Prologue
Silence is a void that can be filled with anything - words, uneasy glances, shallow breaths, or death.
Elena hated silence. It was a boundless, unknown abyss. It was an unexpected guest in the middle of a crucial conversation. It was the shocking outcome of an obnoxious monitor beeping every five seconds beside her father. It was the doctor’s stiff, forced smile after he uneasily announced the prognosis. It was her father’s chest heaving for one last time, inhaling the last bit of oxygen left in the room. Elena remembered silence’s smile as he viciously ripped her father’s soul out.
Now, Elena made sure to fill the silence with anything she could - words, music, forced laughter, screams, crying.
Elena sat on the crooked shingles roof outside her window, her bare feet dangling above the apple tree in her backyard. She inhaled the smoke emitting from the joint between her shaky fingers and stared at the distorted highway lights past the fence. She remembered it all. She remembered the inevitable silence and how he had won. She remembered her father’s hollow eyes, an ambulance, and her sister’s crying.
Her father and Elena were hiking The Rocky Mountains, as usual, conquering steep climbs and traversing suspended bridges that hung high above shimmering lakes.
It was cloudy but Elena’s father was her sun, lighting her up from the inside. But that day, her sun was gradually dimming. She never fathomed her life could take a turn for the worse, especially when it seemed she was living her best days.
As they made their way to the top of a granite cliff, her father’s breathing became shallow. He stopped climbing midway and placed his cold, clammy hand on his chest.
“Just out of breath,” He panted as Elena looked back at him, concerned. “You go on.”
Elena slowly nodded and began to climb lugging her heavy backpack with her when her father sat down, now breathing heavily with a wheeze. He felt dizzy and laid down as his head began to spin and the evergreen trees seemed to be falling onto him. The wind began to howl and his body began to shiver uncontrollably.
Elena looked back at her father and her eyes bulged. His body was convulsing violently. She ran back, throwing her backpack off and not caring where it landed. Her heart pounded out of her chest just as her father’s was. She raced back down the jagged rocks and knelt beside him.
“Dad!” She held up his limp, freezing hand despite the warm spring air.
He was unresponsive. Elena violently shook his shoulders as his mouth foamed and Elena jerked back, beyond horrified.
“Dad!!” She shouted again, tears streaming down her face and disappearing into the rich soil beneath her.
Elena felt the next couple of hours were a blur of sirens, reds and blues, an oxygen mask, and her mother’s ghostly face.
Elena thought everything would be back to normal, but the world had other plans she wasn’t ready for.
“It’s a good thing he came to the hospital,” The doctor with piercing blue eyes declared.
He held a thin-lipped smile at a white table with bright fluorescent lights blinding Elena’s puffy, tired face.
“I have some bad news,” He continued and sighed.
Elena and her mother exchanged glances of worry and shock. Elena hated how the doctor waited for their reactions and held them in suspense. Why couldn’t he just say what was wrong?
“Jeremy...Has cancer,” The doctor paused for effect making Elena resent him. “He doesn’t have very long.”
Elena hated the cold hand her mother placed on hers. She furrowed her eyebrows and stared at the doctor. Her other hand hung limp and trembled beside her.
“He has chondrosarcoma. It’s a rare cancer. And it’s spread through most of his body already so there would be no point in starting chemotherapy,” The doctor spoke matter of factly, over-pronouncing every syllable.
Her mother, whom Elena thought was weak, held back her tears as they threatened to slip out.
“What are you talking about?” Her shaky voice asked.
“Jeremy has cancer,” The doctor repeated and pursed his lips. “I know it’s hard to absorb the news.”
Her mother’s eyes bulged and shook her head in denial. She looked at the doctor who nodded his bulky face to affirm the dreadful news.
Then, her mother took a deep breath.
“How long?” Her voice croaked, squeezing Elena’s hand harder.
Elena stared at the doctor’s callous face who strained it to look a bit more emotional. He clasped his hands, intertwining his fingers, and sighed.
“I’d say two months...At the most.”
Elena felt her chest rip into shreds.
“I don’t understand,” Elena’s mom suddenly cried and took a tissue from the box the doctor offered her. “He’s so healthy. He’s always going to the gym, eating right, going on hikes, I-”
Elena didn’t shed tears. Instead, she was infuriated and shocked. She wanted to strangle the doctor by his fat neck. His fake emotions disgusted her.
“That’s the thing about cancer,” He looked at Elena’s poker face. “It’s random. I’m so sorry. We’re going to place him in the palliative care unit right away.”
