Page 29
Story: The Day Love Died
Kellen was like a ghost in the background, filling out the documents, seeing the blue curtains close over Lena’s bed, and listening to the doctor talk.
“We need to do a CT and MRI scan to find out how the tumor in her brain is doing. It looks like the cancerous cells have spread much faster than we thought.”
Lola’s voice sounded terrified as she said, “Wh… what will happen now?”
“We can only say for sure what we see in the scan results,” the doctor said quickly. “The Chemotherapy didn’t work. It looks like we’ve gone past the point where the chemodrugs could have shrunk the tumor. Maybe surgery is the only option now, but only if the CT and MRI scan reports show that the procedure won’t put any important part of her brain at risk because that could lead to a coma, paralysis, or even death.”
A tumor in her brain. Cells that have cancer. Chemotherapy. Operation. Dead.
It seemed like the world had stopped moving. Virulent words were left behind, floating in the air without gravity, and they kept circling Kellen. They did make sense, but they also didn’t.
No. It couldn’t be. He must have heard wrong! But even a poor attempt at lame denial failed.
He had been busy hating her and making her life miserable with his arrogance and pathetic self. All this while, she had been going through bloody cancer.
Kellen froze at the desk, right across from where Lena was behind the curtains, and the nurse had to physically pull the paperwork out of his hands.
He was so angry with himself and how unjust this whole thing was that his hands were clenched at his sides.
It should have been him, not she.
He should have had cancer, not her. Never her. Lena wasn’t the sinner; he was. But it was her bleeding on that bed behind the curtains. She was barely breathing and holding on to a weak thread that connected her to life.
Kellen bent down, feeling nauseous. His gut was tight, and he was breathing out hot blasts of air through his nostrils.
He staggered to the bathroom and threw up all he had in his stomach. He continued throwing up, and tears streamed down his nose. It wasn’t just because of the bodily pain; it was also because of the pain in his spirit.
Kellen had been staring at the white wall for two long hours when he realized that he had ruined all the colors in his own life. Lena had come into his life like a beautiful rainbow in the sky after a lot of rain. He had turned a beautiful rainbow into dangerous darkness just because he was insecure. He threw away what the skies had given him in the most lively way. He didn’t deserve her, yet she picked him and gave him her love.
And what had he done to keep that love alive?
His own soul condemned him all the time since he couldn’t think of a single method to make up for his faults.
No. No, what he did wasn’t just a mistake. They were wrong.
Not just once or twice. He had gone down that same path of distrust time and again until everything was completely and utterly damaged beyond repair. His child had perished, and now maybe… Lena was also going away.
Lola added, “I called Damien. He’s not in the city right now, but he started back right away after hearing about Lena.” She gave Kellen glances that were full of doubt. It had been like this since he started sobbing while holding Lena’s motionless corpse in the flat. She couldn’t be faulted because she still didn’t know anything, and Kellen didn’t want to tell her that he was Lena’s husband yet. He was too embarrassed to say who he was out loud. They were Lena’s pals; thus, they must have known about his terrible actions.
Kellen merely nodded in response without saying anything.
Lola’s phone rang, so she moved away to answer it. She knew she shouldn’t do that near the rooms where tests were being done that involved radiation and other things like that.
Robert, the doctor from earlier, went out the door and looked around before stopping on Kellen.
“Where’s that girl who came with Lena?”
Kellen sprang up to his feet with a heavy sensation of fear in his chest. “You can tell me. I’m…” He paused, but he swallowed his humiliation because he needed to know how Lena was. “I’m Lena’s husband.”
“Her husband?” Dr. Robert stared at Kellen with doubt as he adjusted his spectacles. “Where were you when she came to see me and then when she had her first Chemo? I thought another guy was her boyfriend or something because he was always taking care of her.”
Where was he? Kellen grinned with anger. He would have to live with this guilt until he died.
“Anyway,” Dr. Robert said with a brief sigh. “Right away, Lena is going to the ICU. As I thought earlier, the scan reports show that the tumor has grown faster than we thought it would, so we don’t have time to slow down the cancerous cells’ growth with Chemotherapy.”
He frowned and stopped before continuing again. “But what puzzles me the most is that this decline in her health has been a slow process, and it’s clear that she was sick the whole time. I told her after the first Chemo that she needed to call the hospital right away if she felt so bad that it outweighed the side effects of Chemotherapy. But she didn’t, so it must have been a slowly growing headache that got so bad that she bled like that.”
Kellen’s hands felt like ice, and his pulse raced as he listened to the doctor. He understood what the doctor was trying to say. It seemed like it was on purpose. That… It seemed like Lena had been through a lot of agony, kept bleeding, and still didn’t contact the hospital or anybody else for aid.
Her phone was immediately next to her dead corpse, and it was covered in blood!
It had to be on purpose.
And he had pushed her that far. He had pushed her to the edge, and now she had jumped off the cliff.
“We need to do surgery right away because Lena is in a bad way right now.”
