Reality

CW: This story contains themes of terminal illness and death. It also contains light mentions of alcohol and swearing. Viewer discretion is advised.

Victor was only nine years old when he was watching his parents argue constantly, the two of them separated from him by a pane of thick glass that blocked their words from reaching his ears. He followed their increasingly erratic gestures and watched their faces flip through expressions like channels on a TV, but paid special attention to their mouths, scanning the shapes they formed to decode their words. It rarely—if ever— succeeded.

“What are they saying?” He would ask Isaiah during his visit each day. 

“I don’t know,” Isaiah would reply each time and, each time, he would lie. Before entering Victor’s room, and standing out of sight, he would catch their arguments. 

“We’re not out of options!” Victor's mother would insist. “The doctors said—!”

“Diana, the doctors are almost out of options. What are we going to try that they haven’t?!” His father would counter. “How much longer can we keep this up? A few weeks? Maybe a month?”

“Maybe longer! We still have options, James. Nothing is set in stone!”

The sound of the doctor’s shoes on the shiny hospital floor would cut their argument short. She would be less than halfway through offering yet another new treatment option before Diana and James insisted she try it and the doctor would disappear to prepare to fulfill their request.

“See? You know there’s still hope!” Diana would say, turning to her husband. “Why would you agree otherwise?”

In those moments, James would become very interested in the floor. Isaiah took this as his cue to stop listening.

He would often find Victor staring up at the white ceiling of his room, having grown bored of the games on his tablet for the time being. Despite his best efforts to get into a position he liked that cooperated with the tubes and wires in his body, he’d end up staying flat on his back with his arms by his sides and the rest of his body—minus his head— hidden under white sheets. His eyes would snap to the door whenever it opened, but light up when it was Isaiah. With Victor, there was always a story to tell, a complaint to be had, and a new high score to report, and Isaiah would stretch those topics as far as they could go. It was only when there was nothing left to say that he would jump in with some stories from his day. His friend’s smile envied the afternoon sunlight pouring in from his window. For a moment, everything was normal. Unfortunately, they could only escape reality for so long. 

As winter melted into spring, Isaiah stopped listening to the arguments and walked right past Diana and James to get to Victor. His conversations—once long and elaborate— had gradually reduced to short stories in a weak, fatigued voice. 

“They said it’s the treatments,” Victor explained. “The doctors said that it was a lot on my body and that the medicine was making me tired…or something.”

“Or something,” Isaiah would echo. 

More often than not, Isaiah would sit close by in a chair when his friend inevitably fell asleep; it wasn’t his fault. Some nights, the doctors wouldn’t even inform him that visiting hours had ended. On many of those nights, Diana and James would be silently staring into their son’s hospital room, each lost in their own thoughts. One late night, as Isaiah was opening the door to leave Victor’s room, the doctor took down her mask. 

“There’s nothing we can do.” 

“No,” Diana whispered, “there has to be something.”

“We have used every resource available to us and put him on every treatment we could possibly put him on. Even if there was another option, his body is too weak. Anything we do will just cause him to deteriorate faster. We’re out of options. I’m sorry.”

Isaiah was stuck with his hand on the open door, his thought process seeming to temporarily stop to process what he had just heard. Diana’s lips moved, yet no sound came out. Her shaking hands rose to cover her mouth as tears filled her eyes. James emitted a choked noise and fell to his knees.

“Please, I can’t lose my boy,” he pleaded, his voice strained and broken by sobs. “I can’t lose my boy.”

Isaiah’s hand slipped from the door. Tears blurred the hospital into watercolor blobs as reality came crashing down on him— his best friend of seven years was out of options. 

“Mommy?” Victor piped up, having woken up mere moments ago. “Am I going to die?”

“Oh—baby, no, don’t say that.” Diana struggled to keep her voice steady as tears streamed down her face. “Everything will be okay, honey,” she insisted, though she was trying to convince herself more than Victor. 

Isaiah’s feet pushed him from his spot by the door and back to Victor, whom he threw his arms around without a second thought. Victor pulled his arms around him in response.

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?” He whispered, and a single tear dripped onto the sleeve of Isaiah’s t-shirt. 

“I don’t want to die,” he begged in a shaky voice. 

Isaiah’s grip tightened as he whispered, “I don’t want you to either.”

Isaiah was only ten years old when he attended his first funeral.

——

“It wasn’t fair, you know,” I sigh, fidgeting with my John Hopkins’ lanyard. “He should’ve had years. Those few months weren’t even close to enough.”

Violet nods, sets down her drink, and replies, “Billions of years of evolution and there are still kids dying before they ever hit their teens. It is so fucked up.”

“Tell me about it,” I growl, fighting the burning sensation in the back of my throat. “You’d think science would’ve come up with a solution ages ago. You’d think this would never happen again, and yet…” 

Violet’s open hand comes to settle on top of my fist. 

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispers, “that you ever had to go through that. It’s awful, watching someone pass so young, especially when everything was done to save them.”

“Thanks,” I breathe, tears turning our messy dorm into a watercolor blob like that fateful night all those years ago. 

“So, all of this…” Violet gestures to the array of notebooks, textbooks, and half-empty drinks scattered about my old wooden desk. 

“It’s for him,” I confirm. “Nobody— and I mean nobody— deserves to suffer the way he did, the way his family did, the way I have been suffering. I don’t know why there hasn’t been a cure discovered yet, but I’m going to find one even if it’s the last thing I do. Every kid deserves a fair chance at life.” My voice breaks on the last line and I draw in a shaky breath 

“I bet he’s really proud of you, Isaiah.” Violet’s eyes shimmer with tears in the bright moonlight shining through our dorm’s window. 

Tears spill from my eyes as I turn my gaze to the window, looking right past the moon and out to the billions of stars. One of them is Victor and, despite its small size, it boasts the same brightness of his smile—brighter than any hospital room. Despite the hot tears slipping off my cheeks and onto my notes, something pulls the corners of my lips into a faint smile. 

“I’m going to make him proud.”