His words were rigid and choppy as if he was reciting a mal-rehearsed speech. Elena’s mother nodded and looked defeated. She let go of her daughter’s hand and quickly headed out of the office, rushing into the bathroom.
Elena didn’t say anything, nor did she shed a tear. She felt the walls of the hospital close in on her as her breath caught in her dry throat. How could the universe be so cruel?
The next day, her father was confined to a hospital room with ample lighting and cords running behind the bed. He was given multi-coloured pills to relieve his pain.
“The morphine will make you hallucinate,” The nurse with the golden grin and blue scrubs said to her drowsy father. “But they’ll relieve your pain. You won’t feel anything.”
She watched the nurse slide the pill onto her dad’s tongue and hand him a plastic cup to drink some water.
In the next couple of minutes, her father began to move slowly, he laughed and looked at Elena.
“These pills make you see crazy things,” He chuckled and then violently coughed. “But, wow, I don’t feel a thing.”
“Not a thing?” Elena asked, intrigued, turning away from the window and looking at him.
Her father closed his tired eyes and shook his head slowly as if he was in bliss. Then, it seemed he fell asleep. He was dying and yet, he was calm. Elena looked at the white pills in the tiny bottle. Could they help her calm down too?
The morphine tablets beside her father in the hospital room were all too tempting.
Elena unscrewed the plastic cap, checking the door multiple times to make sure no nurse was going to barge in. She looked at her father’s slightly open, dry mouth, his chest rhythmically heaving up and down, and the shadows of his relaxed eyes. She felt guilty. His health was slowly dwindling, like a flower withering away. And here she was, thinking about how to numb her pain.
But, she didn’t care. Her sun was dimming. Soon, it would become dark. And Elena was afraid of the dark.
She looked inside at the tablets staring up at her, coaxing her to reach in. Her spiking curiosity grew further as her finger slid a tablet out of the orange-tinted bottle.
She whipped her head to face the doorway. She could hear the quick footsteps of a nurse skittering down the hall. She capped the bottle and put it back on the side table.
It was Amy, the same, kind nurse who went out of her way to care more for her patients. Her graceful, brown eyes smiled at Elena as she adjusted her father’s oxygen level, increasing it by a notch. Elena tightly grasped the morphine pill in her left hand beside her.
“I’ll see you and your dad tomorrow, Elena,” She smiled warmly at her, oblivious to her heinous act. “Take care.”
Elena faintly smiled back as she burnt red. She watched Amy’s eyes for any indication of suspicion. As the nurse walked out, Elena shakily slid the tablet onto her tongue and dry swallowed. After a couple of minutes, her breathing slowed, the world stopped turning, and Elena was floating in the air. It was just what she needed to cope with the tumultuous nature of her life that left her hollow.
Only Deborah came in the middle of nights, the nurse with undeniably horrible vision, usually yawning countless times and too tired to even notice Elena drugged up. She would sleepily grunt at her, tossing a careless glance at her father who was sound asleep, and then leave.
It was a miracle that in all the time her father was bedridden, no one found out about her budding addiction. Elena spent her nights finding happiness that had been unknown to her.
So, this is what it’s like to be truly happy, She thought to herself as she explored the world of delirium.
The universe created an opportunity for her and she took it. Her mother mistook her eagerness to stay more frequently at the hospital for helping her out, but it was Elena’s time to escape her decaying life for a couple of hours every night as she stared at her father’s crippling state.
Two weeks later, he was the same. Elena looked at her father. He was actually dying. And there was nothing she could do to stop it. She had to believe in a miracle. She looked outside the window and searched for God. A sign. Any sign that her father would make it.
“Please,” She whispered. “Please don’t let my dad die. I need him.”
She walked up to her father, gently curling her fingers around his limp wrist. It was as if he was already dead. He was unresponsive. He was silent.
“Please, dad,” Elena croaked a bit louder. “For your daughter. Please.”
Elena’s warm tears slipped down her cold face and dropped onto the side of the bed. “What about that trip you wanted to go on? We’re supposed to go together. Right? Dad?”
“Please,” Elena shook his shoulder and he remained still.
She closed her eyes and opened them again hoping this was a long nightmare that would cease when she woke up. But when she opened them, her dad was still bedridden.
Elena slowly nodded her head trying to accept the fact that her father was leaving the world.
“It’ll be very dark without you,” She whispered to him, resting her hand on his warm, soft forehead.
Elena looked at the pills on the tray beside him, opened the bottle, numbly slipped a tablet onto her tongue, and then swallowed. She slowly sat back down as she waited for the effects to kick in. She and her father were no different at these moments: both unresponsive and oblivious to reality.
And though her father was the one dying, this was the beginning of her end.
