CHAPTER TEN ~*~*~ Teardrops That Run Red

I didn’t understand any of the stuff they said to me even though they explained it over and over. Ryan’s mom rubbed my back just inside the hospital room, as if trying to make me feel better, but her expressions and her teary eyes didn’t help. “Dannie,” she called to me gently. “Ryan has terminal brain cancer.”

I stumbled back, shaking my head, laughing. “You’re kidding me right?” I looked from her to Ryan, who was now awake, sitting on his hospital bed with a weary expression on his face. “Stop it guys! This has got to be the worst joke ever!” I felt tears rolling down my face. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s not possible!”

Ryan’s mom held me in her arms. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” And I couldn’t even get mad at her with the way she was holding me, the way her tears made my hair damp. “As a mother, I just wanted so badly for Ryan to live like a normal boy while he still could. I just wanted him to be happy. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this.”

I blinked back the tears and though my voice sounded so distant, heard myself speak. “It doesn’t matter.” I looked up into her eyes. “He’ll get better right?” I clenched onto her arm. “Right?”

The silence was so painful after that.

Ryan got up and walked slowly towards me. “No Dannie.” His voice was calm and his face lit with a soft smile, like it didn’t matter to him anymore, like he had already given up, accepted it. “I’m going to die.”

“No!” I screamed. “No, you’re not. You lair, you’re not! You’re not! I’m not going to listen!”

I ran out of the room. It wasn’t true. They were all lying to me. Why would Ryan die? Why would they take him away from me after I had fallen madly in love with him? Wasn’t that just too cruel?

My feet kept running and I wasn’t sure when I eventually stopped, but when I started to notice my surroundings I was in a garden of tall, well-trimmed bushes outside the hospital building. Ryan had chased after me from his room and was a couple of short metres behind me. He called my name softly, walking towards me hesitantly, trying to make me feel better like he always did.

But who was going to make me feel better once he was gone?

“Dannie, I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be this way.” He looked at me longingly. “I wanted to tell you a long time ago, but I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t want to get too close to you, but I did. I didn’t want to fall in love with you because I was dying, but I couldn’t help myself. I never wanted it this way either!” Tears surfaced to his eyes.

“You know I haven’t cried since I was a kid,” I said sobbing. “But then you walk into my life and take me on an emotional rollercoaster ride. Congratulations Ryan, for being the only person in this world that can make me cry. Now just stop it! Make this pain go away! Please take it away!”

He stood there paralyzed, shaking his head. “I never meant for it to end like this,” he said. “I never meant to cause you pain and I never meant to make you cry. This isn’t what I wanted for us. I’m sorry.” He held out his arms and I quickly ran into them, drowning my sobs and cries into his chest.

Everything was so unrealistic. I could still hear it – feel it – the sound of his heart. He was still warm and still breathing. He was fine. He was completely fine. And yet, the next moment, he might not be.

So I gripped onto him as hard as I could because I wasn’t sure what else I could do.

“You know, I want to be able to say that I’ll always be here to listen to you, that I’ll always protect you, that I’ll always stay by your side even when your world is crashing down, but I can’t.” His words caught in his throat. “And I hate myself because I have to hurt you this way.”

“Why does the world want us apart when we’re finally together?” I asked, struggling for words. Babbles of tears rushed out of my eyes again. “I can’t live without you Ryan! Don’t go! Don’t leave me! I love you.”

He held me closer. “I’m sorry.” And because he couldn’t do anything more, he kept repeating the same two words. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

We sat inside the maze of bushes for a long time, holding hands until we were both calm. When it seemed like hours had passed by, he explained everything to me. I had been mistaken all along. It was never a summer to-do list that he wrote, it was a bucket list. Ryan’s doctor had suggested it, since he said Ryan might not live past this summer. Ryan could have gone through chemo, but that would have only dragged his life on a little bit longer and Ryan had eventually refused it. The tumour in his head was growing bigger every day, pushing against his brain, often giving him painful headaches and nosebleeds.

“Why won’t you go through chemo though? If it could let you live just a little longer, why won’t you?”

Ryan kissed my fingertips. “Because I’m happy,” he said. “God has given me everything I asked for; even when I thought it was unattainable. I thought it would be impossible for me to fall in love this summer and then God proved me wrong and sent me you. I’m happy Dannie. I don’t want to remember the last minutes of my life to be in a hospital bed, sick and lonely. It’s alright if I go like this.”

