This is me, Lillian Bowe.
I am 17 years of age. I grew up learning that I had a gift, that I was different from others. Come to find out that I wasn't born with a gift, I was born with a sickness that got worse as I grew older.
I'm writing from a hospital in Chicago, Illinois. This is my first time being in the hospital for my sickness, but my parents never knew that I was dying until I woke up one morning with a tiny hole in my stomach. I've always had horrendous cramps that occurred often, but we had no idea that it would be linked to whatever hole it was.
My mom came upstairs to wake up my little brother when she saw me messing with my stomach and stood with her hand on the frame of the door, watching me. "What are you doing?" She asked.
I looked up at her for a quick second and then back down, barely paying attention to her. "There's a hole in my stomach," I kept trying to get a good look at it while prying at it with my fingers.
"What? Let me see." She said as she marched toward my bed.
I moved my shirt out of the way and allowed her to take a look. She squinted at it and then backed up, which I suspected something was wrong because she stood in the middle of my room, just staring at my stomach. She then walked out and left the house in utter silence.
My father came home a couple of hours later rushing through the house and stopped at my doorway wearing khakis and a black t-shirt.
"So your mom said there's something under your shirt?" He asked while looking directly where I found the small hole.
I rolled my eyes and lifted my shirt again to show him, "It's so tiny but it hurts so bad. I don't know what happened but it's there."
He immediately covered his eyes with his hands and turned away from me, "No, I don't want to see that thing."
"What? Do you really think it's that bad?" I stood up and looked at it in the mirror and my face became emotionless once I saw the bruises surrounding it, I knew that it wasn't a good sign.
The next day, my mom told me that I was staying home from school. She took me to the hospital to get the wound checked out. I was taken into the ER for some reason and the nurses locked the door once I got positioned on the hospital bed. They both looked at me with pity in their eyes.
"So... Are you gonna tell me what's wrong, or are you just going to stand there and look at me like I'm a puppy?" I laid there with my arms behind my head and stared at the nurses.
The one with short brown hair looked through her clipboard and sat it on a countertop, "What you have under your shirt there is something called Peritonitis. It is an infectious disease that has taken place in the lining of your abdomen. We need to run some tests and an MRI to look at the causes of this because it can be serious and life-threatening if it gets left untreated. Come with me, please." She picked her clipboard back up and led me into another room with a big white tube.
"What is this?" I walked around to the back and peered inside the machine.
"This is the MRI scanner. These are used to look at the organs inside of your body. This is also what helps doctors diagnose patients with cancer. Can you climb up on here for me?" She brought me around to the front and pointed to the bed of the MRI scanner.
I laid myself down with my arms at my sides and took a deep breath.
While I was in there, I could hear the doctors whispering to each other about something, and when the machine stopped I heard the nurse with long black hair whisper to the other nurse, "I know, I mean this is the fourth patient we've had this month walk into this hospital with something like that,"
Having heard her say that made my skin turn pale. I walked into that hospital having no idea that many other patients were there for the same reason. Dying wasn't really my biggest fear, and it still isn't, but the fact that someone died before they could even be saved is heart-wrenching. My parents were sitting in the lobby with my brother Liam worried out of their minds and they just sat there waiting for the entire three hours we had spent at the hospital, looking around each and every corner for a nurse to walk out with me and hoping that I was okay.
The nurses and I came walking out of the ER and one of them handed my dad a bunch of papers, "We'll have your results ready by tomorrow at 4 pm, and you're going to need to sign those papers and bring them back with you. Have a good night-"
"Wait", my dad cut her off, looked at the nurse's clipboard, and looked back at her, "What's wrong with my daughter?"
She pulled it up to her chest and pursed her lips, "She has an infectious disease in the lining of her abdomen where an open sore has taken place. This is a very life-threatening disease that can only be treated with surgery, but we won't know the causes of this until we look at her MRI results. I understand your concern, but we can not tell you any further information until tomorrow. Have a good night." They both walked away and he sighed, running a hand through his thick hair.
Everyone was silent during the drive back home, and Liam was playing on his Nintendo Switch, fighting zombies. I kept thinking about how quiet it was when I was in the MRI scan. My entire life flashed before my eyes, and the last thing I saw was me and my best friend Julian, turning up at this campfire party during the summer when I turned 15.
We got into an argument when he saw me talking to some guy and was overstepping my boundaries. I told him I wasn't going to let him control me and who I decide to talk to. He didn't take it very well and stormed off and didn't talk to me for a while until I confronted him at school.
