Hello Stranger

by West, Jade

  But he was going to do it. I saw it in his face.

  Logan Hall was planning to kill himself with an insulin overdose and not tell one single soul.

  “I’m right, aren’t I? You were going to use that to finish yourself?”

  “It’s not like you think it is,” he said, finally, but still his face told a whole other tale.

  I edged closer to him, eyes brimming with tears afresh. My belly was twisting, and I felt sick, heart racing with a shit ton more than an orgasm with his dick in my ass.

  “How is it not like I think it is? Huh? Seriously, Logan, you just have to tell me! Please, just fucking tell me!”

  His eyes met mine, and he was as dark as ever, jaw gritted hard. “Like I said, it’s not like you think it is.”

  I was shaking my head, panic overloading, trying to get my mind around it, how someone like Logan Hall could be so consumed by his mother’s loss that he’d kill himself. Because I got it. I got it that he was torn apart, but it’s the last thing she would have ever wanted. The last thing I could see a man like him doing with his feet so firmly on the ground in life.

  “Please tell me you’re over that,” I said. “Your mum would be devastated.”

  He laughed at me. He actually laughed at me. A cold laugh that chilled me to the bone.

  “You think this is about my mother? Really?”

  I felt like a fool as I looked at him, cheeks pinking up like sweet, naive little Chloe all over again.

  “I don’t know what else…” I managed, and his laugh dried up, his eyes glossing over with tears, even though he was trying his damned fucking hardest to stop them.

  “This isn’t about my mother, Chloe. It’s about me.” He paused, his voice choked up, and my belly did that lurch when you know something bad is coming. Something really fucking bad.

  He sighed, and stared back up at the ceiling again, his breaths still ragged in his chest.

  “Tell me,” I whispered. “Please, Logan, just tell me.”

  He sucked in one hell of a breath before he answered, then held it. Held it until he met my eyes.

  “It’s not about Mum, it’s about me,” he said again. “I’m dying, Chloe. I’m fucking dying.”

  51

  Logan

  I knew what was coming. She shuffled backwards on the bed, face paling and mouth dropping as she shook her head.

  “No… No, Logan.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m terminally ill, Chloe. Sad but true.”

  Her head shook harder, and the tears came.

  “No… It can’t be…”

  It broke my heart to see her like that, so lost in the panic of grief.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” I told her. “It can be. I have CLL – Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia. The big fucking C has come to get me all over again.”

  She sucked in a breath and clutched her chest.

  And then she cried. Sobbed. Broke down on the bed next to me.

  I didn’t move. Didn’t even try to make it better, because there is no better. There is no way to dull that shock or that pain. Christ, I knew that well enough.

  Minutes passed as she tried to digest it, retching as the truth sank in. She managed to calm her breathing, but her eyes were still petrified when she looked over at me.

  “They can help you though, right? What are they going to do? I mean they can slow it down, right? Right? What treatment are you having?”

  I should have told her the truth weeks ago. Her pain would be all the worse for the delay.

  “I’m not going to have any treatment,” I said. “I’m done with that, Chloe. I’m not going around that same cycle again. The cancer has spread. The bloods make it obvious, and I’m not interested in finding out more, or getting treatment, or pondering the life and the universe and everything. This time I’m done.”

  “But you seem fine…”

  “I always seem fine, jitterbug. I do my best to keep myself together. Always have, always will.”

  It was true. I tried to keep my energy levels up and ignore any pain. I tried to keep my focus on what I was doing, always. On taking care of Mum, and the people on the ward, and barely giving any attention to potential symptoms or the results of the routine check-ups.

  Until this one. Until this one flagged the abnormal counts and my summons for further tests came calling.

  “Really, it’s ok,” I told her. “I’m not scared, not anymore. I’ve been as antisocial as I can for years now, making sure my piss poor genetics aren’t going to leave people pining my absence when I’m gone.” I paused. “Until you, that is.”

  Her eyes flashed with passion. With fight.

  “Not just until me!” she squealed. “Why do you think nobody gives a crap about you, Logan? They do! Look at those people today! EVERYONE gave a crap about you, you just don’t want to see it! The people at work give a crap about you. You’re their FRIEND, even if you don’t want to think so.”

  I hated the twinge inside me, that soft hearted part of me latching on to her words.

  She carried on before I could find my response.

  “And not just that, but you help SO MANY people! So many people on that ward! You inspire so many families, and doctors, and nurses, and ME, Logan. You inspire ME!”

  “I will still be helping people while I can. I’m not going to give up my job until I have to.”

  “What then? Huh?” Her eyes were sparkling with hurt. “You just come home one day and wipe yourself out with an overdose?”

  I hated just how pathetic my plan sounded when spoken aloud.

  “That isn’t quite how I was seeing it…”

  She shook her head. “Don’t do this. Just don’t do it.” She held her hands up in some kind of shrug. “How about you get some treatment? At least see what they have to say. At least see what they can do.”

  I sighed. “I’ve been here before. I know the story. My genetics are an utter shit pile, uncles, aunts, grandparents… Mum… Me. We all get wiped out by it, sweetheart, it’s always just a matter of time.”

