MidReal Story
Love's Last Stand: A Heartbreaking Battle
Scenario: A girl with cancer and only a year left to live. Trying to save the man she loves from his life of addiction. But he breaks her heart and is always leaving her. She can't seem to let him go. So depression gets the best of her to the point she can no longer fight her own sickness.
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I was a little girl fighting a big monster.
And the monster was winning.
I was sixteen years old, and I had a year left to live.
I’d been diagnosed with cancer at fourteen, and after two years of treatment, the doctors had given up hope for a cure.
They told me to go home and live my life as best as I could for as long as I could.
So that’s what I was doing.
Living my life, one day at a time.
I’d been in love with Dillon Parker for most of those days.
He wasn’t my boyfriend, but he should’ve been.
He was gorgeous and rugged and handsome in that boy-next-door kind of way.
He was also an addict, but I didn’t care about that part because I loved him anyway.
And he loved me too, just not in the way I wanted him to.
Dillon had his own demons to fight, and sometimes he lost those battles too.
But he always came back to me in the end, and that’s all that mattered.
I tried to tell myself it was for the best, but I didn’t believe it.
If it were up to me, he would’ve stayed with me forever, but it wasn’t up to me.
And now I was waiting for him at the airport after he’d left rehab early.
Again.
“Emily, you awake?”
My mom stuck her head in the door of my bedroom.
I opened my eyes and blinked away the sleep, wincing at the bright light streaming in from the window.
“Come on, honey.It’s time to get up.”
“Okay,” I mumbled.
She disappeared down the hallway.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep a little longer, but it was no use.
The sunlight was streaming in too brightly and I was wide-awake already.
I sat up slowly, cringing as my muscles ached in protest.
I’d never been so tired in all my life, but I was used to it.
It was a side effect of the chemotherapy treatments that I went through every week.
The doctors told me it was supposed to get easier over time, but it never seemed to.
After a few moments, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up slowly until I felt steady on my feet.
I grabbed my bathrobe off the hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around myself before heading for the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face.
When I finished, I went back to my bedroom to get dressed.
It wasn’t much of a bedroom, just a small bed pushed against one wall, a dresser across from it, and a window on the opposite wall that let in just a sliver of sunlight.
The walls were painted pale pink and had been decorated with posters of boy bands and pop singers until I’d outgrown those kinds of things.
Now they were mostly bare except for a few pictures of me with my friends that had been taken throughout high school.
I walked over to the dresser and picked out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before heading back to the bathroom to take a shower.
I was still running the water when I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing, and I knew that my mom was downstairs making breakfast.
She’d had the day off today because I had an appointment at the clinic, but she still had to go into work the next day, so she wouldn’t have much time to make breakfast for me today.
I cut the water off and stepped out of the shower, drying myself off before getting dressed and going downstairs for breakfast.
I was just finishing when I heard the front door open again, and I knew it must be Nurse Sarah, the nurse from the clinic who came by to check on me every morning and give me the chemo treatments that were too strong for me to take at home with medicine.
I’d never told anyone that she was one of my favorite people, but it was true nonetheless, and I was always happy to see her.
The rest of the day passed by in an easy routine, just like always.
When she was gone, I closed my eyes again and waited for her to come back later so I could be sure it wasn’t a dream.
But it wasn’t a dream, and in the end, I’d been right.
Dillon didn’t come back from rehab when he was supposed to, and now he might not be coming back at all.
The thought left a hollow pit in my stomach, but it wasn’t just because he might have stayed away from me on purpose this time.
The truth was that I really needed him right now; more than anything else in the world.
My body was falling apart around me, and I needed him here to keep me together until I could get it back under control again.
The cancer was still there, festering inside of me like a dark shadow that would never go away no matter how hard I tried to make it leave me alone.
And the chemo was making me sick all over again, just like it always did.
It was hard enough to get through those days when he was here with me; I didn’t know how I’d ever make it through another one without him here by my side.
I think I’d always known it would come to this, but I’d hoped that it wouldn’t be so soon.
That I would have more time with him before I had to say goodbye.
But it seemed like I was losing everything I cared about these days, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I closed my eyes and tried to push the thoughts away.
The doctors had given up on me too, but Dillon hadn’t.
He’d sent me a video from rehab to let me know that he would be back here for me as soon as he could, and that he loved me more than anything else in the world.
I played it over and over again until I had the words memorized, and then I played it some more.
It was the only thing keeping me going right now, the only thing giving me hope that maybe things would be okay after all.
But it would all be for nothing if he didn’t come home soon, and he had left the clinic two weeks ago now, and there was still no sign of him anywhere.
My best friends, Olivia and Danny, had both told me over and over again to forget about him and start living for myself.
But that was easier said than done.
I loved him more than anything else in the world, and nothing could ever change that.
I knew that he wasn’t perfect, that he had his own demons that he was fighting every day just like I was, but it didn’t matter to me.
He was still the most important person in my life, and I would never let him go.
I was still thinking about it when Olivia came by later that day to take me to the clinic for another appointment.
She hadn’t seen Dillon at the airport either, but she didn’t want to talk about it during the ride there, so we sat in silence together for a little while before we got there.
I wanted to ask her what she thought, if she thought he might be gone for good this time or if she thought he would come back to me eventually.
But I was too scared to say it out loud, so I didn’t say anything at all.
It took a minute for her to respond as she parked the car outside the clinic, but then she finally turned to me with tears in her eyes.
“I don’t know if he’s coming back this time,” she whispered as we both broke down crying together.
I shook my head as I stared at her through the tears, trying not to believe her words even though I knew that they were true.
“I want him to come back,” I said through sobs as I tried to pull myself together again after a minute.
“He promised he would come back for me.”
“I know, Emily.I know he did,” she said as she took my hand and squeezed it softly.
“But if he did leave rehab early then that means that he doesn’t want to get clean, at least not yet.And you deserve better than that.”
I shook my head again as I looked down at our hands on my lap.
“I don’t care,” I said.
“I just want him here with me.”
“I know,” she said as she wiped a few more tears from her eyes.
“I know you do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stayed silent and cried some more until she finally got out of the car and helped me out too so that I could go inside and get my chemo treatment done for the day.
I didn’t want to think about Dillon anymore, but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it anyway, especially when I saw my mom and Nurse Sarah in the waiting room a little while later and remembered that we had all planned to go to the airport together after I finished my appointment to try and find him and talk to him if we could before he had the chance to run away from me again for good.
I couldn’t believe that he had left rehab early without saying anything to me first, but I had no idea where else he could be if he wasn’t there, so I knew that I needed to find him and get some answers before I could even try to move on from him once and for all.
I didn’t know what I’d say to him when I saw him again, but I knew that I needed to see him and talk to him again before I gave up on him for good, and I was hoping that my mom and Nurse Sarah could help me figure out what to say once we found him together.
But then they told me that they’d seen him at the airport earlier that day, and all of my hope disappeared as soon as I saw him walking towards me a few minutes later too.
