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Chapter One: End.

"Mr. Fitz?" My eyes open.
"What?" I mutter. I had been sleeping. Finally, I was sleeping without any nightmares. And now, I was woken up. The lights hurt my eyes and there were too many voices in my room. "I was sleeping."
"I know." Maria says. Maria is one of the day-shift nurses. She's the nice one. She's too nice. She reminds me of Aria. And for that reason I'm unusually mean to her. Which is weird. Because she doesn't deserve it. But I do it anyway. "I need some blood." She tells me.
"I'd rather sleep." I say.
"You can sleep afterwards."
"I wanna go home." I tell her.
"You will." She says. "When you get better you can go home."
"What if I don't get better?"
"Then you'll go home to heaven."
Maria and I go over this almost every night. Like a rehearsed script. I do this mostly to see when she'll change her replies. But she never does. You don't change your script. She gets her needles and blood-getting-kit out and takes my arm in her hand. "So what book are you reading today?" She asks me. The only reasons I've made it this far with my cancer treatment, is by reading. My record is two novels in one day. And the longest it has taken me to finish one book is three days. I have nothing else to do. Sometime's there's a good movie on, or I get a sudden burst of creativity and I write a short story. But mostly, if it ever takes me more than a day to finish a book, it's because I sleep too much. If I have chemo scheduled for that day, I usually sleep most of the day and don't have time to read. "To Kill a Mocking Bird."
"Again?"
"It's my favorite." I say. "How much blood are you taking?"
"No more than usual." She says. "Why?"
"Because sometimes I get dizzy after the blood draws."
"That's normal."
"I know." I roll my eyes. "I just don't like it."
"No one likes anything about cancer."
"I like some things about cancer." I say.
"Oh do you now?"
"You get a lot of attention from pretty young nurses."
Maria laughs. "And is that me?"
"Oh, was I that obvious?"
Flirting with my doctors. Another way I get through my days laying in the hospital bed.
"Anyway." She says. She doesn't like to flirt with me too much. She's engaged. Engaged to a non-dying patient. "Did Wes come by yet?"
"He has a finale today. He'll come by tomorrow." Every other day (usually) Wesley, my younger brother, comes by to drop off new books and take the ones I've finished back to the library. He sits and we talk and he tells me about his day and how school's going. Somedays we hang out and talk like normal brothers. Sometimes it's awkward and depressing, the silent that passes between us so he makes up an excuse to leave or I say I need a nap. And sometimes I actually am too sick to visit. So I really do say 'I need to take a nap.' and mean it. So he doesn't have to stick around and watch me pathetically shake and sweat. I play it cool with him. I don't let on how sick I am or how depressed I am. I pretend it's just some kind of annoying cancer that bores me. But really, it'sstage four melanoma. 4% survival rate. But he doesn't need to know that. He's busy with school. I like to give him the gift of oblivion. But sometimes the deep side comes out in him. Last week he came for a visit and it was a few hours after one of my chemo. I was throwing up all over the place and I was a sweaty and shaky mess. It was rather enjoyable, actually. I wish.
He looked all scared and concerned at first. The little sad look on his face. It was the first time he ever saw me looking sick. And I was too out of it to even say anything or do anything. All I remember was the look on his face.
Shortly after he had arrived I fell asleep. And when I woke up two hours later to puke, he was still there. I had woken up and knew I was gonna throw up. I reached for the little plastic puke bowl they leave for us, but I didn't feel it to grab it, and my eyes were still adjusting to the light. Those nurses forget I like the lights off when I'm sleeping. Anyways I ended up throwing up all over my bed. Not my finest moment.
"Oh, gosh." Wesley had said. "Uh, um,"
"It's fine." I say. "Just press the button." I point to the one on the wall. He stands up and presses it, then flinches like he expected sirens to go off. "Are you okay?" He asks.
"I'm covered in puke." I had muttered. "Of course I'm not okay." Then I smile and plug my nose for effect. "Cancer stinks."
He had smiled, slightly. Maria came in at that point and stripped the sheets and handed me a new gown to change into.
"Is there something I can do to help?" Wes looked concerned again.
"No." I tell him. "Maria has to take care of puke boy to get paid. It's how she affords those pretty highlights."
"Yup." She smiled catching onto the mood of my worried brother. "I have to work for my money. Thanks, Ezra, for making my job so hard."
Wesley smiled and lightened up. After that I told him to go home and handed him a list of books to get me. I told him thanks for staying with me and if he ever told anyone about this, I'd beat him. He left and thought everything was okay. But then I puked the entire night and the next morning I had surgery to remove mets that had spread to my liver. Kinda like how tomorrow morning I'll have surgery on my brain to remove some more. Wesley is all I have left. I haven't heard from Aria in a month. My dad died. Harley, my best friend, is in Paris on his honeymoon. I found out I had cancer two days before his wedding. He got married two weeks ago. I can't tell him. He JUST got married. I won't ruin this time for him. When he calls to chat I tell him I'm sitting in my apartment watching Aria sleep. Or that I was about to do the dishes that've piled up for weeks because my dishwasher broke. He thinks that's my biggest problem. A broken dishwasher. And that's how I want it to stay. In a few weeks I'll tell him. And then I'll tell my mom. Who I haven't spoken to in years.
I have other friends. But I don't want to worry them. Wesley is the only one who knows because he found out. He used his emergency key to get in my house one day to 'borrow' some money. And at the time he was in my house when I wasn't, my doctor called and he heard the voicemail. Sneaky little brother.
I'm giving this treatment a shot. I told my doctors if there wasn't improvement in a month, I was going to go home and die. No one would miss me. Maybe Wesley would at first, but he has such a busy life that he wouldn't notice me gone. Same with anyone else. Everyone has a life. And me? I have his hospital bed and a stack of books. And cancer.


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