I walked in to the hospital with Taylor, my arm linked in hers. I was shaking, my legs felt like jelly and my stomach was crazy. Let’s just say I was nervous. We got to the lift and pressed number 2 as it’s the floor we had to be on. I weakly smiled to her.

“Everything’s gonna be okay babe.” She smiled to me and squeezed my hand.

“Hmm. We’ll see.” I sighed, looking to the floor. I refuse to let myself cry today.

The doors of the lift opened, signalling that we were on the floor we needed to be on. I huffed and walked out, still with Taylor.

“Tay, I can’t do this. I’m so scared.” I sighed as she wrapped me in a hug and I squeezed her tightly, showing her just how much I actually didn’t want to go in.

“Go. I’ll be right out here, phone in hand, sitting on this chair, right here honey.” She cooed, rubbing my back and playing with my hair. “I’ll be right here.”

I sighed and nodded, looking up to her and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Okay, promise you’ll stay out here til I come back out? I love you Tay, I’m sorry I made you come with me.”

“Not at all honey, I love you too. You need me, and you’d do the same if I was the one in your position. There’s a party at the guys tonight, we’ll go. Being in the company of people you care about will keep your mind of everything, I promise. Now go in, I’ll be right here. Stay strong!” she said.

I walked towards the double doors, pressing the button to open them. The buzzer rang, notifying me that the door was opening. I stood back, waiting for the doors to open and as they did, I mumbled ‘Here we go’ to myself. I walked down the small hall and came to a hand sanitizer thing. I put my hands under and it let some gel out, to which I made sure my hands were covered in it. I walked down a little more until I came to a little door, the door that I’ve become so familiar with over the past few months. I opened the door to the hospital room. My mum being on the bed, smiling softly at me. My gran was at one side of her, with a chair I was presuming was for me left out. She was holding my mums hand and looking at the floor. I made my way to the chair and looked around for a while. Both of my brothers were standing at the foot of my mum’s bed. And my stepdad was at the other side from where me and my gran were sitting, also holding my mums hand. I put my hand on my mum’s leg, rubbing gently, letting her know I was here. She turned to me and smiled.

After what felt like days of a tense silence, the doctor came through the door. Standing next to my stepdad and next to one of my brothers.

“Hello. It’s alright for me to say this in front of everyone, yes?” the brunette doctor said, clutching a file in her hands. She looked around for a response and when my mum nodded she gave us all a soft nod before she continued. “The CT scan didn’t show good results, I’m afraid. Basically, your lymphoma cancer is very, very aggressive, Mrs Rose, and although the chemo has shrunk a good bit of it, it just isn’t working anymore. We’re going to put you on a new drug, it gives you a better quality of life. You’ll be getting nurses coming in to help you and your family out when you get back home – which will be on Monday.” She paused, waiting for a reaction. I couldn’t fucking breathe. I can’t believe it.

“Is there nothing else you can do?” my gran choked out, saying the thing we all wanted to.

“I’m afraid not. If we gave her more chemo therapy, it would kill her. If we gave her radiotherapy, it would kill her also. This drug might just build her up enough to give her another shot at chemo, but it doesn’t look likely. I’m so, so sorry. I would estimate that you have-” she started to speak before I cut her off.

“I don’t want to know how long she has left. I don’t want to dwell on that, it’d make the time we have with her now, pointless, it’d be constantly playing on our minds. I don’t want that. Excuse me.” I said and abruptly got up, kissing my mum on the head. “I love you mama, I’ve gotta go. I’ll come back tomorrow.” I said and got up without a second thought. I rushed out of the door, ignoring my brother’s calls for me.

I can’t fucking believe it.

My mum, my best friend, the woman who gave me life, she just, won’t be here in a few months. I couldn’t breathe, my eyes were blurred with tears and as I got out to where Taylor was standing she came running towards me, having seen me like this before when we first found out my mum had cancer.

I let out an audible cry as soon as Taylor engulfed me in her arms. The tears were streaming down my face, and to be quite frank, I didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of me right now. My mum was likely to die of cancer and I can’t fucking believe it. Taylor led me to the lift, where we got in her car. I’d stopped sobbing, my breathing was shaky and I still hadn’t told her anything yet. But she knew oh too well. My silent tears ran down my face as I thought of everything that my mum would miss out on. I thought about old memories and how happy my mum used to be. I then thought about her now. Her once thick, curly black hair was gone. Her beautiful sparkling blue eyes looked tired and sad now. Her once chunky, cuddly figure had now become a bag of bones, other than her tumour which she always joked made her look 9 months pregnant. And boy, it did. That’s one thing she hasn’t lost. Her sense of humour. Her care for others instead of herself. But she’s still not the woman who I know as my mum. She’s so weak, small and unwell. It breaks my heart every single time I look at her, and see her panic look on her face, or her struggles to breathe. She also has COPD – which is a lung condition, and it doesn’t help her cancer at all. It’s been such a hard few months. This just isn’t fair. I wanted to have my mum be by my side for the majority of the life, it’s not her time. I’m not ready to lose her… I knew being happy with Vic was going to come back to bite me on the ass. Fuck, Vic. I was going to have to tell him everything.