Kellen let out a trembling sigh of pain and spoke out, his voice sounding like a croak. “Will she be okay after the operation?”
At that point, he could go down on his knees and beg the doctor or anybody else if it meant saving Lena’s life.
“We’ll take out as much of the cancerous tissue as we can to keep her condition stable for now.” Doctor Robert looked at Kellen with pity but still spoke in a professional way. “But surgeries often go wrong, and it’s a fifty-fifty situation when it comes to dealing with grade three malignant brain tumors. I’m not saying you should give up hope, but you should be ready for the worst.”
Was the doctor saying that Lena may really die during the surgery? And she would die anyhow if there was no operation!
“We’re running out of time, so I need you to sign some papers so we can start the procedure as soon as possible.”
Running out of time.
Kellen had never felt so powerless before. He hated feeling like he was disabled because he always wanted to be in charge.
Lola, who had been back for a while and was patiently listening to the doctor’s decision, was now crying and resting against the wall. Ryan was running down the hall toward them with a thundering look on his face, and Celeste was running right behind him.
Kellen was so sad that he couldn’t pay attention to anything or anybody around him.
He fell back down onto the plastic chair behind him as the doctor left, stating he would mail the forms. A group of nurses quickly rolled a stretcher with Lena on it out the door. In a flash, they were gone from his sight.
Kellen sat still, not knowing that others were staring at him. He could hear voices chanting things he couldn’t understand. At one point, he flinched at the sound of distant cries.
He stared at his hands. There was blood on them, Lena’s blood. His hands shook, and a chill of fear raced down his spine. He wiped his palms hard on the edge of his shirt to attempt to get rid of all the blood, but it had dried by then and wouldn’t come off. He tried, but it didn’t work. Kellen looked like his whole life had been taken out of him as he stared at his hands. He looked like a statue that had been frozen in time, beautifully made but full of sadness. But the tears that were streaming down his face conveyed a different story.
Third-Person Point of View
Ryan leaned against the wall and looked away from Kellen, who was a horrible sight. He didn’t even look at the man for a second. If it were possible, he would have murdered Kellen with his bare hands in the worst way conceivable at the start. Kellen should have gotten the worst punishment in the world. But now was not the time to ponder about this sad individual; it wasn’t worth it. Because Lena was locked in the struggle for survival within the O.T., this was more important. And for the security not to kick him out of the hospital at this important time. The glass doors to the theater were scary yet promising at the same time. Doctors, nurses, and many more patients were always going in and out of them. Ryan’s gaze followed everyone and then strayed to what could be seen of the interior through the glass. He had been praying in quiet for the previous three hours.
“We need to do a CT and MRI scan to find out how the tumor in her brain is doing. It looks like the cancerous cells have spread much faster than we thought.”
Lola’s voice sounded terrified as she said, “Wh… what will happen now?”
“We can only say for sure what we see in the scan results,” the doctor said quickly. “The Chemotherapy didn’t work. It looks like we’ve gone past the point where the chemodrugs could have shrunk the tumor. Maybe surgery is the only option now, but only if the CT and MRI scan reports show that the procedure won’t put any important part of her brain at risk because that could lead to a coma, paralysis, or even death.”
A tumor in her brain. Cells that have cancer. Chemotherapy. Operation. Dead.
It seemed like the world had stopped moving. Virulent words were left behind, floating in the air without gravity, and they kept circling Kellen. They did make sense, but they also didn’t.
No. It couldn’t be. He must have heard wrong! But even a poor attempt at lame denial failed.
He had been busy hating her and making her life miserable with his arrogance and pathetic self. All this while, she had been going through bloody cancer.
Kellen froze at the desk, right across from where Lena was behind the curtains, and the nurse had to physically pull the paperwork out of his hands.
He was so angry with himself and how unjust this whole thing was that his hands were clenched at his sides.
It should have been him, not she.
He should have had cancer, not her. Never her. Lena wasn’t the sinner; he was. But it was her bleeding on that bed behind the curtains. She was barely breathing and holding on to a weak thread that connected her to life.
Kellen bent down, feeling nauseous. His gut was tight, and he was breathing out hot blasts of air through his nostrils.
He staggered to the bathroom and threw up all he had in his stomach. He continued throwing up, and tears streamed down his nose. It wasn’t just because of the bodily pain; it was also because of the pain in his spirit.
Kellen had been staring at the white wall for two long hours when he realized that he had ruined all the colors in his own life. Lena had come into his life like a beautiful rainbow in the sky after a lot of rain. He had turned a beautiful rainbow into dangerous darkness just because he was insecure. He threw away what the skies had given him in the most lively way. He didn’t deserve her, yet she picked him and gave him her love.
And what had he done to keep that love alive?
His own soul condemned him all the time since he couldn’t think of a single method to make up for his faults.
No. No, what he did wasn’t just a mistake. They were wrong.
Not just once or twice. He had gone down that same path of distrust time and again until everything was completely and utterly damaged beyond repair. His child had perished, and now maybe… Lena was also going away.
