to go back to a few hours ago when they were brimming with hope.
“Let’s go meet the team,” Dr. Channing says as he watches me shake while I stand here in front of him. My head is pounding as it does every day now, and I know that a nosebleed isn’t far off.
I’m introduced to the “brilliant” doctors that hold my future in their hands. The guys spent hours looking into them, so I feel like I already know them. They’re colder and more clinical than I’d imagined though, and I wonder if they see me as a person with a life they’re trying to save, or if I’m just another number in a long line of attempts to become gods in medical history.
Shaking off my negative thoughts, I follow them into a conference room, where they start to explain how the procedure works. I’ve been to medical school, I know what most of the terms mean, I know how surgeries work, how science works.
But when they start to talk about the risks and what happens if they aren’t able to cut this nerve, or move this blood vessel, or if the tumor has attached itself to this part of my brain…I panic.
“We’ve had one recent success that gives a lot of hope for your procedure,” they tell me, but I can read between the lines, that their one success came amidst a hundred failures.
The paperwork is placed in front of me, and my hands shake as I sign, coincidently at the same time that my nose begins to drop steady drops of blood. They splash on the paper, and honestly, it all just feels like the biggest sign in the world that I shouldn’t be doing this.
We shake hands with the doctors and set up the surgery for the following morning. They go through the usual spiel of how I can’t eat or drink after a certain time. Blah, blah, blah.
I feel numb. All their words go in one ear and out the other, because I’m envisioning my dad on that couch, gone forever. And then I’m imagining myself stuck to a machine in a hospital bed, Carter, Quaid, and Logan mourning the ghost of a girl that will never come back.
How long would it take them to take me off the machines? How long would they let me lie there until all the memories of this life we’ve lived together have been replaced by memories of me comatose on that bed?
My panic is a living, breathing thing now.
I politely tell them I have to go to the bathroom, and when I turn the corner, I run. Or hobble really, because my body is not up for running anymore. I go through the heavy steel doors and down the glass-encased hallway until I’m out of the hospital. There are cabs waiting in the circle drive of the hospital, and I frantically hail one. I grab the handle and jump inside.
And right before we set off, for who fucking knows because I can’t even remember where I told the driver to go, the other passenger door swings open and Logan slips in.
He slides into the seat and closes the door. He doesn’t say anything as the cab pulls away. He grabs my hand and holds it tight. And he just sits there next to me as we drive.
“Where are we going?” he finally asks after we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.
“Away,” I tell him, my voice breaking.
“Okay, baby,” he says quietly, once again squeezing my hand.
I look over at him.
“Aren’t you going to say something, tell me how stupid I am for running, beg me to go back?”
“No Val, I’m not,” he says quietly. “I’m just going to go with you wherever you want to go, and I’m going to be there for however long you want me to be there.”
“Stop the car,” I yell suddenly, and the driver screeches to a surprised halt right in the middle of the road. I get out and stumble away.
“Val,” Logan pleads, grabbing my arm. I turn around in his arms, and I start beating on his chest with my fists as angry tears fall down my face.
“Stop being so fucking nice,” I scream at him. “Why are you still here? Why do you three want to watch me die so fucking bad?”
He grips both of my arms and gives me a small shake. “You think I want to watch you die? That’s what’s going on in your head?” He lets go of