We pulled up into the driveway of the house Taylor and I shared. She walked holding my hand in hers, pulling me down to the couch.

“I’m just going to make you a cup of tea, my lamb. VIC!” she yelled from the bottom of the stairs. I just nodded, not having the energy to do anything else. I heard his footsteps come from my room down the stairs to the livingroom. He smiled as he realised we were both home, but that quickly faltered when he seen, what I was assuming was the blank expression on my face.

He sat down next to me, taking my hand in his. I felt that little bit warmer at his touch.

“There’s something wrong, but I’m going to wait until you’re ready. Tell me whenever you’re ready. I’ll stay and look after you tonight instead of going to the party, okay?” he weakly smiled at me and kissed my cheek, to which I pulled his face to mine, kissing his lips softly, letting him know I will be okay, eventually, but I’ll still be okay.

Taylor eventually came back with my cup of tea in her hands and sat it on the coffee table. I took a big gulp of it, feeling the sweet taste of my 3 sugars go down my throat. I sighed and took another drink, before letting my shaky hand set the cup down, feeling both Taylor and Vic’s eyes on mine. Vic was playing with the ends of my hip-length hair. I smiled at the relaxing feeling, but it almost automatically disappeared.

“Vic?” I choked out, my voice still making it evident that I’d been crying. “I’m ready to tell you now.” I felt him nod and let go of my hair, holding my hand instead. I seen Jaime in the corner of my eye at the doorway. I weakly smiled at him. “Come sit down Himes.” He did as told and sat down next to Taylor, hugging her, noticing both of our sad demeanours.

“Uh, so my mum started to get really unwell like 6, maybe 7 months ago. It started off just tummy pains, then she found out she was anaemic, then she found out she had burst blood vessels in her tummy – explaining both of that. She went for a CT scan about two weeks after that to see if the medication they’d given her had healed those vessels. We were waiting for the results, which were going to take a week, and in that week, she couldn’t eat. Everything she ate was brought straight back up, everything she drank was brought straight back up. To take a drink of water she had to swish it around her mouth and spit it back out. She was in unbearable pain and scratching all the time. That’s when we noticed that she was turning yellow, her eyes were yellow and the doctor came out to us. They told us she was jaundiced. So she got rushed into hospital. We then got the news that she’d need a biopsy of a couple of lumps in her neck. She got that done, and it came back that she had Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer. And a very aggressive case of it. She’s had 5 chemo therapy treatments and countless chest infections. She’s had pneumonia 3 times, and septic shock a couple of times. We nearly lost her. And we got a meeting with the doctor today, to tell us that we are losing her. They’re putting her on a drug to ‘give her a better quality of life’ and they were going to tell us how long before I went out, I didn’t want to know…” I choked on my tears, having my head now in my hands. Vic lifted me onto his lap and I heard Taylor cry. Vic cuddled me close to him and I put my face into the crook of his neck.

“Shhh, babygirl. It’s going to be okay. I’m so sorry about your mum honey. I’m so sorry. I’ll be here every step of the way, so will Tay, and Jaime. Babe, I’m so sorry. Take as much time as you need to just cry. It’s okay, I’m here.” Vic cooed me, rocking me back and forth, repeatedly kissing my hair or my tear stained face. I eventually wore myself out from the crying and fell asleep on Vic’s lap.

I had constant nightmares about my mums death, and I couldn’t seem to wake up from them. I guess it’s because this is going to be my real life now… And boy, was I wrong about not crying today.

Notes

Title Credit: A Match Into Water - Pierce the Veil.

I might update this again tonight because I'm having problems sleeping haha, if not, the next update for this should be up around Monday, possibly Tuesday. Thank you all for reading, you're all stars. Please give me as much feedback as you can, it makes me smile reading through comments.

Until I update, you could read the sequel to Come Back To My Heart, if you haven't already, thank you! :-)

I just want to say that this story, well, this chapter, is very personal to me. Everything I put about Kim's life in this story is basically what's going on with me right now. I thought it'd be good to put some of my own experiences in, purely because I know exactly how I felt at the time, so I'd (hopefully) be able to write it well. And if anyone ever needs to talk if they're going through the same things, don't hesitate to message me! I will be there for any single one of you.

I hope you're all enjoying this story xxx