It was funny. Or I thought it was funny, anyway. It was funny that the one person that got to be somewhere besides school, is the one person that actually enjoyed sitting around in class and learning. The one person who actually cared about the stuff they were teaching.
Instead, like I so often was, I was sitting in a hospital bed. I hated hospital food, I hated nurses that were only nice to me because they pitied me, and most of all I hated listening to the coughs and the screams. I’d spent three months sitting around in a hospital bed watching my parents lose their minds for the third time. It was taking everything I had in me not to explode with how tightly wound I was. But luckily I’d be going back home soon.
My mother had a grip like a pro wrestler on my shoulder, as the doctor walked in and tried not to look me in the eyes. My father was sitting in a chair in the corner, reading the newspaper. He was also trying not to look me in the eyes. The doctor looked up at my mother, but still avoided my gaze. I had a smirk on my face, trying to have a little bit of joy in this pitiful situation.
“Well? How long?” My mother’s voice was shaking. She was still young, in her mid thirties. Her hair was starting to turn grey. Her mascara and makeup and everything else ran down her face from fresh tears. I’d been trying to tell her jokes all day, to maybe get a little bit of a chuckle out of her. She wasn’t in the mood, oddly enough.
“At the moment… Our best estimate is nine months.” His voice was low and hushed. As if he could say it quiet enough for me not to hear when I was sitting in a bed a foot away from him. He darted his eyes quickly in my direction and then looked away.
His statement roused my father up. He put the paper down and stood up from his seat. He marched over to the doctor. My father was so thin that he looked sickly. But he was also taller than most, so he had that. His eyes went wide when he arrived at the doctor.
“So what are you going to do about it?” My father said, his voice cracked midway. The doctor didn’t immediately respond. “What are you going to do!” My father yelled. I’d never seen him break down like this. Tears welled up behind his glasses.
“Sir, I know you’re upset. But his condition has worsened too much. There’s just… There’s nothing left. We could try surgery, but the chance of him ending up braindead is too high. The cancer’s in such a vital spot…” The doctor shrunk back. I kept my smile on as long as I could hold it. It got hard at points.
Tears welled in the corner of my eyes, as I saw my parents breakdown and start holding each other in an embrace. As I saw the doctor leave the room with his head hung low, I decided to do the same. Even as my dark mass of hair covered my face I held that smile there. The tears dripped down my face and leaked onto my hospital gown, but I still smiled. Because what else could I do?
My parents gave me some privacy as I changed into my street clothes. A pair of jeans and a long sleeve maroon shirt that felt a size too large. I still smiled as we walked through the long corridors of the hospital and made our way to the elevator. I still smiled as my parents stared stone-faced at the elevator doors during the descent. I kept a smile on as we walked to the car in the parking lot. When I got into the car I put on my headphones and played music as my parents tried not to talk about the diagnosis.
With that, my smile disappeared. I looked through the messages on my phone and saw the usual people. Teachers were sending me my assignments so I could do them while in the hospital. Relatives were sending their prayers.
As I changed songs my friend Danny sent a message: How are you doing, man? I would have laughed if I didn’t think it’d disturb my parents during their conversation.
I’m doing great! How was your day? Was what I decided to respond with.
He left me on read for about thirteen minutes, presumably because he was still in class. I used those minutes to respond to my various relatives sending their love and support. After three messages I decided to just copy and paste the same generic sappy message and send it to all of them. Eventually Danny responded with: How long?
Such a vague response. Yet I knew instantly what he wanted to know. Just seeing the words sent a chill down my spine. My entire existence was being reduced to an expiration date.
What did I do to deserve that? I typed my response out slowly, unsure of whether or not I actually wanted to send it. Nine months. I was stuck on three dots for a really long time. I could hear someone shouting my name from the front seat. It was my Mom. I could tell she was trying to keep her composure.
