, she willed herself to stay awake.
Her mother came into her room, disturbing her thoughts. Suzie noticed that she had a pillow and a bed sheet in her hand.
“I can’t sleep” She said, her voice cracking.
Suzie moved over as her mother gratefully lay down next to her.
“I am never letting you out of my sight” Her mother said, wrapping her arms around Suzie.
The impossibility of those words broke their frail hearts that night.
The next three days were a blur to Suzie.
Visits to the hospital took up most of her days.
But the nights were the worst because Suzie felt more emotionally vulnerable when the moon was out. She tried desperately, each night, to stay awake as fear gripped her heart and squeezed on it. She couldn’t share this with anyone. Especially not her mom.
The first week went by this way, Suzie unable to do anything productive and her mother unable to stop those tears.
On day 8, Suzie moped around, trying to shake off the denial and face the fact that her life was coming to an end.
Her father came home late one night from the business tour he had been on and clung to her as he sobbed his heart out.
Suzie had never seen her father cry before.
Her own tears were frozen at the pathetic sight of this man she loved very much.
Wrapping her arms around him, she let the big man show her how much he loved her through those heart-breaking tears of his.
The next day, he quit his job, determined to save his daughter.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you!” He said. “You just wait and see”
In those seven days, Suzie had more health examinations than she had ever had in her 18 years of life.
But much to her parents’ disappointment, every doctor she went to, the response was the same. By the time the sixth appointment ended, Suzie had become immune to hearing about the certainty of her own death.
She felt that the most cruel part of all this was how her parents had involuntarily gotten her to hope that every doctor was wrong and how Suzie fell for it, getting herself crushed at all their words.
As week three dawned, Suzie felt a sudden weakness that made her unwilling to move. This time, it was not psychological.
She spent the first three days lying in bed, crying and had to have the doctor come home to tell her she was deteriorating at a faster rate than he had expected. Even though she was in the room, they were talking about her like she didn’t exist, like she had already died.
The doctor’s choice of words made the fight go out of her.
Relatives from all parts of the world came to meet her.
Determined to do something productive, she called her enemies to tell them the news. She had more of those than friends.
“I’m dying” She said. “I know I’ve been mean to you, but if I’ve ever hurt you, I’m sorry. I genuinely do like you…r hair.”
Almost all of them forgave her.
Except for one.
Josh.
He shouted at her, telling her not to tell him pathetic lies.
No matter how hard she tried to tell him that it was the truth, he wouldn’t believe her. She didn’t blame him. It wasn’t exactly something that was easy to believe. Hell, it had taken her three weeks to believe it herself.
“Go rot in hell!” He said.
“Give me three weeks” She tried to joke.
He grew silent on the other end, finally realizing that she was telling the truth.
“I’ll be right over”
Josh was written all over week four.
In their short time together, they grew close, sharing stories and exchanging secrets.
“The doctors say that I may not make it till the end of 42 days”
“Well, we’ll prove them wrong, then, won’t we?” He smiled.
“Josh, the way they were talking about me” She said, shaking her head. “I felt like a dying plant”
“More like a wilting flower” He pushed whatever was left of her hair, off her forehead.
“I’m really scared” She admitted. “And I’m really ugly.”
“Yeah, you are” He said, making her smile. “But I’m here for you.”
“Till the end?”
“And beyond”
“Ok, that’s creepy”
Laughter filled the room.
As the last fortnight dawned upon Suzie, she spent her time telling her parents how much she loved them.
“Don’t throw my bed away, ok? I want this to be your memory of me. This is where I spent my last days. Also, I don’t want funerals. And I want to be buried close by. With a photo of us three on my chest. Call those people who put make-up on dead bodies. I want to be a beautiful zombie when I wake up from my coffin to haunt you.”
Her mother wept, trying hard not to choke on her own tears. Her father stood by the window, trying to distract himself from the painful reality.
Suzie felt this moment to be more painful than her weeks of fear.
She was at a stage where all she wanted to do was cry her heart out but didn’t have the energy to. Even if she did, she couldn’t cry because her mother would break apart and that was the last thing she wanted to see.
“It’s ok, mom. Most people don’t even get 18 years.”
The last week was the most difficult one.
It was the end.
The worst part was that Suzie did not know exactly how many more days were left.
Every night was more difficult than the previous one.
Looking back, she realized that she hadn’t really done much in the last five weeks.
Taking her piece of paper out, she decided that she finally knew what her Bucket List should contain.
Every day, Josh came over to tell her about how lucky she was to be escaping from this hell called life.
“Take me with you” He groaned.
She laughed. “Keep me here” She said.
And for the first time in 37 days, she truly cried.
She cried for the life she was losing, for the helplessness she was facing and for the relationship with Josh that would never blossom.
She cried for hours till she finally drifted off to sleep.
Early, the next day, on the third day of the week, Suzie’s mother found her daughter lying lifelessly still.
Instantly, she knew that it had finally happened.
Her wails brought everyone into the room.
Clutched tightly in Suzie’s hand, was a piece of paper that only Josh saw.
It had two sentences written on it.
Bucket List:
Live six complete weeks
Die without regrets
Crushing the paper in his hand, Josh quietly walked out, leaving the family to mourn.
He vowed to never let them know.
__END__
