by Alexa Davis
“Ah, well, I bet you did well,” I smiled thinly. Things were much better for the kids here, but it seemed like there was always going to be negative sides to it. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t fix everything. “Jo is certainly happy with how you all behaved.”
“Where’s Lila?” she eventually asked, just as I thought she might. If she remembered me, she would definitely remember Lila.
“Oh...” I was about to launch into an explanation of where Lila might be, but before I could get there, Lila shocked me by entering the room totally unexpectedly. “Oh, there she is.”
“I hope you don’t mind me joining you.” Lila sat by my side with a massive smile on her face. Her cheeks were adorably flushed, as if she’d been rushing around, which somehow managed to make her even more beautiful. “I went to the studio, but it was closed, so I assumed you’d be here.”
“Everything all right?” The image of her hunting for me made me smile to myself. I just loved being on her mind, no matter what.
“Yeah, I just wanted to get in to record the lyrics to the song now that we have them, if you have any space.”
I chuckled, recalling the long evening where we’d all argued over absolutely everything. We’d come up with an awesome song in the end, but it took us a long time to get there. “Kyle has recorded the piano part, right? So, I thought that we could just knock it out whenever you’re ready.”
“Oh, did you want to go now?” I was excited for that, I didn’t mind being back at work for Lila. “We could get it done today, then things could progress.”
“Sure, but not yet. Let’s stay and hang out with Sadie for a while first. I haven’t seen her much yet!”
As they played, my heart melted. They just looked so right together, so adorable. Lila made Sadie smile, even more than I did, so I was content to just watch them for now.
***
“Wow, that was excellent.” We’d ended up staying at the orphanage until much too late, which meant that we were recording into the night, but it felt awesome. Lila was more confident now, as if she could tell that she had talent, which made me proud of her. She deserved everything that was coming to her. “Now that we have all the recordings, we can get going.”
“Obviously, I know that the marketing budget won’t be the same as we first thought, but I’m still grateful to you.” She moved by my side and threw her arms around my back. “This is still a dream come true, no matter what happens next.”
“But Kyle’s dream, right?” I teased, holding her close to me. “This isn’t something that you want at all.”
“Okay, maybe I do.” She shrugged and pulled back to stare into my eyes. “But I didn’t until very recently. Honestly, no one ever used to hear me sing. It was only because Kyle heard me singing in the shower!”
“Well, I’m so glad that he did. I never would’ve met you otherwise!”
It was weird to think that if the circumstances hadn’t brought us together, we never would’ve met. I couldn’t stand the thought of never knowing Lila now. She’d changed me in every way possible and I was so glad for that.
“So, it sounded okay? My voice wasn’t pitchy and weird? I still don’t feel a hundred percent in my throat.”
“I am taking you to the doctor soon if that’s the case!” I insisted sharply. “That’s been going on for too long. You need to be looked at.”
“No, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I just wanted to check that I sounded okay.”
“You sounded great.” I pulled her in for a kiss, feeling my heart skip a beat as we connected. “Perfect, in fact. This is going to be a hit no matter what we do.”
I was still confident in that, despite everything. Lila and Kyle had something and that would shine through with or without a big marketing budget.
“I hope so.” She clutched my fingers tightly, hope shining in her face. “That would be amazing, for all of us.”
She was right. I needed this just as much as she did, but hopefully everything would be okay in the end. If everything worked out exactly as I thought it would, we’d be all out of the shit. Financially, it was advisable for me not to sink more of my own money into the studio, and I hoped I wouldn’t need to. If this all worked, then I wouldn’t.
If only I could make things right with Michael, then everything would be all right.
Chapter 28 – Lila (Sunday)
Fucking hell!
I was getting very frustrated with this cough now – it was making me crazy! It kept coming and going, and tonight it was at its worst. I couldn’t sleep with it. Every time I drifted off, it’d wake me back up again and the exhaustion was making me weep. My mouth and neck felt raw, my chest was aching like crazy, and I was starting to feel like I was really, genuinely sick. Like I could throw up at any moment.
Eventually, I gave up on lying down because it seemed to be making it worse, so I got up and staggered toward the bathroom. At first, I flicked the cold tap on and I sucked the ice-cold water down, which only went some way to soothing the rawness I was experiencing. Then I glanced at my rough reflection in the mirror, which only caused the tears to flow even more furiously.
My hair looked like it was a bird’s nest, my eyes were bloodshot, my skin grayish and pale. I looked like hell. Maybe if I didn’t look so ill, I wouldn’t feel it.
As the hacking cough came over me once more, I tried to keep it quiet so I wouldn’t wake up Kyle, but it was too eager to get out. I leaned over the toilet bowl, clinging to the hard plastic, and eventually along with the spit and saliva, some blood came pouring out, too.
Shit, this is bad, this is bad.
My heart thundered as I stared down at it in shock. My mind flickered everywhere, trying to find some explanation. There had to be some other reason that I was coughing up blood – it didn’t have to mean that I was seriously sick, did it?
I’d never ever had to be worried about my health before, with everything else going on in my life that part of me had always been okay. Now, just as things were going amazing, this was happening to me.
