Last Chance

Chapter 8:

I heard Joel stir a few hours later and for once I didn’t get up before or with him. In fact, I groaned and rolled over still half asleep, half forgetting he wasn’t getting up to go to class and it wasn’t 7:00 am and he wasn’t healthy anymore.

I felt the mattress shift but I didn’t feel it rise as it would when one of us gets out of it.

“You’re still in bed?” Joel asks.

“Didn’t go to bed till 7:00 am,” I answer.

“You carried me to bed at eight, did you not go to sleep after that?” he asked.

“No, I couldn’t sleep,” I replied. “Jamie already left.” I continued so he didn’t have to get up and check on him.

“I’m going to get breakfast, I’ll be back, okay?” he whispers.

“Be careful on the stairs,” I reply.

He kisses my sideburn before I feel the bed rise as he gets out of it and the click of the door opening. I wish I had the energy to get up right now. I wish I didn’t need sleep, sleep seemed like such a colossal waste of time other than the fact that it helped your brain and stopped you from hallucinating. I could do so much more if I didn’t have to sleep, for Joel, my work, and myself. Not that Joel would want me to do everything for him. Independence was a good thing to have well he still had it, in a year’s time he might not be able to walk or remember much.

I prayed he didn’t forget me. Memory issues were one of the symptoms of brain cancer and the doctors always said it was a possibility. If he forgot me he might ask to be taken back to his parents. They’d think he’d come to his senses when really, he was just another step closer to dying. They’d wake up one morning to his corpse in their house and they’d still blame me. Maybe they’d say I’d poisoned or drugged him. The coroner would laugh at that when he did his examination obviously but it didn’t mean the police wouldn’t get a second opinion or his parents wouldn’t find one they liked better. People had been wrongly convicted before.

I heard the stairs creak as Joel made his way down the stairs and back up them ten minutes later. I held my breath until I heard him reach the bottom or top each time expecting to hear a crash in between but he was steady this morning and made it back to the bedroom without incident.

I rolled over to see him kick the door back open, he was holding two plates with two slices of buttered toast each. I smiled at him.

“I haven’t been made breakfast in a while,” I joke.

“It’s the least I could do with all you do for me,” he murmurs sitting back in the bed. I take one of the plates from him and he sets his on the bedside table so he can climb back in bed and cover his cold feet with the blanket.

We sit in bed and eat breakfast together. Joel must be feeling alright today considering he ate something solid, made it himself, and hasn’t had a dizzy spell. Since I worked all last night and I’m ahead by most standards now having five out of seven computers done. Wyatt would come to pick them up tomorrow, I decided to enjoy my day with Joel.

We go into the bathroom and lock the door behind us. We undress and get into the walk-in shower with seats. I knew we’d appreciate the seats one day, I just wish it wasn’t so soon. Joel sat down well I turned the showerheads on to steaming hot. The glass walls of the shower and the mirror by the sink start to fog up. I turn back and notice Joel rubbing his forehead. He must be getting a headache. I knelt down in front of him.

“You okay?” I ask just loud enough to hear over the pitter-patter of the shower. He smiles at me nervously and awkwardly, “Yeah,” he replies.

I see something in his eyes then. I’m not sure what but he blinks and it’s gone.

“I’m fine, Luka,” he continues reassuring me.

I help him up and keep him steady with one arm well I reach for the shampoo with the other. I flick the bottle open with my thumb and pour some on his head. He laughs and shuts his eyes so the shampoo doesn’t hurt them. I rub the shampoo into his hair and then guide him under one of the showerheads to wash it out. I then take the conditioner and do the same. I let him sit down and wash his own body as I wash my hair. When I look back his short hair is sticking up at odd angles. I smile and sit down beside him. His paleness is less pronounced with the warm water making his skin red. His thinness is still evident though.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I reply quickly.

I don’t know why his thinness bothered me so much. Maybe because I knew being too thin wasn’t good for you and Joel had always been slim but buff and now he wasn’t that. Not that I needed or wanted a buff fiancé, I just knew he was healthy then.

I reached up and traced one of the scars through his hair across his head. I realized something then, Joel’s parents were never going to be grandparents. Joel was an only child. I wondered if they’d thought about that. Maybe they’d just accepted it when we moved out and they disowned him? They had said he’d never had kids both when I visited them and over the phone. If they changed their mind and I did have kids in the future they could have been involved with them. They weren’t Joel’s kids but I loved Joel and when I raised my kids I was going to think about him.

When Joel did die they could talk to me, they weren’t the only people who would be saddened by his death.

“I know something’s wrong, I’m dying. No one would be okay with their fiancé dying. Unless they want them dead and I know you don’t want that,” he murmurs.

“I just wish your parents would listen to me,” I reply honestly.

“I’d wish they would, too, but we might have to accept that they aren’t going to,” he replies.

“I need to call the lawyer,” he reminds me, getting up and stepping out of the shower to dry himself off and get dressed. I sit in the shower for a while before getting out and getting dressed. Joel is sitting on the bed making an appointment with his lawyer.

“May 12th, then?” he replies. “Okay, thanks.”

He hangs up and turns to me.

“He says after we get married he’ll bring over the papers,” he replies. “We have to do it before the 12th of May.”

I guess we weren’t waiting until summer to take our trip or maybe we’d just have a small ceremony or go to court to get married and take the trip later.

“I should book the tickets for the trip, Japan is a popular destination and plane tickets are expensive,” I answer.

My phone rang then. I picked it up and looked at the number and recognized Joel’s doctor was calling. I answered.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Luka?” the doctor questions. “I called you because Joel wasn’t picking up. I’m sorry if I interrupted your work. There is a new drug we’d like to test on Joel. It just reached human trials so we can’t guarantee what side effects it will have but you could come in and read over the paper and decide later in the week if that’s alright with you?” he explains.

“Yeah, sure. How about the day after tomorrow?” I reply.

Wyatt was coming tomorrow with more computers and I couldn’t leave him or them out in the cold for long.

“Alright, 11:00 am sharp,” the doctor replied.

“Right, thank you,” I replied and hung up.

“Who was that?” Joel asked.

“The doctor, they have a new drug they want you to try,” I reply quietly.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he asks.

“Yeah, it is,” I reply.

We’d tried so many things though. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and just have them dashed when it didn’t work.

I set the phone down.

“Will you be okay by yourself for a few hours? I wanted to go visit Sean,” I continue.

“Yeah, I think it’s a good day. Go see your brother,” he reassures me.

“I love you, see you later,” I whisper and kiss his forehead.

“Love you, too,” he replies.

I was going to clear my head more than to see Sean. It was one of the warmer winter days, I’d probably drop by Joel’s school and tell the students about the drug they wanted him to try. I’d warn them not to get their hopes up, too, of course. I took my phone just in case, grabbed my car keys, slipped on my winter coat and shoes and opened the front door to the warm sun melting the icicles hanging from my roof. I locked the door behind me.

The neighbours across the way that had never bothered to acquaint themselves with us had a snowman built in their front yard. I wonder if they’d notice when Joel was gone. We hadn’t bothered to introduce ourselves either to be fair.

I got in the car and started it up, I sat for a while waiting for it to warm up and defrost the front window so I could see and drive safely on the roads.