“Jacob? Jacob, honey.” I contemplated not taking my headphones out and just pretending like I couldn’t hear her. I was sitting in the back of our car. I was staring out the window watching the buildings pass as we drove, so it’s not like I could see that she was looking at me. Danny eventually stopped typing, but he never responded. Smart, he didn’t want to say something and crush my spirits. I pulled my headphones out.
“Jacob, are you sure you want to go to school today? I mean we can take the day off and go to a pizzeria in the city… It’s not like anyone would blame you.” She very carefully said. My stare must’ve been harsh because she gave me a sad look when I met her eyes.
“I uh… I don’t want to miss any more school than I’ve already missed.” I said hesitantly. Have to choose my words carefully right now. They haven’t come to terms yet. She turned back around to resume her conversation with my dad. I stuck my headphones back in and listened to sad music as I continued to stare out the window. This was possibly the last time I’d ever get to see the city.
As we approached the bridge the giant buildings made way to much smaller ones. I tried to occupy myself with happy thoughts as we passed them by.
At least I won’t have to do treatment this time so I can keep my hair.
At least now Mom and Dad can try for that girl they’ve always wanted.
At least it’ll finally be over.
Seeing the bridge broke me out of my trance. It was only a few miles long, but it seemed to last forever as you drove through the traffic. The pale metal looked almost white in the blazing sun. Driving across the bridge was always my favorite part about going to the hospital. It looked stunning as we approached. Even more stunning as it faded in the distance.
…
I pulled my hood over my head. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. School isn’t that bad. I mean, I’m about to die. School’s nothing compared to death, right? That double set of doors leading into the main office were just as foreboding as a vault door would’ve been. The secretaries gave me a look of pity as I signed myself in. I flashed them the biggest grin I could. That only made them look sadder. No way to win, I suppose. I marched off to third hour just like before all the nonsense. The vice principal decided to stop me as I walked past his office.
I made my way to class, pulling a fake smile back onto my face. My teacher pulled me into a tight embrace, to comfort me. It was a stupid gesture. I didn’t feel any better or worse just because I was hugging someone. I sat down in my usual seat, right next to Danny. I noticed as I sat down that the entire classroom had gone completely silent. As if awestruck by my presence. When I looked over at Danny I found that he was staring at me.
In fact, everyone was. “What?” I asked. The classroom erupted back into noise. Chitter and chatter filled the room once again. A lot of it was about me. Danny was staring at me with a puzzled expression. He spent several minutes studying me before finally saying anything.
“So what did you do in the hospital all that time?” He asked. I’d hoped that by the time I got back to class I’d get to talk about something other than my sickness or the time spent in that Make-A-Wish prison… But oh well.
“Mostly watched tv, sat around. Got bloodwork done, took meds. You know. The usual fun stuff.” I wasn’t being entirely sarcastic. I’d been getting treatment for so long that it has become pretty mundane to me. He stared at me for a while. He seemed to be deeply troubled by something. He scanned my face for long moments with a cold expression.
Danny was unlike me in a lot of respects. I was short, barely 5’5. He was tall at 6’1. I weighed less than one hundred pounds, he was somewhere around one fifty. I had long dark hair that sometimes covered my eyes. His brown hair was trimmed neatly on his head. I liked making dumb jokes, he was a bit more stoic. I always wore baggy clothes, he was well dressed. My voice wasn’t necessarily high pitched, but it definitely wasn’t deep. His voice demanded attention. “I’m worried about you.” He sighed.
“Why’s that?” I asked with a chuckle. He narrowed his eyes like he was upset about something. The people around us were getting quieter, trying to listen in.
“You’re doing that thing you do. Where you pretend like nothing’s wrong, and like nothing matters.” He explained. He stared me in the eyes. “I know you don’t like talking about it, but you shouldn’t be smirking right now.” He finished.
“Ooooookay then.” I said, purposefully stretching out the ‘o’ sound to make him sound crazy.
“Like that, exactly like that!” He raised his voice just a little. “You’re treating everything like it’s a joke. It’s not healthy.” He continued, quieter than he needed to be. “You need to have a little faith that everything will work out okay.” He finished.