He kissed the teardrops falling down my face. “Don’t cry. I’m happy I swear, and it’s all because of you. I was always doing what other people told me to and I never expressed myself. I never felt alive once those years, but when I met you, I realized that my world wasn’t just black and white, and for the first time I saw a rainbow. I lived for the first time even though I knew I was actually dying inside. I have no more regrets.”

“But you can’t just die!” I argued. “What about telling the world what’s on your mind? What about showing the world who you really are inside? You haven’t done any of that!”

“But I have.” He smiled, touched my cheek. “I’ve shown you!”

And even though he smiled the same smile that always made me smile along with him – this time, I couldn’t.   

“Dannie, I’m happy enough just being loved by you. So don’t think about it anymore. Let’s just be like we always have and when my time comes, promise me.” He held both my hands in his. “Let me go.”

I nodded and forced a smile through my tears, because even if I hadn’t, Fate wouldn’t have changed.

For the next couple weeks, we spent our time just hanging out and not doing anything in particular. We visited all the places we went to in the summer that we had enough gas money for. We went to the fruit farm again, the rose meadow, the beaches, the docks, the cliff where we watched the sunrise and lastly City Park, where Ryan performed his song that won first place. It was like we were tracing back our footsteps, trying to find a way to relive and rewrite our love story, but the thing was, no matter how much we changed, how much more we loved, the ending was still the same.

We went to the playground in City Park and swung on the swings silently, waiting for the night carnival to start. It was a carnival that was held once a year at City Park near the end of the summer – a tradition from the Natives that gave thanks to all the things that were harvested in the summer and a prayer to all the things that will be harvested later.

Ryan got off his swing after a while. “Want me to push you?” He asked me, smiling.

He smiled more lately, at me, at nothing, at everything. Maybe he didn’t know how much longer he had to smile. Maybe he wanted to leave a good memory. Maybe he wanted to make a good memory.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine. You don’t need to push yourself.” His body had become noticeably weak recently. The tumour was growing at a fast rate, pressing against his medulla oblongata, making it hard for him to breathe normally and giving him an irregular heartbeat.

It wasn’t long now. It wasn’t long.

He tilted my head back, stroked my hair aside and kissed me. “Just let me,” he said. “Since I can’t do anything more for you.”

It wasn’t true. He had done lots for me. It was I, not him, that couldn’t do anything.

I let him push me for a little bit before we left the playground for the festival. Everyone was so happy there, chatting, playing and eating candy apples and cotton candy. I envied them because they smiled so easily, like they couldn’t care less if the sky fell down.

Ryan and I went on the Ferris Wheel after a few walks around the festival and a couple rounds of games. It was almost midnight and they were going to start the fireworks at any moment. At the top, Ryan said to me, “You know, our little town is really beautiful.” He pointed at all the lights around us, the bonfire by the food stands, the full moon that shone down, leaving a shallow reflection of itself on the lake. “It’s funny how people never see how important and beautiful a thing is until they’re about to lose it.”

“I’ve always known how much you meant to me,” I said. Sudden vibrant flowers bloomed in the air making a loud boom in the sky. “Look, Ryan! Fireworks!”

Ryan smiled and kissed my forehead before resting his head on top of my shoulder. “Dannie?” He said, clutching my hands tightly in his when the Ferris Wheel took us back up to the top.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” He closed his eyes as teardrops ran down his face.

“I love you too,” I replied.

The late summer rain started to tickle down. It would heal the dry cracks on the ground over time and give birth to new buds from flowers that had wilted from the passion of the hot summer sun. They were tears from the sky that needed to be cried.

But right now, it would dampen our parade.

I felt Ryan’s hands slowly losing grip on mine, his staggering breath coming to a quiet end. “Ryan, don’t go,” I cried. “Just stay with me. There are so many things I still want to do with you, so many things I want to tell you, show you. There are so many days I still want to spend with you Ryan! You can’t go! You can’t leave me alone like this! Ryan! Ryan! Stay!!!”

I screamed at the top of my lungs, letting the sound of the fireworks drown out my cries, and when his hands completely let go, I finally realized I was alone – that I was the only one still holding on.