Prologue
I am not dying today.
At least, that’s what my doctor says. Just this afternoon she turned from my scan on her big shiny screen, to me, another patient on her sterilised equipment. At least today I was on the seat and not the scalpels. She said, with a tired expression, “Noah, you’re better than I’ve seen you since diagnosis.”
Now, I know that doesn’t say much, but my parents didn’t hear the clear opportunity for cynicism in her statement. They heard that their darling son was almost cancer free for the first time in years.
To be honest, I feel exactly the same. I know you always hear that when you have something evil inside of you, you can feel it, like your body’s response to something that it’s never seen. But I guess when you live with that something for two years, you kind of become buddies. Or at least, get bored of wishing it would go away.
I am no different to what I was yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that. And even if I live to be one hundred, I’m going to feel the same. Granted, probably with a few more wrinkles and bowel issues, but the same old me. Noah Albert Clark. The sick kid. The kid who’s dying. The kid who will always be dying.
Because this happens every time I go into remission. They put me on some new pills to keep away the nasty stuff (clinically known as Acute Myeloid Leukaemia), mom makes me eat more greens, seen as I won’t throw them up anymore, and my hair starts growing again. Lucky me, right?
Wrong. Because even though I’m happy and healthy and all that jazz, everything stays the same. I’m still in quarantine. Because, I think deep down, everyone knows that it’s coming back. And it’s exhausting, just waiting like this.
Sure, I’ll take the pills, I’ll go into surgery, I’ll do whatever gives people hope. Who knows? I could be some miracle cancer kid that dances around on the ads and begs for donations. But, if my parents can go singing from the treetops that their son, for now, is not a walking, talking, ticking grenade, then why do I still feel so empty?
Not only do I not feel the evil that they tell me I should, I feel like I’m hollow. I always blamed the disease; my inability to make friends, the sad poetry that screams into my head at night, the feeling that someone is counting down to my funeral. And I thought that it was my acceptance of that fact that made me feel like it was okay. There was no fear. My therapist told me that accepting what was happening was good for me.
Am I supposed to cheer? Am I meant to become this new glowing person that is stronger than ever? Because, this near-death experience, this supposedly terminal disease has made me unlock my chakras or talk to God or… what?
But I don’t feel like any of that. Because for the past two years, the idea of my death was something brought up on a daily basis. Not when I was around, of course – that would just be plain insensitive – but behind closed doors, I was the talk of the town. In a rather depressing way.
So, as I lay here in my bed, trying to get a grip on what’s happening, I can only come to one conclusion.
I feel cheated.
