Just one blink and with a shimmer in the air and a soft crackle of light he dissolved into nothingness, no sound no warning just the empty space where he'd stood, that's when it hit me he was gone...
"Your CT scan reveals a growing mass within your frontal lobe in your brain which indicates a growing tumor" the doctor said, his voice flat, his eyes searching mine for signals of pain or panic. But my gaze was hollow, already staring beyond him, beyond the walls of this sterile room. I tilted my head as though trying to hear some different frequency, and spoke in a tone that caught him off guard:
"How long do I have doctor?"
"Five months," he replied, the words falling like programmed code.
Five months. An eternity for some. A blink for others. For me, it was enough.
I smiled and rose without another word, leaving the consultation room and the doctor frozen in place, wondering if I truly understood what tumor meant.
I did.
I just knew it meant something different for me.
As the elevator descended, I drifted higher into the clouds of my thoughts, untethered. Five months. How do you live an entire life in that silver of time? Paris or Rome? No... Peru-where the mountains kiss the sky and time forgets its name. The carousel of what-ifs spun in my mind like a vinly playing memories that hadn't happened yet.
ding
The elevator chimed like the final note of a forgotten lullaby. The doors opened and I stepped out into the real world, the sterile white walls giving way to spring sunlight and silent questions.
I was almost out of the hospital when I collided with someone.
"Can you watch where you're going? Sheesh," I muttered, irritation automatic until I look up.
Hazel eyes met mine.
Not just eyes-worlds. Like a dreamscape etched in sepia, where the light had gone out a long time ago but still glowed faintly, hoping someone might notice. There was a loneliness in them-"I've been the archer, I've been the prey" kind of loneliness. A quiet, echoing sorrow. A whole galaxy collapsed behind irises the color of fallen leaves in October.
I blinked.
And for one fleeting moment, it felt like falling in love in slow motion, like a lyric you've never heard before by somehow already known by heart.
Who was I kidding - love? As if.
That word sounded like static from an old signal, scrambled and distant. A relic of another time. Something I'd stopped believing in when the scans lit up and the doctor said five months.
"Aren't you gonna apologize?" he asked, a lazy arrogant smirk stitched across his face.
I stared. Unblinking.
Why would I? He bumped into me first but of course, people like him never think they're the ones at fault.
He glanced at his wrist like he had somewhere important to be or someone more important to haunt. Then just like that he walked away. No parting line. Just the sound of his footsteps, fading like the end of a dream I never asked for. I stood there watching him go, each step pulling him farther into the blur of the world - and yet I couldn't stop staring at his back, like he was the cliff and I was the girl stupid enough to look over the edge.
What a jerk, I muttered under my breath, swallowing whatever strange electricity in the air between us.
I got into my car and by the time I got home, my body ached with questions I couldn't form and all I wanted was a long, cold shower-the kind that stings at first and then numbs everything, the kind that washes him off my skin but not out of my mind.