Chapter 2

THE SECOND DAY

I wake up with my alarm beeping right beside my face.  As I get out of bed, I start to go into the shower, until I hear our phone ring downstairs.  I run down the stairs and through the “hall of drawings” (where all of my artwork is portrayed) and go through the kitchen to grab the phone.
“Hello, this is Katie.”
“Katie … Belovich?”
“… Speaking.”
“Hi, there, this is Jack’s doctor, Mrs. Richards.  I’d like to talk to you about his final surgery.”
My heart drops.  What does she mean by final.  Does she mean that it might cure him this next time, or does it mean they already know it won’t work?  Either way I’m as interested as I’ll ever be.
“Uh, sure.  W—what about it?”
“Well, if you have or haven’t forgotten, I’d just like to remind you that it is Friday, at 4:00 P.M., but this one will be his last go.”
“Uh, well, what do you mean by last?”
“It means he—oh, okay—I’m sorry my superior told me that I cannot tell you.”
“What?  Why not!”  My voice is louder than I imagined, so I try to tone it down a little.
“Well, your mother told us not to tell you.”
I feel like I have a lump in my throat.  Why is my mom keeping a secret of my own brother from me?  Why doesn’t she want me to know the fate of my own sibling?  I can’t take this anymore.  This curiosity of my own life, of my parent’s life, of my brother’s life, it’s literally tearing me apart.  I just can’t handle it.  It’s only been a couple of hours, and after one incident, I hate everything.  Time has made my life a distant memory, and now this horrid reality is taking my family away from me.  A voice in my ear disrupts my thoughts.
“H—hello?”
I hang up the phone immediately, and run upstairs.  I slam the door behind me, and I breakdown.  I cry silently, but the emotions I’m feeling take over, and it’s like a dam just broke inside of my eyes, and all of its water is just pouring out in a waterfall.  Time is forever a Lie.

***

The bus ride to school is different.  Now that everybody knows that my parents have died, they all of the sudden feel sorry for me.  Before they were calling me four-eyes (which is such a cheesy way of an insult that I have glasses), know-it-all, mainly because everyone else is stupid, and sometimes they push me into lockers or on the ground.  They should be jealous, because once I’m successful, they’re probably going to be living in a box on I-90.  But now they’re saying condolences, especially some of the people who bullied me.
“Hey Katie.”
I turn around to see my two best friends, Mary Haply and Dana Smith.
“Hey guys,” I say in a sort-of-fake, sorrowful voice.  Usually they’ve just been regular friends.  Going places as friends, talking and texting on an occasion.  But they’ve changed as well as the others.  Now they’re more caring and supportive, but I only like them, because I’ve always seen them as supportive.  They raise my confidence and happiness when I’m feeling down, and I appreciate it only from them.
“So, did your parents …” I could see Dana choke a little after that word.  “… See your report card before they left?”
“Yeah, they did,” I say with a smile, trying to hide my true emotions.  I never cry in public, but people see me as tough for doing that.  Honestly, I just hate the feeling of people seeing me cry.
“Well that’s good, they got to see that you got straight A’s,” Dana replies.
“Yeah, just like us!” Mary says in excitement.  For some reason, she’s the only person in our school that is actually enthusiastic about school.  Yeah, Dana and I care about our grades, but we still hate it.
“I’m trying to focus mainly on school, guys.  So I don’t tend on making a bunch of arrangements with you, sorry,” I say, trying to sound apologetic.
“Oh that’s okay, I know you want to make special people proud of you,” Dana replies.  After that they both decide to turn around and face the front of the bus.
The whole ride there, I think about the phone call this morning, what will happen tomorrow with the final chemotherapy.  I think of how Jack will survive his leukemia and live with me forever.  I wouldn’t mind not having parents when I know that Jack is with me.  I feel happiness rise up inside of me, and then drop like an anvil.  I think about the other option: how he won’t survive.  I don’t know what I would do if that happens.  I would cry even more.  I would scream at God for putting me through this misery.  And the thought of him not even knowing that his parents died; I have to tell him tonight.  A tear rolls down my cheek as we come to a complete stop and people start running off of the bus.  Time is Forever a Lie.

***

I come home from a regular day at school (despite the condolences from everyone), and look at the calendar in my bedroom.  I grab a red Expo marker and write on Friday, the 23rd of October:

FINAL Surgery

Then, I let a tear drop right below the reminder.  I don’t want to see his heart be broken right before he might … die.  Now I really don’t want to tell him.  I throw the marker at my wall and jump onto my bed, my eyes looking at the ceiling.  After about five minutes of staring, I run downstairs to get a black sharpie.  I get a stool that’s tall enough to let my head hit the ceiling, and place it next to my bed.  Right above where my bed lies, I start writing words on the ceiling.  Once I finish, I kick the stool aside, and lay back on my bed, looking up at the words that I just wrote above me:

Time is Forever a Lie

Chapter 3

THE THIRD AND
FINAL DAY

“Clear!”
I watch as they shock my brother over and over again.  During his surgery, he ran into cardiac arrest.  My eyes hurt watching him like this.  They drift over to the clock.  8:00.  It’s been four hours since this started, and my heart is probably going to do the same thing as my brother’s right now.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee …
The doctors all stop doing whatever they were doing to my brother, and stare at the ground.  No, no, NO!  I can’t lose him, I can’t.
“MOVE!” I scream, as I push the doctors away, shaking my brother.  “Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!”  I can barely see him now; the tears in my eyes have filled them.  The doctors are telling me to get out, but I stand there, resisting their pull.
“JACK!”