Lola added, “I called Damien. He’s not in the city right now, but he started back right away after hearing about Lena.” She gave Kellen glances that were full of doubt. It had been like this since he started sobbing while holding Lena’s motionless corpse in the flat. She couldn’t be faulted because she still didn’t know anything, and Kellen didn’t want to tell her that he was Lena’s husband yet. He was too embarrassed to say who he was out loud. They were Lena’s pals; thus, they must have known about his terrible actions.
Kellen merely nodded in response without saying anything.
Lola’s phone rang, so she moved away to answer it. She knew she shouldn’t do that near the rooms where tests were being done that involved radiation and other things like that.
Robert, the doctor from earlier, went out the door and looked around before stopping on Kellen.
“Where’s that girl who came with Lena?”
Kellen sprang up to his feet with a heavy sensation of fear in his chest. “You can tell me. I’m…” He paused, but he swallowed his humiliation because he needed to know how Lena was. “I’m Lena’s husband.”
“Her husband?” Dr. Robert stared at Kellen with doubt as he adjusted his spectacles. “Where were you when she came to see me and then when she had her first Chemo? I thought another guy was her boyfriend or something because he was always taking care of her.”
Where was he? Kellen grinned with anger. He would have to live with this guilt until he died.
“Anyway,” Dr. Robert said with a brief sigh. “Right away, Lena is going to the ICU. As I thought earlier, the scan reports show that the tumor has grown faster than we thought it would, so we don’t have time to slow down the cancerous cells’ growth with Chemotherapy.”
He frowned and stopped before continuing again. “But what puzzles me the most is that this decline in her health has been a slow process, and it’s clear that she was sick the whole time. I told her after the first Chemo that she needed to call the hospital right away if she felt so bad that it outweighed the side effects of Chemotherapy. But she didn’t, so it must have been a slowly growing headache that got so bad that she bled like that.”
Kellen’s hands felt like ice, and his pulse raced as he listened to the doctor. He understood what the doctor was trying to say. It seemed like it was on purpose. That… It seemed like Lena had been through a lot of agony, kept bleeding, and still didn’t contact the hospital or anybody else for aid.
Her phone was immediately next to her dead corpse, and it was covered in blood!
It had to be on purpose.
And he had pushed her that far. He had pushed her to the edge, and now she had jumped off the cliff.
“We need to do surgery right away because Lena is in a bad way right now.”
Kellen let out a trembling sigh of pain and spoke out, his voice sounding like a croak. “Will she be okay after the operation?”
At that point, he could go down on his knees and beg the doctor or anybody else if it meant saving Lena’s life.
“We’ll take out as much of the cancerous tissue as we can to keep her condition stable for now.” Doctor Robert looked at Kellen with pity but still spoke in a professional way. “But surgeries often go wrong, and it’s a fifty-fifty situation when it comes to dealing with grade three malignant brain tumors. I’m not saying you should give up hope, but you should be ready for the worst.”
Was the doctor saying that Lena may really die during the surgery? And she would die anyhow if there was no operation!
“We’re running out of time, so I need you to sign some papers so we can start the procedure as soon as possible.”
Running out of time.
Kellen had never felt so powerless before. He hated feeling like he was disabled because he always wanted to be in charge.
Lola, who had been back for a while and was patiently listening to the doctor’s decision, was now crying and resting against the wall. Ryan was running down the hall toward them with a thundering look on his face, and Celeste was running right behind him.
Kellen was so sad that he couldn’t pay attention to anything or anybody around him.
He fell back down onto the plastic chair behind him as the doctor left, stating he would mail the forms. A group of nurses quickly rolled a stretcher with Lena on it out the door. In a flash, they were gone from his sight.
Kellen sat still, not knowing that others were staring at him. He could hear voices chanting things he couldn’t understand. At one point, he flinched at the sound of distant cries.
He stared at his hands. There was blood on them, Lena’s blood. His hands shook, and a chill of fear raced down his spine. He wiped his palms hard on the edge of his shirt to attempt to get rid of all the blood, but it had dried by then and wouldn’t come off. He tried, but it didn’t work. Kellen looked like his whole life had been taken out of him as he stared at his hands. He looked like a statue that had been frozen in time, beautifully made but full of sadness. But the tears that were streaming down his face conveyed a different story.
Third-Person Point of View
Ryan leaned against the wall and looked away from Kellen, who was a horrible sight. He didn’t even look at the man for a second. If it were possible, he would have murdered Kellen with his bare hands in the worst way conceivable at the start. Kellen should have gotten the worst punishment in the world. But now was not the time to ponder about this sad individual; it wasn’t worth it. Because Lena was locked in the struggle for survival within the O.T., this was more important. And for the security not to kick him out of the hospital at this important time. The glass doors to the theater were scary yet promising at the same time. Doctors, nurses, and many more patients were always going in and out of them. Ryan’s gaze followed everyone and then strayed to what could be seen of the interior through the glass. He had been praying in quiet for the previous three hours.
Table of Contents
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