"Oh, hello," The school nurse greets Tobi as she closes the door. "What's up with you, hm?"
"Oh," Tobi mumbles as she gestures to herself loosely. "I'm kinda struggling with the mile. I about passed out."
Giving her a quizzical and concerned look, the school nurse slides into her desk chair, folding her hands on the desk in front of her. "Do you know why that might've happened?" She asks, eyeing Tobi as if trying to figure out what the problem was.
"Ah, yes, actually. I've been pretty short of breath these past few days. It's just recently gotten a lot worse." Tobi explains as she flattens out her P.E. shorts on her thighs and uses hair behind her ear. She can't stay still.
Pursing her lips, the nurse grabs a pen from a cup in front of her and taps it in front of her. "Well, do you know why that is, or are you not sure?"
Tobi swallows past the lump in her throat, he leg bouncing and her fingers thrumming against her knee. "Um, yes, I..." She trails off and grips her knee, her palms clammy. "I have the Hanahaki disease."
The nurse's pen clatters onto the desk loudly and Tobi fixes her gaze on her sneakers. Clearing her throat, the nurse picks her pen back up and asks hesitantly, "And about how long have you had this?"
Quietly, Tobi responds, "Three months."
Her pen clatters onto the desk again and the nurse's mouth falls open. "Th-three months? A-and how--"
Tobi cuts her off by pulling the trashcan from beside the desk in front of her as she begins coughing. Blood sputters out of her mouth, a to rent of crimson running from her parted lips and down her chin before pooling gruesomely in the trashcan. Petals float over the blood. Tears pool in Tobi's eyes from the force of her coughs and run down to mingle with the blood.
When Tobi lifts her head to look at the woman over the desk, she mumbles, "I'm sorry. I don't--" She coughs loudly again and more blood rushed into the trashcan. "I don't think I can run my mile in P.E. today."
The nurse's expression shifts from shocked to worried to pity before resting on concern. Pushing away from the desk, the woman comes to stand next to Tobi. When Tobi turns up to face her, blood still dripping from her chin and into the trashcan, the woman sighs and says, "I'm going to send you home for the day, okay? Maybe it would be best for you to stay home for a few days."
Once she says this, Tobi turns to stare into the contents of the trashcan. Blood stands in the bottom and what little contents it had previously sit covered in blood and stained a dark red. Her thoughts swing back to what they always do when she sees all the blood from her own body: how much time does she have left? With the back of her hand, she swipes at the blood already drying to her chin, saying, "Alright. Thanks."
❀❀❀
Sitting on her couch and staring out the window blankly, Tobi fidgets with the contents of the box she'd been keeping under her bed. The five envelopes clatter around in the box every time she picks them up slightly before dropping them back in. She turns her head to the contents of the box, staring at the names written neatly on each plain envelope. Ashton, Dennis, Mom, Dad, Dean.
Her eyes wander to the desk calendar she'd recently propped up on the coffee table. The last day of the month is circled in red. Her birthday. Five more days.
Would she even last that long?
Silently, she reaches forward and turns the calendar down onto the wood. Thumbing through the letters again, she wonders what her parents will think. How her brother will react. His wedding in nearly a month. She chuckles. "I can't make it to his wedding." Her sad smile turns to a frown and tears well in her eyes. After pushing the box from her lap to the table, Tobi pulls her knees to her forehead and huddles in the couch, wishing it would swallow her.
A torrent of tears rush from her eyes and drizzle onto her clothes. How does anyone accept the fact that they're dying? She wonders as she sniffles and presses her face into her raised thighs. I still want to do so many things with my life. She thinks to herself as she presses her face harder into her raised knees, her sobs echoing back to her in the empty apartment. I still want to be with Ashton -- to love him and build a life with him! I want to finish high school. I want to be a doctor and help people. I want... Her inner thoughts trail off and, after a long pause, she whispers hoarsely, "I want to have a family."
She sobs harder and anger builds in her core. Shaky all over, she hastily grabs a throw pillow fro next to her and buries her face in it before letting out an ear-piercing scream. Lowering the pillow to reveal her red tear-stained face, she falls back into the couch hard as she digs her hands into her hair, her nails scraping her scalp. "Why?" She groans, her voice strained and pitiful.
Rapidly, she gulps air down, trying to calm herself and clear her head. Her breathing becomes shallow and she fights to stand before collapsing on the floor. Grappling at her throat, she struggles to stand and make her way to the kitchen. Before she can even make it halfway across the living room floor, a cough tears from her mouth and shakes her entire body.
Blood pours from her mouth as she coughs and splatters itself across the wood of her floor, stray petals in the mix. Her eyes are wide and full of fear as she continues to gag and cough, all the while staring ahead at the blood pooling and splattering around her body. Once she finally stops coughing, she heaves blood onto the floor, crimson dripping from her gasping mouth into a progressively expanding puddle. She watches with terror as the blood flows over the wood and onto the tile of the kitchen area.
Falling backward away from it, she scrambles to back away from the immense amount of blood coating her floor. Her back hits the coffee table and her trembling body shakes the table. Gasping for air, she feels as if the walls are collapsing in around her. Tobi barely makes it to her feet and stumbles to the balcony, feeling the urge to get away from the mess -- her mess as quickly as possible.
With shaky hands, she pushes the door open and staggers onto the balcony, her mind clouded with images of her blood oozing into the kitchen. Then her mind creates images of her lifeless body in the kitchen where the blood had seeped to, covered in her own blood and a plethora of petals around her. Her breath comes in shallow pants as she presses her back to the wall of her apartment. She collapses to her knees, her hands grappling at her head. A buzz seems to echo through her mind, blocking out everything else.
She wants it to stop. She wants everything to stop. She can't take it anymore.
From overhead, thunder booms, startling her. Turning her head upward, a sudden downpour starts, dousing her in a matter of seconds. Blood soaking her clothes washes into the water collecting on her balcony, the water turning a sickening pale pink. She lifts her hands to her face, covering it. A bloodcurdling scream, worse than the one she'd let out earlier, tears from her terrified and quaking body.
It feels as if the whole world stops and listens to her scream of terrifying agony and lets it echo back and forth in the skull of every person. She doesn't register any sound after her scream, just a faint ringing in her head. The ringing fades to a dull buzz and she faints, her body falling limply into the pink puddle collecting under her and running off the edge of the balcony to the street. As her vision goes dark, she lifts her hand limply and stares at it. It's pale and drenched in her dried blood and rain from above.
It looks lifeless. As if she's already dead.