“Are you okay?” Kyle’s voice burst through my shock, and as I quickly turned around, I found him right behind me. “Oh, my God, you have blood all round your mouth. What’s going on?”
He grabbed some tissues and handed them to me, so I started aimlessly wiping my lips. “I don’t know,” I whispered tearfully. “It’s this cough.”
“I thought you were over the flu now.” There was a deep terror in his eyes that made me freak out even more. He was worried about me, which meant there was something to be worried about.
“So did I, but it keeps coming back, and now it’s worse than ever.” I wanted to collapse against him and sob. I didn’t know what to do, and in my sleep-deprived state, I couldn’t get any perspective on any of it. “I’m scared, what do I do?”
He grabbed me and held me close, while rubbing my hair down. “Shh, don’t worry, everything will be okay. I just need to get you to the hospital...”
“It’s like, five in the morning,” I argued weakly. “We can’t go now. Plus, we don’t have insurance. What are we supposed to do?”
“This is your health on the line. We have money now. I am not letting you get sick because of funding. We need you to see a doctor, to get the right treatment, so you can get better. We can worry about everything else afterward.”
If I didn’t feel so shitty, I would have argued with that, but I wanted to get better. I was scared. I did need a health professional to look at me. “Okay, just let me get dressed.”
I heard Kyle calling a cab as I was in my bedroom and that made me sob harder. I hated us spending our hard-earned cash on me, especially as it was a lifeline that might not last forever. I didn’t want to go back to struggling from paycheck to paycheck, but at this point, I didn’t see what other option I had.
Kyle joined me in the doorway, looking at me with fearful eyes. “The cab is on its way. Shall I give Xander a call?”
I considered that for a moment, thin
king it through. I did want Xander and his comforting presence by my side to help get me through this nightmare, but that was selfish. I didn’t want to drag him into my mess, and I didn’t want him to think that the only reason that I’d called him was for the money side of things. He seemingly had his own financial woes to worry about. I didn’t need him in mine.
“No, thank you.” I held my hands up to stop him from arguing with me. “I don’t want him to come to the hospital with me. I just want to see what’s going on. It might just be nothing, and I don’t want to pull him out of his bed and away from his work if it isn’t anything to worry about.”
Of course, that was just hope speaking. There had to be something going on with me. But if it stopped Kyle from calling then that was good enough for me.
“Okay, if you say so.”
He didn’t look convinced, but then he did leave me alone to get dressed, which I was grateful for. I didn’t intend to get made up like crazy, I just wanted a bra on, and to not be wearing my pajamas. It might be okay to go in at five a.m. looking like this, but by the time I got out, it could be like nine. I didn’t want the world to see me looking so bad. It was a silly priority, but one that I couldn’t stop.
By the time I heard the cab honking outside, I was at a standard I could cope with, but that still wasn’t enough to have my heart stop hammering. No matter how okay I looked, there was no taking the fear away from me. This was officially scary as hell. I was just lucky to have my brother by my side, looking out for me. Without him, I would probably just fall apart.
***
“You’ll feel a sharp scratch,” the nurse told me kindly as she pushed a needle into my arm. I took a sharp intake of breath and my face screwed up, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I was expecting.
When we got to the hospital, I was still coughing blood into a tissue, so they raced me into an examination room and started running a whole bunch of tests on me. I’d had an ECG, my blood pressure taken, and now some blood tests. If this didn’t give the doctor enough information, I’d been told that I might have to go for X-rays, too. They were taking this seriously, which freaked me out even more.
In fact, if I didn’t have Kyle holding my hand I would be a sobbing, broken mess.
“Okay, I’ll send these off to the blood room now. I’m not sure how long it’ll be before they come back; it depends how busy they are in there.”
“Right, sure.” My voice sounded weird, all hollow and monotone, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. “Thank you.”
Once she left the room, I flopped my head back on the uncomfortable hospital pillow, frustration circling me. I didn’t like this, any of it. The anticipation, the waiting... It was killing me. However bad the news was, I wanted to know. It had to be better than this.
“Do you want anything?” Kyle asked me quietly. “I can pop to the store and get you a drink or something to eat?”
“No, thank you, I have everything I need here.” This was followed by another horrific round of coughing, which pissed me off even further. “I just want to go home.”
“I know, but we just have to wait a little while longer. Once we have the results, then maybe we can think about going home.” He didn’t say it depended on what the results were, but he didn’t need to. We both knew that. “For the meantime, why don’t we write some more lyrics?”
I shot him an unimpressed look, making my opinion on that matter very clear. As if I hadn’t had enough trouble writing the last song, the last thing I needed was more stress added on my shoulders. “Yeah, right.”
“Yeah, it’ll be good. We can use this room as inspiration. The room is so whiiite, the floors so cleeean...”
Despite myself, I burst out laughing. Somehow, Kyle had managed to shake some of my bad mood off, and he had me smiling.
“Yeah, sure, that sounds wonderful. It can be album number two.”
“Or the last song on the first one...”
