Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lila (Sunday)
Fucking hell!
I was getting very frustrated with this cough now – it was making me crazy! It kept coming and going, and tonight it was at its worst. I couldn’t sleep with it. Every time I drifted off, it’d wake me back up again and the exhaustion was making me weep. My mouth and neck felt raw, my chest was aching like crazy, and I was starting to feel like I was really, genuinely sick. Like I could throw up at any moment.
Eventually, I gave up on lying down because it seemed to be making it worse, so I got up and staggered toward the bathroom. At first, I flicked the cold tap on and I sucked the ice-cold water down, which only went some way to soothing the rawness I was experiencing. Then I glanced at my rough reflection in the mirror, which only caused the tears to flow even more furiously.
My hair looked like it was a bird’s nest, my eyes were bloodshot, my skin grayish and pale. I looked like hell. Maybe if I didn’t look so ill, I wouldn’t feel it.
As the hacking cough came over me once more, I tried to keep it quiet so I wouldn’t wake up Kyle, but it was too eager to get out. I leaned over the toilet bowl, clinging to the hard plastic, and eventually along with the spit and saliva, some blood came pouring out, too.
Shit, this is bad, this is bad.
My heart thundered as I stared down at it in shock. My mind flickered everywhere, trying to find some explanation. There had to be some other reason that I was coughing up blood – it didn’t have to mean that I was seriously sick, did it?
I’d never ever had to be worried about my health before, with everything else going on in my life that part of me had always been okay. Now, just as things were going amazing, this was happening to me.
“Are you okay?” Kyle’s voice burst through my shock, and as I quickly turned around, I found him right behind me. “Oh, my God, you have blood all round your mouth. What’s going on?”
He grabbed some tissues and handed them to me, so I started aimlessly wiping my lips. “I don’t know,” I whispered tearfully. “It’s this cough.”
“I thought you were over the flu now.” There was a deep terror in his eyes that made me freak out even more. He was worried about me, which meant there was something to be worried about.
“So did I, but it keeps coming back, and now it’s worse than ever.” I wanted to collapse against him and sob. I didn’t know what to do, and in my sleep-deprived state, I couldn’t get any perspective on any of it. “I’m scared, what do I do?”
He grabbed me and held me close, while rubbing my hair down. “Shh, don’t worry, everything will be okay. I just need to get you to the hospital...”
“It’s like, five in the morning,” I argued weakly. “We can’t go now. Plus, we don’t have insurance. What are we supposed to do?”
“This is your health on the line. We have money now. I am not letting you get sick because of funding. We need you to see a doctor, to get the right treatment, so you can get better. We can worry about everything else afterward.”
If I didn’t feel so shitty, I would have argued with that, but I wanted to get better. I was scared. I did need a health professional to look at me. “Okay, just let me get dressed.”
I heard Kyle calling a cab as I was in my bedroom and that made me sob harder. I hated us spending our hard-earned cash on me, especially as it was a lifeline that might not last forever. I didn’t want to go back to struggling from paycheck to paycheck, but at this point, I didn’t see what other option I had.
Kyle joined me in the doorway, looking at me with fearful eyes. “The cab is on its way. Shall I give Xander a call?”
I considered that for a moment, thinking it through. I did want Xander and his comforting presence by my side to help get me through this nightmare, but that was selfish. I didn’t want to drag him into my mess, and I didn’t want him to think that the only reason that I’d called him was for the money side of things. He seemingly had his own financial woes to worry about. I didn’t need him in mine.
“No, thank you.” I held my hands up to stop him from arguing with me. “I don’t want him to come to the hospital with me. I just want to see what’s going on. It might just be nothing, and I don’t want to pull him out of his bed and away from his work if it isn’t anything to worry about.”
Of course, that was just hope speaking. There had to be something going on with me. But if it stopped Kyle from calling then that was good enough for me.
“Okay, if you say so.”
He didn’t look convinced, but then he did leave me alone to get dressed, which I was grateful for. I didn’t intend to get made up like crazy, I just wanted a bra on, and to not be wearing my pajamas. It might be okay to go in at five a.m. looking like this, but by the time I got out, it could be like nine. I didn’t want the world to see me looking so bad. It was a silly priority, but one that I couldn’t stop.
