"And the first lady to cross the line is...Gracen!" he announced as the whole arena filled with loud cheering. I joined in the cheering as the MC went on to announce the second, third and the fourth runner...as each lady crossed the line.
"Where are contestants number three and seven?" He asked in a taunting manner.
When the last contestant breezed crossed the finish line, Gracen was nowhere to be found. And then I saw her coming towards me—gold medal around her neck and looking very much like the beauty queen she really was.
“Great win, Sweetheart.” I congratulated her, wrapping her in a warm hug.
“Thanks Honey, but I feel guilty. Those other out-of-shape women never had a chance against me,” Gracen bragged. Look how out of breath they all are,” she giggled.
“You did great, Babe. I knew you had it in the bag,” I told her, rubbing her back with my palms and planting a kiss on her long silky hair.
She pulled away from me and playfully threw jabs at my chest while I took cover with my arms. The loud voice of the man behind the megaphone captured my attention. It informed the crowd that the men’s’ race was about to start. I glared at Gracen, laughing furtively at my victorious woman. I dared not tease her about being out of breath herself. She would kill me.
“Try not to come in last,” Gracen warned, poking my nose with her finger.
“No worries, I’ll try not to break your record Babe,” I mocked.
Another smile immediately appeared at the corners of her lips. She was indeed beautiful and elegantly so, with a spark that would start a fire in the absence of oxygen.
The gun thundered, and then we men ran. The sight was breathtaking as my legs moved in accord until weariness set in and only the fittest trudged on. The crowd roared, and the atmosphere was electric as a winner was set to emerge. One man was close behind me. Gracen voice reached my ears as she cheered. I crossed the finish line first, the other runner a close second. I raised my hands above my head flashing a “V” for victory.
The ovation became louder in an instant. I suddenly felt dizzy and fell to the floor in a struggle to catch my breath. I guess I had expended my energy more than I should have after being jet lagged. My stomach hurt, and my joints cramped, but I struggled to stand to my feet and hugged my overly-elated fiancée who was overjoyed. She could not help screaming at the top of her lungs That’s my man! It made me feel all the happier for winning.
*****
"Brrrr, it's cold out here," Gracen muttered, shivering, as we stood outside the Moonlight Basin Lodge; an 8100 acre in the alpine community. The snowy afternoon is bitterly cold in the large populated area of Big Sky, Switzerland. This was our second day here and it had snowed heavily the previous night.
Gracen had lain in my warm embrace this night as the snow came down heavily. More than a foot of snow was expected to blanket the area again this night. This left me with another promise of a night spent with Gracen’s smooth skin interlocked with mine. The thought of it made me giddy.
"Don't worry, Darling, I'll warm you right up after our skiing session." I flashed a smile and winked. Gracen’s cheeks flushed even redder as I gazed into her sky-blue eyes and licked my lips thinking of getting a taste of her nether regions.
"You're a bad boy Jiraiya," Gracen fluttered her naturally long eyelashes at me.
"There's no boy here Sweetheart. Haven't you learned the difference by now?" I replied with an arch to my brow.
"That I can definitely attest to," she responded with a giggle before turning her head to view the surrounding area.
"I can't believe it's only early November and the ski lifts are this crowded," she added with a frown appearing between her perfectly carved brows.
"Why do you find such a trivial matter as the crowd to be a problem? You're with me and not them," I stated turning her face away from the crowd, so she could look at me.
"True but the Colorado mountains would have been better," Gracen rebutted in a playful tone.
I put on my ski kits which had been a Christmas gift from Gracen, and move to the edge of the chair, ready to go. I push off, knees slightly bent.
Looking at Gracen with a smile, nudging her on, "Let’s just ski, shall we?" I said as I pushed off with my ski poles. I looked back to see Gracen taking off behind me. "Damn it, I live for this shit!" The more dangerous the sport the more alive I felt.
I zoomed past the dips and over the snowy hills like the experienced skier that I am. Gracen moves to my side and I look over at her and grinned. She might be a top model, but she loved the feel of danger and excitement just as much as I did. That's why we clicked so well together. Gracen and I continued down the hill at a fast rate, zigzagging like a pair of ski Olympic champions.
“Wow, that was exhilarating,” I said once I reached the base. I slipped off my goggles so I could get a good view of Gracen as she came to a stop right beside me.
“Jiraiya, your nose is bleeding,” Gracen said with an alarmed look on her face. That was when I felt the warm trickle slide from my right nostril, resting in my light moustache.
“What?” I put my finger below my nose, quickly feeling the warm blood. Gracen was quick to get a napkin from her ski pants pocket, putting it to my nose to stop the bleeding. After a minute, the blood seemed to slow and I tried my best to dispel the worried look on Gracen’s face with a joke.
*****
I played down Gracen’s worry and talked her into taking a bath with me. We sat in the big bath tub, allowing the warm water to soak into our skins, giving that incredible feeling of calmness. The words were silent… our eyes were closed. Our legs touched underneath the foam. Ahh… knew a bath tub could feel so much like paradise. But when Gracen opened her eyes, she screamed. It was there again...the blood running down my nose. The moment and the mood were ruined as I opened my eyes wide.