Of course! He didn’t know that I’d been in and recorded the lyrics. I hadn’t gotten around to telling him yet, which I was glad for now. It meant that I could have some good news to break up this shitty day. “Oh, I recorded the last one! I did it Friday night, so at least we have one album ready.”
His face lit up – his dream was still in line for coming true. Now with all this happening, I felt better about that than ever before. “That’s awesome, sis, great news.”
I smiled thinly, desperately hoping that there would be more to follow.
***
Time passed. I wasn’t sure how much, but it felt like hours. Kyle and I talked, played games, and I eventually send him down to the store for me, but we were still bored as hell. Anticipation had given way to irritation, so by the time the doctor came in to speak to me, I felt completely unprepared.
He sat down by my bed, his expression grim, but I wasn’t freaking out anymore. An odd sense of calm had overcome me as I waited.
“We have some bad news,” he told me gravely. Kyle gripped onto me tighter, but I still felt numb. “Your blood tests have come back cancerous, and we believe that it’s in the throat. Of course, we will now need to run the X-rays to prove that, but that’s where we’re at right now.”
He continued talking, but I couldn’t hear any of it. Throat cancer... I have cancer. It felt like a death sentence, one that I couldn’t yet digest.
Am I going to die? Am I about to lose my life? I was certainly going to lose my singing voice, that was pretty much a guarantee.
I felt sick, nausea was swirling around in my stomach, tingles were racing up and down my body, but I didn’t know what to deal with that information. Kyle was holding me close, trying to comfort me, but I didn’t what to do.
Throat cancer.
“Right, well I’m going to go and check up on a free X-ray room so we can get started,” the doctor continued, standing up a little awkwardly. “The more information we have right now, the better.”
As he left, I was still in a stunned silence. What was I even supposed to say to that? “I’m going to call Xander,” Kyle told me firmly. “He needs to know now.”
But I couldn’t stand that, I wanted to deal with this on my own for now. “No, don’t,” I rasped. “No, I’ll call him tomorrow. I just want to get all these tests out the way first, please.”
He sat down, giving me my way, but he didn’t look impressed by it. This was my illness, though. This was my choice. I needed to deal with this in my own way.
Chapter 29 – Xander – (Monday)
I sat in my chair, trying to get into the swing of things while I watched the band record, but my heart simply wasn’t in it. I couldn’t offer any suggestions because in all honesty, I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t think about anything other than my friend Michael. I hated us being so distant. I didn’t like going all this time without speaking to him. It made me very uncomfortable.
One way or another, I would have to make it right.
“All right, guys,” I said into the microphone, determination lacing my tone. “That’s great for today, but I think we need to take a break and come back to it some other time. I’ll book you in for another day, if that’s okay?”
I expected a bit of a fight considering they were originally booked in for the rest of the day, but luckily the guys looked about as spent as I felt, so they quickly agreed and packed their things up. While they did, my emotions swirled in my chest.
I couldn’t keep putting this off any longer. I had to go and speak to Michael. If he was going to continue dodging my calls and ignoring my voicemails, then I would have to go to him directly. I’d been trying to avoid doing so because I wasn’t sure how heated things would get again, but it was getting silly now. One of us had to be the bigger person, to make things right, and I didn’t mind it being me.
As I locked the studio up, excitement grew in my chest. This felt positive. I probably should have done this a whole lot sooner, but at least I was doing it now. I spent the drive over planning just what I was
going to say to him. This was potentially a delicate situation and I needed to handle it carefully. I was going to have to choose my words carefully if I didn’t want another argument.
This will be good. I did my best to gear myself up. This will be fine, there’s nothing at all to worry about. But I wasn’t totally convinced that it’d be that simple. Michael had never held a grudge for this long.
Anxiety crept in as I waited with baited breath for him to answer the door. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea if he was even there. Maybe he was so upset that he’d gone somewhere else entirely.
But then the door swung open, and there he was, except he didn’t look like his normal self. He had more stubble than I’d ever seen on his face before, his eyes were surrounded by dark circles, which suggested that he hadn’t been sleeping much, either, plus a strong scent of booze emanated from him.
“Are you okay?” I asked cautiously. “What’s going on?”
“What do you want?” he growled back, clearly not totally ready to forgive me just yet. Whatever was going on with him, his anger toward me hadn’t died down.
I hadn’t planned on apologizing necessarily, I just wanted to work past this, but seeing him in such a state tugged at my heart strings. Whatever had happened between us didn’t matter; it wasn’t as important as my friend.
“I just wanted to come and say sorry for our fight. I spoke to the accountant, and he basically agreed with you. We need to make some cutbacks if we’re going to survive. I should’ve come sooner, but my stupid pride got in the way.”
It worked. Michael stared at me for a second, as if he was trying to gauge how serious I was, before he stepped to the side and let me in. As I walked through the hallways of his usually pristine home, I couldn’t help but notice the mess. His house looked just like him... like something terrible was going on.
“So,” I started, perching on the edge of his couch. At first, Michael remained standing, looming over me, but when I didn’t speak, he took the hint and sat down. This was going to be a chat between friends. I wasn’t going to let him make things awkward. “How have things been with you?”