  She was still shaking her head. “You don’t know that!”

  I let out a sad little chuckle. “I do, Chloe. I’m a realist, I know it well enough.”

  “You’re not a realist,” she told me, and her voice was strong enough to make me shiver, her eyes shining bright with her truth. “You’re not a realist, Logan, I swear to God, you’re not. You’re a fatalist.”

  “And you believe in unicorns and fairytales and the power of the etheric.”

  She didn’t flinch, not even for a heartbeat. “So do you,” she said. “Somewhere deep down inside, you believe in something too.”

  I laughed. “You think?”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Then I guess you don’t know me at all.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “Maybe I just know you better than you know yourself.”

  I laughed right back at her. “Then these past few weeks have been pretty insightful.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “They have.”

  I felt a pounding of negativity right down in my ribs. Not wanting to buy into any of this floaty bullshit.

  “Tell me, sweetheart,” I said, shuffling closer. “Tell me where this incredible insight of yours comes from.”

  I didn’t sound like an asshole, and I didn’t mean to be. My voice was calm and shuttered, detached from my feelings like a train carriage, unclipped.

  She pointed to the stack of books behind the insulin bottle. “There,” she said. “It comes from there.”

  I couldn’t help raise an eyebrow. “From novels?”

  She nodded. “Yep. From novels. From Mythago Wood and Lavondyss and Dion Fortune novels. From Master and Margarita and the Initiate and Stonehenge.”

  “That has nothing to do with my belief in anything. It’s a hobby, nothing more.”

  “Not true,” she said. “I can feel it. Even if you can’t, I can see that little spark in you when you talk about the stories. I can imagine you as a
little boy, running along with those characters through their journeys, and knowing, just knowing there was something there.”

  I could remember that. I could remember my imagination running wild as a little boy, spiralling around my head as I thought about the otherworld, and magic, and fate, and all the crazy shit that might be behind the surface of the cold, hard world we lived in every day. But I was wrong. Watching so many people die had rubbished it away, more and more over time.

  She didn’t give up speaking.

  “You think there wasn’t even a little tiny hint of fate in how we met, Logan? Do you?” Her eyes were so alive. “How we met on a random train reading random stories, and how we found out we worked in the same place, in the same ward?” I felt the strength in her belief as she paused. “You think it wasn’t crazy as all hell when we found out we both had Moon Magic as a favourite, of all of the novels in the world?”

  “Coincidences,” I replied. “Reality is full of them.”

  “BULLSHIT!” she snapped.

  “TRUTH!” I snapped back, and then I got to my feet, grabbing my dressing gown and slinging it on. “And you know what else is truth, Chloe? The truth is, that this is not your fucking problem. You’re a ridiculously inspirational young woman with an incredible life to lead. You have a whole ocean of love and happiness ahead of you, and I’m not a part of that. I can’t be a part of that. And now you know why.”

  “I want that ocean of love and happiness to be with you,” she said, and she was calm. So fucking calm.

  “You’ll need a sailboat to cross it then, unfortunately, not an ocean liner.”

  “I don’t care.” She shrugged. “I want to cross it with you.”

  Her truth was intoxicating in its simplicity. So pure in her words.

  “And this is why I didn’t tell you,” I said. “I knew you wouldn’t make the choice to walk away, especially not once you’d had all those fluffy conversations with my mother. I know you promised her you were all in for all time.”

  Her mirror of me was perfection, the power in her eyes worthy of a crown.

  “This isn’t about your mother,” she said. “It’s about me.”

  52

  Chloe

  So many answers to so many questions in one tiny explanation, the puzzle was complete and crystal clear.

  Logan was dying. Slowly, quickly, made no difference, it was concrete sense all round.

  Fuck you, universe. Fuck you.

  I didn’t hold back my words, not even for a second. I didn’t even begin to back away from him with his crazy crap expectations of have a nice day, I don’t want to know you anymore.

  “I mean it,” I said to him. “You’re an inspiration, and I love you, and an ocean of love and happiness with you can be as short a crossing as it likes, it doesn’t mean it’s any less important, or any less valuable. If anything it makes it more valuable. In some ways it makes every single moment more important.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” he replied. “You’re young and have a whole lifetime ahead of you.”

  I shrugged my usual shrug. “And I might get knocked down by a bloody bus tomorrow, who knows?”

  “You won’t be saying that when I’m rasping for breath, all tubed up like my mother, and you’re wiping my ass in your twenties while your friends are out there boogieing on the dancefloor every night.”

  “Would you have sacrificed a single minute with your mum, even when she was at the end? Would you have rather been out somewhere else? Anywhere in the world doing anything you liked?”

  He paused then. Stopped in his tracks.

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think I would either, if we get to that point with you?”

  “If?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “If. Nothing in this life is certain.”

  I heard Granny Weobley’s voice, giving me one of her wise old lessons, and I said it aloud.