By the time I heard the cab honking outside, I was at a standard I could cope with, but that still wasn’t enough to have my heart stop hammering. No matter how okay I looked, there was no taking the fear away from me. This was officially scary as hell. I was just lucky to have my brother by my side, looking out for me. Without him, I would probably just fall apart.
***
“You’ll feel a sharp scratch,” the nurse told me kindly as she pushed a needle into my arm. I took a sharp intake of breath and my face screwed up, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting.
When we got to the hospital, I was still coughing blood into a tissue, so they raced me into an examination room and started running a whole bunch of tests on me. I’d had an ECG, my blood pressure taken, and now some blood tests. If this didn’t give the doctor enough information, I’d been told that I might have to go for X-rays, too. They were taking this seriously, which freaked me out even more.
In fact, if I didn’t have Kyle holding my hand I would be a sobbing, broken mess.
“Okay, I’ll send these off to the blood room now. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before they come back; it depends how busy they are in there.”
“Right, sure.” My voice sounded weird, all hollow and monotone, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. “Thank you.”
Once she left the room, I flopped my head back on the uncomfortable hospital pillow, frustration circling me. I didn’t like this, any of it. The anticipation, the waiting... It was killing me. However bad the news was, I wanted to know. It had to be better than this.
“Do you want anything?” Kyle asked me quietly. “I can pop to the store and get you a drink or something to eat?”
“No, thank you, I have everything I need here.” This was followed by another horrific round of coughing, which pissed me off even further. “I just want to go home.”
“I know, but we just have to wait a little while longer. Once we have the results, then maybe we can think about going home.” He didn’t say it depended on what the results were, but he didn’t need to. We both knew that. “For the meantime, why don’t we write some more lyrics?”
I shot him an unimpressed look, making my opinion on that matter very clear. As if I hadn’t had enough trouble writing the last song, the last thing I needed was more stress added on my shoulders. “Yeah, right.”
“Yeah, it’ll be good. We can use this room as inspiration. The room is so whiiite, the floors so cleeean...”
Despite myself, I burst out laughing. Somehow, Kyle had managed to shake some of my bad mood off, and he had me smiling.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds wonderful. It can be album number two.”
“Or the last song on the first one...”
Of course! He didn’t know that I’d been in and recorded the lyrics. I hadn’t gotten around to telling him yet, which I was glad for now. It meant that I could have some good news to break up this shitty day. “Oh, I recorded the last one! I did it Friday night, so at least we have one album ready.”
His face lit up – his dream was still in line for coming true. Now with all this happening, I felt better about that than ever before. “That’s awesome, sis, great news.”
I smiled thinly, desperately hoping that there would be more to follow.
***
Time passed. I wasn’t sure how much, but it felt like hours. Kyle and I talked, played games, and I eventually send him down to the store for me, but we were still bored as hell. Anticipation had given way to irritation, so by the time the doctor came in to speak to me, I felt completely unprepared.
He sat down by my bed, his expression grim, but I wasn’t freaking out anymore. An odd sense of calm had overcome me as I waited.
“We have some bad news,” he told me gravely. Kyle gripped onto me tighter, but I still felt numb. “Your blood tests have come back cancerous, and we believe that it’s in the throat. Of course, we will now need to run the X-rays to prove that, but that’s where we’re at right now.”
He continued talking, but I couldn’t hear any of it. Throat cancer... I have cancer. It felt like a death sentence, one that I couldn’t yet digest.
Am I going to die? Am I about to lose my life? I was certainly going to lose my singing voice, that was pretty much a guarantee.
I felt sick, nausea was swirling around in my stomach, tingles were racing up and down my body, but I didn’t know what to deal with that information. Kyle was holding me close, trying to comfort me, but I didn’t what to do.
Throat cancer.
“Right, well I’m going to go and check up on a free X-ray room so we can get started,” the doctor continued, standing up a little awkwardly. “The more information we have right now, the better.”
As he left, I was still in a stunned silence. What was I even supposed to say to that? “I’m going to call Xander,” Kyle told me firmly. “He needs to know now.”
But I couldn’t stand that, I wanted to deal with this on my own for now. “No, don’t,” I rasped. “No, I’ll call him tomorrow. I just want to get all these tests out the way first, please.”
He sat down, giving me my way, but he didn’t look impressed by it. This was my illness, though. This was my choice. I needed to deal with this in my own way.