I wake up, breathing heavily, and I feel as if I just got out of a sauna.  I’m sweating, and my heartbeat might as well be over 200.  I wipe the sweat off of my head, and wipe my eyes, and then I get out of bed and walk downstairs.  That might as well have been the worst nightmare I’ve ever had.  I just need a drink of water.
After I gulp down a whole glass of water in just 30 seconds, I walk back upstairs, turn my fan on, and crawl back into bed.  I face upward with my eyes staring at my ceiling.  It says it for me, instead of letting me think of it:  Time is Forever a Lie.

***

School, once again, was fine.  As I take the bus home, I remember my dream I had last night.  That cannot happen today, I say to myself.  My brother will live, and I know it.
I get home at 3:00, and I have about 30 minutes before I leave for the chemo.  What I do in that amount of time is draw a flower, a pink flower.  I got the skill and hobby of drawing from my mom, who was an artist herself.  I used to draw with my mom every weekend and every Wednesday.  But now, I do it by myself, and it’s important to me, because I want to carry on my mom’s artwork.  As I’m thinking about this, I notice I’m drawing the same flowers that I gave my mom.  I quickly crumble it up and toss it in the trash next to me.  I cannot think about them right before my brother’s fate is to be discovered.
“Ready?”
I look over as I see Jack standing in the hallway, his shaved hair showing, instead of covered by his hat.  I finally see him for once: his blue eyes, just like mine.  I notice his smile showing his perfect teeth, while mine are still covered by braces.  I love him so much; I even start to cry in front of him.
“Katie,” he says as he sniffles.  “You’ve never cried in front of me.”
He runs over and hugs me.
“I love you, Katie,” he says.  I open my eyes and smile as my tears run down my cheek and onto his shirt.
“I love you too, Jack.”

***

“What do you mean I can’t go in there?  I’m his protector!”
I’m standing in front of a tall black man, his stature kind of intimidating, with a green apron around him.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but only hospital workers and Doctors working on the patient can be in the room.”
“Are you kidding me?” I say loudly.  “As his sister I should be able to see him!”
“You can sit in the waiting room if you want, but there’s not a chance that I am allowing you in this room.”
Then he walks away and disappears around a corner.  I can’t believe I’ll have to wait hours before I see him, either dead or alive.  I also can’t stand the fact that I still don’t even know if this means he’ll survive or not.
I sit down in a chair next to a very oversized woman looking at me with a disgusted stare.  I ignore her and try to focus on the time.
One hour.  I start to read a magazine that says at its heading, “Courtney Cox gets more plastic surgery.”
Two hours.  I start to drift off in a long sleep, this time not keeping track of the time that has passed so far.  Before I drift off I hear a beeping coming from down the hall, and see doctors running towards where it’s coming from.  Please don’t let that be Jack.
I wake up, and it’s 7:13.  I totally just skipped dinner! I stand up and walk over towards a vending machine, but before I can come within 5 feet of it, someone steps in front of me.
“Excuse me, but are you Katie Belovich?”
“Y-yes.”
“Can you follow me?” he asks before walking down the hall to the right of me.  I think of what happened before I fell asleep.  This is where the beeping came from!
“Well, before you can see him, I’d like you to know something.”  He pauses for a good five seconds before carrying on.  “We did the best we could for this last try, and because of the survival rate for himself, he—couldn’t make it.”
Something just died inside of me.  Feelings being crushed, my life becoming a true lie, every-thing that I’ve tried to live for has just been flattened and thrown down into an abyss.  I walk in the door, not even acknowledging that the man was in front of me.  What I see is my brother, with his eyes closed, lying on the bed in the middle of the room.  I walk next to him, and put my hand in his.
“For everything I—we—have done for you, we appreciate every moment we had with you, Jack.  You’re life is something I loved more than anything else in the world.”  I start to cry, and it becomes harder and harder to talk.  “My life—revolves around yours.”  I start to bawl in front of his dead body.  I just can’t take this pain anymore.  I need to have someone in my life that I love as a family, but all of that has been washed away.  I’ll never forget the one brother that made my life meaningful, and I’ll never forget the words that has described these past few days: Time is Forever a Lie.

***

After I drive home, I settle on the couch and stare at the blank screen of the television in front of me.  I feel as though I might as though I should kill myself, right here, right now.  But suicide is never the answer.  From hallucination, I expect, Jack appears on the screen.
“Katie, it’s lonely up here.  With you, when I was alive, I felt at home, I felt normal.  But this is a different feeling, and I don’t like it.  Please, come up here with me, with our parents.”  Then he smiles and fades from the screen.  I love you, he mouths, before he disappears.
“I love you too, Jack,” I say out loud, but quietly.  “But, I’m sorry.  Mother helped me reach goals for a reason.”  Tears trickle down my face as I stood up to get a pencil and a sheet of paper.
As I set them down, I start to draw:  Time is Forever a Lie.