This is super short. I know. I was planning on having one huge chapter but I decided to split it into two instead. Mean, I know. 

Unedited.

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I hear voices. They’re yelling frantically. Others are barely audible, filled with so much emotion I can practically feel it choking me. I hear tears. Heart wrenching sobs, so loud they echo around the room. I hear footsteps. Loud and constant, as if someone is pacing. I hear beep. Of what, I have no idea. I just hear insistent beeping that never seems to stop.

Yet I can’t see anything. The world is black, like my eyes aren’t working.

I try to figure out where I am but everything is hazy and I can’t remember anything. I don’t know where I am or why I can’t see.

I can hear conversations, the voices familiar and yet I can’t place who they belong to.

“Why isn’t she waking up?” cries a distraught female voice. “Wake up, baby. Please. I need you. Don’t die on me.”

I test the word in my mind. Die. Die? Am I dying? Is that why I can’t see? Has the cancer finally decided to kill me? Has my one useful lung given up?

A male voice, sounding right near my ear, says with gentleness I’ve never heard before, “It’s okay sweetheart. She’ll be okay. I promise you. It will all be okay.” His words are little more than a coo.

The same woman speaks again, clearly emotionally unstable. “Everything is not okay. My daughter is hooked up to machines that are the only thing keeping her alive.” Her voice hitches and I can hear her tears. “She’s dying. My only daughter is dying.” Her breath hiccups and stops talking.

“Shhh, honey. It’s going to be fine. I promise you.”

The woman cries, “You can’t promise anything! She’s dying!”

I hear a throat clear, before another voice speaks. Unlike the other ones, this isn’t familiar to me. “Mrs Adams, I have news—”

The man is cut off by a round of tears so heart wrenchingly painful I can feel them in my soul.

Mrs Adams. Adams?

Finally the pieces of the puzzle solve themselves and I want to cry with her. Mum is here. Mum. Crying because I’m dying. I’m not sure if I start to cry but I know that I want to. That means dad is here too. They’re both here to watch their daughter die.

I try to move. Try to reach my hand out. Try to show them I won’t die.

But it’s all useless. My body is as unresponsive as my vision.

“Mrs Adams, she—”

At the sound of the doctor’s voice—at least I assume that’s who he is,—mum starts to scream hysterically. She sounds crazed and terrified, her voice almost a stutter because of her sobs. “No! She’s not dead! Don’t tell me she’s dead!”

“Mr Adams—”

“She’s not dead! She can’t be dead!”

Voice so calm, I wonder if he’s even human, the doctor orders, “Mr Adams control your wife. I cannot tell you anything if she continues to scream like a banshee.”

“Excuse me? Did you just tell me to control my wife? Does is bother you that my wife crying because her daughter is lying on a hospital bed, because she couldn’t breathe before?” Dad’s voice is perfectly even but I can detect the barely controlled rage in his voice and I can’t see.

“Mr Adams, please. I didn’t mean it—”

Dad just talks right over the doctors’ words, angrier than I’ve ever heard him before. “I don’t care what century you were born in, but this is not the 1930’s and we don’t ‘control’—” he spits the word, “—our wives like they’re dogs because they get emotional. So, no, I will not control my wife because she’s screaming like a ‘banshee.’”

His outburst shocks me. I’ve never seen him get mad and I feel for whoever he’s arresting—

Suddenly everything goes silent and I wonder if I am dead. Panic sets in as everything starts to go numb and then everything just stops.

I’m dead, I think, wanting to cry.

*             *             *

The only thing I’m aware of is that my face feels wet. Like I’ve been standing under a waterfall. Or like I’ve been crying. I can’t help but wonder if dead people cry. Will I be put through the torture of watching my own funeral? I’ll find out then if I can cry. It’ll kill me—with a bitter laugh I realise I’ve missed my chance—to have to watch my brother cry. To see dad cry. To see anyone grieve over me.

Of all the questions I want to know the answer to, there’s only one that I’d find out if I got the choice: how did I die? Was I with my family, sitting around the lounge room? Did I suddenly just stop breathing? Did I get to say goodbye?

Something moves next to me and I jump trying to find who touched me. I can’t see what—or who. Everything is black and I can only feel. I can’t see and I can’t hear.

The touch comes again, this time on my shoulder instead of my arm. Another touch—a hand?—is on my forehead, a gentle one that I can barely feel.

Death is overrated, I think. If all it is is blackness and imaginary touches, I don’t want it. But I can’t change anything—this is death and I’m suffering through it whether or not I like it. And I don’t. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to have cancer—or have had cancer since it’s technically gone now that I’ve left the world.

This isn’t what I’d come to expect every time I thought about the cancer finally getting the best of me. When you died your life was supposed to flash before your eyes, every drama, every fight, passing so fast you couldn’t catch all of it.

This death is much more anti-climactic—no life being broadcasted in front of me and no memories.

Something blue flashes and I wonder if I’m imagining things. Then it flashes again. If I were to blink I’d have missed it. As the blue continues to flash I wonder what it means.

“. . . Going to do?”

“. . . Through this together . . .”

“What’s wrong . . . her?”

This death isn’t anti-climactic. This death is torture—and I can’t stop it. The voices of my family run through my head and I wonder what conversation I’m remembering.

I try to force away the imaginary voices but it does nothing. They just continue to bounce around my mind, a never ending heart ache.

“. . . She . . . No . . . Won’t believe it!”

“. . . Not moving?”

“Alyson!”

The touches don’t go away and it only makes the pure sadness I feel burn even more. Everything seems so real and it only makes everything worse. None of it is real. I’m not going to see them again. Hear them again. I’ll never see dad laugh at a ridiculous dad joke again. I won’t get to see Rick graduate.

As numbness starts to sink in, I do the only think I can think of. I remember who I am—who I was. I may have left of a permanent vacation—or nightmare—but I won’t forget me.

My name is Alyson Adams. I’m sixteen years old and I lived with cancer for six years. It never got the better of me—I didn’t let it. I have a beautiful family that will mourn me until they can’t mourn anymore. I have parents that will never forget about their daughter and I will be forever in their hearts. I have a brother that will be successful and live a life he can be proud of. They all love me with all they have. They always will.

I love them—always.

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Cliffhanger! :)

Personally, I think it's pretty obvious what's going to happen (I did write it after all but still). But do you? O_O 

Hope you enjoyed.

~ Littlemissflawed