One Last Goodbye
#1 of Liv, Ty, and Real Life
A short story about friendship and the grim reaper.
We were all standing outside his room, in the blazingly pristine white halls that smelled of cleaning agents. I always hated hospitals. The unsettling reek of chemicals that cannot be escaped behind their cold walls. They always caused me headaches. As I clutched the sleeve of my borrowed hoodie like a vise and forced myself not to cry, I thought back of the pervious, precious few hours that we'd been here.
The phone call woke me up at 6:42 a.m., and I knew even then I'd never forget that time, never forget this date. Even in the haze of sleep, the message was received clearly, and I didn't change clothes in my haste to leave, barely noticing the burning in my throat. I arrived bedraggled, clothed in sweat pants and a tank top, shoeless, with my hair whipping wildly about my mousey face. In the last moments I had spoken to my dear friend, alone, as per his request, I had questioned how this had all happened so randomly.
"Liv?" I glanced up at the sound of my name. My friend Topher stood stoically, his eyes dark as if he hadn't slept, in the doorway to the room I was waiting outside of now.
"He wants to talk to you now." His voice cracked a bit at the end, and he tried to cover it up by clearing his throat. I doubt any of us cared.
I rose from my seat with some difficultly. My body was stiff, tense with stress and the fear eating me alive on the inside, but I drug myself across the room towards that damned door and the nightmarish hell that lie beyond it. I closed the door with a soft click, took a deep inhale, and turned to face the horror scene. Zach lay tucked into a white bed in a white room. His face was ashen and bleak, and without the harsh beeping of the heart monitor I would have assumed death had already taken him from us. But he smiled at me, his trademark signature smile, and I felt the dams behind my eyes quiver.
"Hey Livvie." He all but whispered, his voice raspy. There was a square of gauze taped to his forehead on the right side, and the smooth skin around it was bruised and stained a brownish color. A thin oxygen tube was inserted inside his bottle shaped nose. He was hooked up to so many machines I couldn't count them. I almost whimpered.
"Hi Zach. Do you need anything? Should I call a nurse?" I knew I was shaking but I just couldn't help it. One of the most important people in my life was laying in front of me, bleeding into his body cavity, and no one could do a thing to help.
"Nah. I'm okay." I sat down in the chair next to his bed and forced myself to smile at him.
"They said that a fragment of one of my lower ribs punctured my liver. They can't do surgery fast enough to fix it, so I'm bleeding to dearth." I nodded, staring at the pattern of blue and white tiles on the floor. My fists were clenched against my knees so hard the usually black skin beneath my gray fur had turned white. I didn't want to hear this again. Not from him. Not with such certainty.
"Liv?" He asked, turning his head to look at me. I looked up at him and reached out, taking his fin in my paw and squeezing gently. I saw an infinite galaxy in those piercing blue eyes.
"Yes Zach? What is it?"
"Don't you ever doubt yourself again. Don't you ever let anybody put you down, you hear me?" I blinked in confusion.
"What?"
"You heard me. You're one of the most amazingly multi-layered people I've ever met. You are talent and smart and so so strong. Stronger than I ever was or ever could be" His eyes were welling with tears. "But you think badly of yourself because a few idiots talk shit. After I'm gone I don't want you to EVER look down on yourself again. You hear me? Never. And I'm not saying all that because you're my friend. Or because you're a girl. Or because you have a figure that can make a real man swoon, that even a gay guy like me can appreciate. You're independent and you're pretty, and all those little boys who told you that you'd never find love just aren't man enough to handle the beauty that's inside you. You don't take shit from anybody after I'm gone. You don't need my protection, or anyone else's. You never did. I want you to see the potential inside yourself. Okay? That's my dying wish Liv. That's what I want you to do, in my memory. Can you do that for me? Please?"
The beeping of the heart monitor had begun to slow, and it was like time slowed with it. My heart was inside that room with Zach and his mate Dillan, in their final moments together. I tried desperately to leave my body, to push the strength of my heart into his, but I knew it was a fruitless effort. And suddenly, as if time itself ceased to exist, the tone of the flatline echoed through the hall, followed by the gut wrenchingly passionate wail of a fox who had just watched his mate die.
"Oh God no!" I sobbed, burying my face into my best friends chest as he stroked my hair. The dams burst and a torrent of sorrow flowed down my face. My last thought before I allowed darkness to overtake me was of Zach's dying wish.