I laughed in his face. Have a little faith. What a joke. “Dude, I’m the same person I’ve always been. I’m the same person I’ll always be. Even if I’m lying in a puddle of my own blood I’ll still be the same person. Nothing is wrong with me.” I said with humor. He didn’t seem to find any comfort in it. The teacher’s ten minute alarm for ‘class free time’ finally went off and our lesson began before Danny and I could really catch up. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. I was already sick of talking about being sick, and I’m not sure how much more I could handle. The lesson was a simple one, she passed out a poem, we analyzed it. By the time the bell rang we were highlighting the second to last sentence.
It was a simple poem, about life and death. Is this all there is? Why is everything about life and death? What is people’s obsession? It’s not like they have an expiration date. The hallways are just as bleak and grey when they’re filled with people.
…
When I finally got home it was like a breath of fresh air. I wasted no time in unpacking my stuff, and throwing dirty clothes into the hallway outside my room. Once that was all done I threw myself backwards onto my bed and watched the ceiling fan make its rounds for a few minutes. I could hear my mom and dad talking in concerned voices out in the hallway. I tuned it out and instead tried focusing on the noise of the fan going about.
When I heard them go silent, I waited for the door to slam shut as dad left to go out for a drive. He did that when he didn’t know what else to do. I scuttled to their bedroom where mom was crying on their bed. She forced herself to stop when she heard me approaching, but she still ended up letting out a little bit of a sniffle. “Hey mom?” I asked from the doorway. No way I’m going in there and facing her like this.
“What is it honey?” She asked. She’s trying to keep herself together, putting on a happy facade. But her voice is rich with despair.
“Can I go down to the arcade or something?.” I asked.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about this?” She asked with another sniffle. That’s the thing about people. We’re limited by only having our own thoughts and feelings, thus it’s hard to differentiate between what we’re feeling and what others are. She believed that I needed someone to talk to because she needed someone to talk to. She thinks that I’m putting on a happy facade because she’s putting on a happy facade.
She doesn’t understand that I’m genuinely happy. I imagine she’d never understand that, even if she knew why. “No… I just need some time by myself.” I caught a glimpse of her face through the crack in the door. She looked defeated. Like her whole world had ended. I guess in a way it had. Or it’s about to. There was a long pause from her end.
“Go ahead. Be back by ten though.” She finally said, quietly. As I made my way out of the house I could hear her lose control and begin to weep.
One of the upsides of not having long to live is that you can get away with a lot more than you normally would. I could do almost anything and people would still let me off lightly. Anything short of murder, I suppose. Which would come in handy for what I was planning on doing.
I didn’t go to the arcade like I promised, instead I made my way to the darkest deepest edges of town. Far away from where any normal person should go. I went to a neighborhood full of abandoned houses with homeless people making dens to do drugs in. At the very deepest darkest edge of town was an abandoned factory.
Even the homeless population around those parts considered it too dangerous to go near. Traps were apparently laid out that took out anyone that got too close. Traps not designed to kill or even really to maim, but designed to hurt like hell.
No one went to the cops because the cops didn’t come down there anymore. I would’ve liked to see their reaction if they ever found out that it was a fifteen year old that had made those traps that had dislocated their shoulders or temporarily blinded them.
My lab was covered in dust from a month of neglect. The timing of my little excursion was rather unfortunate given how close I was to finishing my suit. All I had to do was finish the power source and it’d be good to go. Cans of chemicals and different alloys lined benches and tables. My workspace was in a constant state of messiness, though I didn’t really care enough to clean up.
Lying in the center of the largest table in my lab was a suit. A porcelain mask lay off to the side; it had two large completely white lenses that were covered with tiny black dots that acted as sensors. A mess of brown thin ‘fur’ laid everywhere. It had taken months to perfect the polymer so that it couldn’t be cut or burned by conventional methods. The suit itself was spread out, the exoskeleton already covered by the ‘fur,’ the only work I needed to do was insert the battery.