I felt alright; it all seemed normal. It was just the strain that I had put on my body. I looked at the worried woman in front of me as, slowly, my sight started to become blurry. And right then I knew something was terribly wrong....
Gracen helped me to the clinic and sat by me as the doctors ran their tests. The bleeding from my nose was persistent, it wouldn’t stop. When we finally got things under control, I had little to no strength left. Gracen looked on, somewhere between perplexed and terrified. My test results finally are in—I don’t hear the doctor. All I see is Gracen's beautiful face as it drowns in a flood of tears.
I am that man, the man Gracen dreamed of marrying. The man she loved has just been sentenced to a life of hell.
Leukemia.
Chapter 5
Jiraiya
The Week After
A week after our trip, I was back home, lying in a hospital room. The specialist stood just a few inches away from my father and my mother. Gracen was behind them, pulling nervously on a few strands of loose hair. Through partially closed eyes, I could see the sadness in her eyes as the doctor told my family about my condition.
Mother was devastated. Father had always been a sturdy-minded person; I knew it hurt him just as much, but he had taught himself to show only the tiniest of emotion. I lay on the table watching and listening. I wondered if they knew that I was awake as the doctor rambled on about the various kinds of treatment available, my prognosis, stiff upper lip, etc. I felt the heat in my eyes, but no tears came forth.
The next couple of days were difficult; I had never felt so weak in my entire life. I needed someone or something that would tell me that it would pass; I needed to know that things would get better. The darkness that had started to form in my soul only grew deeper.
"You really need to eat something to keep your system functioning properly, it is best for your health," I heard Gracen say. Her words seeped through my ears and into my brain, slowly and gently like water under a bridge at night. It was supposed to make me feel better, but it only made me feel worse.
"Why? My body is not working properly. I feel like drowning myself in the ocean right now.
My bones hurt so much. I feel dizzy every time I try to move. The doctors have given me a list of things I should avoid. Every freakin’ thing I enjoy is on that list. My life is being taken away from me." I could feel the heat of tears at the corners of my eyes, threatening to break free and turn my face into a waterfall.
"Don't think like that, Sweetheart. I am here for you and I love you so much," she said and leaned in to hug me as tears found their way down her face. Her hugs were supposed to make me feel better but, instead, they reminded me of my worst fear: How could she stay with me? Why would she want to? She was young, beautiful and active. She had her whole life ahead of her. A career to look after and dreams to accomplish. I could see it in her eyes. She was thinking the same thing. I could not bear being a burden to her.
She sat down beside me and talked. She spoke of work; she spoke of the many things that had happened in her day. I knew she was trying to keep me happy and abreast of events in her life but all it did was tell me that she was out there all alone, while I was stuck here on this miserable hospital bed.
"How do you feel, Jiraiya?" I heard the voice of Dr. Coleman as he walked into the room. I had cursed a thousand times in the last few days: not being one to stay off work for a long period of time. I had wanted to be out of the hospital and off to work, but the doctor had shaken his head. With that little gesture, my hope of being discharged was dashed on hard rocks, where it shattered into tiny pieces. So, in anger, I had cursed for days, any time I heard or saw the doctor. Today I was in no mood for cursing.
"Now good Doctor tell me, how long will I have to be here?" I asked.
"We need to keep you for further observations. The treatments will be more effective if you don’t stress your bones and muscles. Imagine the stress of coming here every time you need to do your chemotherapy. Don't worry, in about three weeks, you should be able to go home. But you will need a nurse or a caregiver when you are discharged."
"Is he going to make a full recovery?" Gracen asked. Right there and then, without the help of an interpreter, I knew what she was thinking about. She was already thinking about her future with me; if I was going to ever get better, if our lives together would be the way they were before, if I would ever be the same and how it would affect our relationship.
"It is hard to say right now. We need to give the treatments time to do its job. His body is responding better than I had anticipated, but it is too early to know. We need to get him through about 50% of the process before we can make that determination. As far as pain management goes, the pain meds will certainly help,” the doctor said methodically.
I turned to look at Gracen and saw the gloom in her eyes.
"It's okay," I mumbled. "It’s okay," I repeated, more to convince myself than her.
She held my hand in hers and squeezed tightly. I knew she loved me and I loved her, too. But from the look of things I knew our love might not weather the storm.
*****
It had been two weeks; I was given clearance to go home with the caveat of returning for weekly checkups. The trip home was somber; my father and mother in the front seat and Rosie and me in the back. No one said a word.
It hurt me that Gracen had been unable to be there for my release from the hospital. She had texted that she wanted to; but a previous “work thing” had made it impossible. I checked on social media and saw her at an event with a big shot photographer who was holding her too close for comfort. I tried to take my mind off it and concentrate on things that made me happy. But I just couldn't take my mind off it.
"I am glad you are coming back home, Mr. Sampson. The house has not been the same without you," Rose said, much to my delight.
"I’ve missed you too, Rose. I kept dreaming of this day in all that time at the hospital," I said to her. “But in my dreams, I was going to my own home and not to my parents’,” I responded with a sigh.
