Cancer

Cancer had spread through his body like fire through a forest, burning everything on its path. It wasn’t news, though. It had been spreading for the past twenty years.

Hospital hallways were silent that night. Death didn’t scream; life did. There wasn’t much life left in that wing of the hospital. A subtle smell of disinfectant lingered in the air. I remember thinking about how much I hated that clean, recycled atmosphere. It was almost as if they wanted to mask death with fancy hygiene products. Doctors are all liars.

Lying on the bed, Christopher looked like the carcass of the man he used to be. As I inched closer to him, his eyes jolted open.

“They say the good die young, you know?” His voice trembled. “I must be wicked.”

I just stared at him. He wouldn’t say too much these days. All of it would be babbles and incoherent phrases. Not that he had been too lucid when healthy, either. He wasn’t sober for long enough to actually provide insightful thought.

Christopher lay there, his mouth half open. I looked into his glassy eyes and a void formed in my stomach, deep, dark, gaping. He would be gone soon, and no money could ever reverse that. We had wasted so much time… and now it was too late.

The old man’s breathing would get noisy from time to time. It reminded me of an engine struggling to start. Life is loud.

Almost as if he could read my thoughts, he turned to see me and raised his head a bit. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ve been learning to die since the day I was born. It’s just time to perform.”

He never made a sound after that. His cancer stopped in its tracks an hour later, along with his heart. The hospital’s hallways were full of noise now, doctors rushing in, but the room itself was a void. Life is loud; death is silent.