This is it. Tonight is the night. The second time my cancer returned, and the chemo started, I began to realize that I didn’t have long to live. My life was on a timer. I suppose everyone’s life is. My timer was just moving much faster. While mindlessly searching the internet in one of my numerous stays at the hospital I stumbled upon designs the military had been using for a mechanical exoskeleton that enhanced strength and speed. Then I stumbled upon a chemical formula created by a lab in Harvard for a polymer that couldn’t be burned or cut. At the age of twelve I began assembling the suit. The chemo treated the second round of brain cancer. It had returned just in time for the completion of my suit. Which meant that it was now or never.
My hand shook nervously as I inserted the little chip into the ‘spine’ of the suit. Finally I heard a click and suddenly the mechanisms in the exoskeleton came to life. Tiny LED lights, that I had designed so I could tell when the suit was on lit up. Clicks and clacks sounded throughout the entire suit. This was the part where I really, really hoped I got my math right.
I slid the suit on. The metal against my skin was freezing cold until the numbing agent was applied. No amount of numbing could keep the sharp pain shooting throughout my nervous system from being noticed. It felt like a thousand tiny metal worms digging beneath my skin and biting down on the muscles. Tiny worms crawling into my ears and attaching themselves. Tiny worms all along my spine, wrapping around the bone. Tiny worms crawling in my skull. I dropped to my knees and screamed for the duration of the process.
Luckily the pain eventually stopped, and instead of being trapped inside of an immobile exoskeleton until I starved to death like I had feared, it had successfully bonded to my nervous system. I told my fist to clench and the exoskeleton responded. Even more amazing, I told my brain to move my tail, and the prehensile tail attached to the exoskeleton moved about. I tested it for a few minutes, seeing if I could use it to grip objects.
Next was the mask. Though porcelain on the outside, the mask was entirely mechanical on the inside. Special lenses designed to enhance my vision and special sensors designed to enhance my sense of smell were built into it, much like the special devices attached to the ears. The problem with the mask was that in order to integrate it was going to have to attach itself under my eyes, and inside my nose and mouth. Which was not only incredibly painful, but also extremely dangerous. If my math was even a little off then I could be rendered blind forever. Removing a mechanical exoskeleton was going to be extremely difficult while blind, I imagined. Well, here goes nothing.
I could see the LEDs light up as the mask snapped into place on the exoskeleton. The wires sank underneath my eyes and blinded me. My nostrils filled with fire as the wires sank into the delicate skin. I could feel the wires sink into my throat and mouth. The numbing agent was pumping in even larger doses, and still the pain made me fall. I fell to my back and clawed at my face as I tried to scream but no noise came out. If I could have screamed in those moments I imagine my throat would’ve been raw by the time the process was finished.
It was a horrifying thing, wearing that mask. My vision wasn’t perfect normally but it wasn’t horrible. But the mask let me see particles of algae growing along the wall as if they were giant patches. Through the eyes of the lenses everything was perfectly clear. I could see for miles in a straight line if nothing was obscuring me. I’ll have to do more tests with this stuff once I’m finished.
I almost vomited from the smell. Everything reeked, even normal everyday things like the clothes that I had left on the floor. I clenched my fist again to see if the integration was absolutely over. It felt as though I was clenching my skin and bone fist. I pinched the pseudo skin beneath the fur polymers. Then I tested the other enhancements. I jumped straight up into the air. I’d measured the height of the room to be fourteen feet tall. I made it to the ceiling without much effort.
I did a sort of flip in the air and when I was angled correctly I sank my giant claw tipped feet into the metal ceiling. I started to walk along the ceiling. I got about halfway to the wall when I made a wrong move and fell flat on my head. Then I tested my newfound strength. I found a crowbar someone had used to force their way in there with, before I had become a tenant. I bent it effortlessly in my bare hands.
Okay. Now…. Time to do something really stupid.