"Stop talking nonsense! We’re your family! We would never allow you to be by yourself when you’re sick. You should be with us so we can care for you.”
Rose continued. "Do you still feel much pain?"
"Not as much as I felt these past two weeks. Now I just feel exhausted all the time, but the pain meds are doing their job. The doctor said it would get better over time." I smiled at her, even that was hard to do now.
"That's great, I am so happy to hear that. Maybe you can take me skiing with Miss Gracen like she promised when you are fully recovered," she teased, trying to make the mood a bit less grave.
“You, skiing?” I gave her a doubtful look.
“It’s never too late to teach old dogs new tricks,” she grinned widely. “After all, you need an incentive to get back on your feet and be your normal competitive self again,” she explained as a single tear fell from her right eye.
"Of course, Rose. Thank you so much for believing in my full recovery. Even my parents haven't said anything remotely close to that," I glanced at Mother in the front seat, but her head was turned toward the passing scenery; apparently lost in thought. In reality, I knew she was scared to death—at wit’s end as to how to handle my situation.
"That's not fair, Mr. Sampson. Your mother has been worried sick about you," Rose said in Mother’s defense.
"You see now that's the problem, I don't need anyone to be worried sick about me. I need my family to be optimistic about my full recovery instead of speaking about my condition like I am going to die soon. You know the doctors only gave me two years, right?" I said to Rose with a glint of anger in my eyes. I was not really angry; I was just tired of being looked at with pity.
"Don't talk like that, Jiraiya. You know we care about you and we just cannot act like everything is alright when it isn’t." Her voice rose to a high pitch as Mother turned to look at me from the front seat. Rose reached over to give my hand a squeeze as I sat there and remained quiet.
"He just keeps spewing nonsense.” It was Father’s turn now; he spoke for the first time. He had been quiet since we got into the car; he had hardly said a word at the hospital and I was soon going to find out why. "You talk like we have lost hope in you, but you should ask yourself where is that whore you planned to marry? Has she given up on you completely? She doesn't even think you two can make it beyond this. Where is she now?" My father raged.
"Don't talk like that, Frank.” My mother tried to make him speak less viciously but I knew, deep within me, that he was right.
He wasn’t right about everything but he was right about this thing. Gracen should have been here with me; but she wasn’t. I felt very bad about it, but I consoled myself with the thought that I understood. She had said it was work-related and maybe it was. But the face of that man kept popping up in my mind.
I tried pushing the image out of my mind. The harder I tried, the harder it became. Well, I guess my time with Gracen is over. I’m no longer of value to her and I just need her to say it. I want her to look me in the eye and tell me that she doesn’t want me anymore. I know that she loves me; or at least the person I used to be. I guess the illness is just too much. I wonder if I will die alone, with no one at my side.
Chapter 6
Karine
I looked up at the man that was being wheeled into the hospital by two nurses, noting that he looked pale and weak. The expression on his face made me remember my father. I looked away and concentrated on the sheets that I had taken out to wash. This was basically what I did every day, it was my job. Although I sometimes assisted the nurses and doctors whenever they needed an extra hand, I did not really have any medical skills. I wanted to though; I wanted to go to college and get my degree. Once I had big dreams, but those dreams were not so big any more.
I walked past the reception area and my eyes caught the television screen. There was a talk show on and a charming celebrity couple was the guests on the show. They looked really good together: their lifestyle simply glistened on their faces and spoke more than any words could express.
I almost walked straight into the wall, missing the
door by an inch or two because my attention was focused on the screen. I watched as the couple kissed to the delight of the small talk show audience. It brought back instant memories of my own love life and how much it had sucked. My boyfriend and I had broken up just one month ago. I had caught him in the arms of another woman. For days on end I was broken and sad...I felt betrayed. I blamed myself for his slip-up, making up excuses like: maybe if I was more responsive to his needs sexually, he wouldn’t have had the need to seek his pleasure somewhere else.
I had been brought up in a religious family; my morals were solid and almost unwavering. It's not as if I was a prude or that I hated the idea of sex...quite the opposite. My body was like an exposed electric wire; I got turned on by even the slightest hint of eroticism. I had fantasies, I had desires and wishes. I constantly fought to keep myself in check and I felt like Timothy, my ex, understood me more than anyone else in the world.
I was no longer a virgin. I had given him my virginity, but we had only had sex twice in all the time we were together. I felt like he understood; I always thought that he was caring and very appreciative of the kind of girl that I was. Because of this, I always tried my best to restrain my desires to make love to him every time we were together. I didn’t want him to see me differently. If only I had known that it was all the opposite.
I took the elevator to the lower level of the hospital’s basement and turned towards the lower level-laundry area where I knew that Nancy would be waiting for me. She did the same job that I did: she was the only one who I shared my thoughts with and she shared hers with me, too.
“You have that look in your eyes, Karine. What’s going on with you?” I heard Nancy’s voice immediately when I came into her line of sight. She was already busy with some sheets and laboratory robes. I smiled as I approached her and found a good space to drop the sheets I had in my hands. I put a basket of soiled laundry on the countertop and placed it near one of the washing machines. I began running water into the machine and then added some disinfectant detergent.
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