  “The moment is now. It’s always now. Not about reliving the past or dreaming up the future, it’s in the here and now. Enjoy as many of those moments as you can, because they never come twice, my love.”

  “Lovely little mantra, where did you get that from?”

  “My grandma,” I told him.

  “Good for her.”

  I looked at his face, at his scowl, at his gritted jaw and the darkness of the pain in his eyes. But there was more. Just a hint, but I could see it. Feel it.

  I was reaching him. Some part of me was reaching some part of him, and somewhere there was a tiny little sparkle of brightness in his darkness, all that way deep inside him, he was reaching right back out at me.

  He just didn’t know it.

  He wouldn’t let himself know it.

  “How many people have you lost?” I asked him. “In your life, I mean.”

  “Too many,” he snapped.

  “And how many of them would you regret spending a single second with?”

  “Stop this,” he said. “You can’t reason with me.”

  Reason, he used the word reason.

  “If this was the other way around, and I got hit by that bus tomorrow and ended up in Franklin Ward on my way out, tubed up to the oxygen machine while my organs packed up, would you walk away from me with a see you later? Hey? Would you?”

  “Of course not,” he snipped back. “But this is different.”

  Different. Different. Different.

  Everything was always so damn different. Except it wasn’t. It was exactly the same.

  We loved each other.

  Call it fate or destiny or coincidence, or two people having more in common than they could ever know possible, mixed with things on total opposite sides of the scales, like weird magnets that couldn’t stay apart… it didn’t make any difference whatsoever.

  We loved each other.

  And that wasn’t going anywhere. Ever.

  I got up from the bed and walked up to him in his dressing gown, still naked, and tear streaked, with my heart absolutely reeling in pain… but my feet didn’t stall for a second. I walked right up to him and put my hands flat on his chest.

  “One tiny second of joy is worth a lifetime without it,” I said. “I want every single second with you I can get. Every single second, of every single day.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” he said, but his voice was buckling. “We have no fucking idea just how many seconds I’ve got left.”

  “So let’s find out,” I told him, and remembered his words to me weeks ago. “Let’s just enjoy one day at a time, shall we? The shadows will always be waiting in the shadows.”

  “That’s my line.”

  “I pinched it.” I managed a smile. “I love you, Logan. I can say it a million times, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll keep on loving you.”

  He laughed, just a little, but he laughed. “I’ve heard that line plenty of times with your pretty little ass in my patient’s seat.”

  “You’ll hear it plenty more,” I laughed back. “So how about you let that fatality go for just a minute, hey, and let us enjoy one day at a time?”

  And he listened to me. Thank God, finally, he listened to me.

  He reached out and pulled me close, and his warmth was divine. The greatest thing I’d ever felt in my life.

  “How could anyone ever refuse such an incredible little jitterbug like you?” he said, and my heart soared free.

  Even in the cold hard shock, and the pain, and the fuck you, universe, fuck you, the universe was still smiling. Smiling right down on both of us, both Logan and me. Because that’s what love is. That’s what love always is. Whether it’s being on a beach putting your toes in the sea, or climbing a mountain in a wheelchair, or eating a fried breakfast in your boyfriend’s shirt, it’s every moment. Every single moment of joy in your life. And I was damn sure I was going to have a whole ton more of them with Logan Hall.

  53

  Logan

  The girl was a diamond, shining through every piece of rough I’d ever known. Glowing brigh
t, even in the misery, the shock and the pain.

  We ate some of the leftover sandwiches, staring at each other in silence, and I felt a glimmer of something I hadn’t felt in years.

  Hope.

  It was just a glimmer, but I felt it.

  I felt hope.

  “When was the last time you made plans?” she asked me, and her question was genuine in the most stunning of ways.

  “I do still make plans sometimes,” I managed a laugh. “I tend to take each week as it comes.”

  Her shrug set my heart alight. “Then we should start making more of them. There’s so many things I want to do with you.”

  There it was again, that optimism. Always a fountain of the most incredible sparkles, even in the darkest of times.

  “We could take each day as it comes,” I said.

  “Each day as it comes, sure. But days turn to weeks and weeks turn to months, and months even turn to years, no matter if you have CLL or any other miserable crap hanging over your head.”

  I stopped munching my jam sandwich and looked at her through fresh eyes. The sweet little girl on the train who didn’t look like such a sweet little girl anymore. It looked like a wise old woman was staring out through her eyes.

  If anyone had a soul, it was Chloe Sutton. I could feel it in every single one of her breaths.

  “I guess I should make my own bucket list one of these days,” I said.

  “A list. You should make a list. The bucket can go screw itself. We don’t even know what size of a bucket you have left. It could be a whole swimming pool for all you know.”

  That was true enough. So was her comment on how my realism was fatalism. That had been clear enough when she’d drawn out every detail of my current diagnosis before we’d made our way downstairs.

  I was dying. I knew that much. But I didn’t know how or when, not yet. Not set in stone.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to write yourself off without a decent fight,” she said. “You’re Dr Logan Hall, you fight as hard a fight as you possibly can for everyone else with a bucket list, it’s the least you can do for yourself.”