Julian was there for me at my worst times, and him not being there with me made me anxious. Like, a part of me was missing. We made a promise to each other when we were 10 that we would always fight together and that if one of us loses our fight, the other would have to visit their death bed and confess to any lie they'd ever told. It was a weird promise that we made, but each time I woke up, I was one step closer to losing my fight.
He came over that night and I told him the bad news.
After we laughed, joked around, and had our fun, I got all serious and sat with my legs facing forward and my knees bent. I stared at my bedsheets and cupped my hands together before telling him, "So, I went to the hospital yesterday to get something looked at. I was in the ER-"
"I know... Your dad told me before I came up here." He was sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the floor and then he repositioned himself in front of me, "But let's not talk about that until tomorrow, I wanna know how you felt when you were in the MRI scan. Was it scary?" He got closer to my face and widened his eyes.
I chuckled and pushed his face away, "A little bit. It was just really quiet, you know?" I hesitated for a moment, "How's it going with that girl? Anything new?" I changed the subject to avoid any other questions he had.
He cleared his throat and looked behind me at the wall, "Not really. I still can't figure her out. She doesn't talk to me all that much, just bums me out a little. What about you? Things okay with Toby?"
It took me some time to process what he asked me because I remembered that he and I had broken up and that I never told him. I stayed quiet for a moment, "Yeah, uh... Listen I know that you don't like lies, but he and I broke up... A while ago, actually. Things got rough between us, we started arguing more often and he didn't really change, and then he broke up with me. I just never got to tell you because I wanted to forget about it. I'm sorry." I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear and kept staring at him.
He looked away toward the pictures of me up on my wall and then looked back at me, "It's okay, I get it. But hey, at least you're single again. Not having to deal with jackasses anymore until someone decides to treat you like a decent human being like I do." He laughed.
I smiled at him and hugged him, "Thank you, Julian."
He smirked at me, "I'm your best friend for life. You always got me."
I ended up laughing because the way he said that was funny. He always had me cracking up at the stupidest things, but that's our humor. We're the very corny comedic duo.
"What's so funny, huh?" He giggled at me while I pulled myself together.
I finally stopped and when everything got silent, it was just us two staring at each other. I still had a smirk on my face and he was looking at me with no emotion. It was so quiet that I could hear him breathing. I couldn't help but get irritated by the hair that was covering his eyes so I decided to be slick. I moved a little closer to him and wept that hair to the side. I didn't know what I was thinking, but the next thing I knew, he kissed me.
With tongue and all that. It happened in just a matter of seconds and I didn't know why I wasn't expecting that to happen. I wasn't thinking that maybe he wanted to kiss me. I went along with it anyway and he finally pulled away, looking embarrassed. I was too stunned to speak, and I sat there for a moment trying to recapture what just happened.
My best friend who I've known since I was 6 years old just kissed me. He french kissed me. I was at a loss for words and couldn't think straight. The warmth from his lips was still lingering.
He shot up from my bed and stared at me, "I probably shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry." He covered his face with his hands and left my room.
I heard the bathroom door shut and assumed that he locked himself in there to rethink what he had just done. I wasn't mad at him, I was just shocked because it was completely uncalled for and I wasn't expecting it to happen, even though I was probably the one who caused it to.
He was in there for a while until I went to check on him. I opened the door and he was standing there looking at himself in the mirror. "You can't stay in here all night, we have to go downstairs and eat." I scoffed.
As he stopped playing with the strands of his hair, he looked at me in the reflection standing at the doorway with my arms crossed and looked back at himself, "I know. I'm just thinking... Give me a minute and I'll be out."
I sighed and went downstairs into the kitchen to make my plate while my parents were sitting at the table eyeing me as I took a scoop of macaroni. My father sat his fork down and cleared his throat, "What were you two doing up there?".
I finished my plate and took a seat next to him, "Just the usual. He kissed me though, and got scared and locked himself in the bathroom. He acts like that sometimes, he's just weird."
He stared directly at me while I took a sip of my drink and then gave me a really confused look, "I know that you and Julian have been close friends for a really long time, but do you really think he'll stay around for that long? He's stopped coming over ever since he and I had that one conversation".
I looked at my dad I finished chewing my food and bit my tongue after because I already knew what point he was trying to make, "You mean the conversation about him and what he wants to do after high school?" I flick a piece of the steak with my fork.
He cleared his voice again while he cut his chicken, "I don't think being a veterinarian is a suitable job for Julian. That's all I said. He should be a mechanic or maybe a technician." My mom glared at him and squinted.
At that point, I was beginning to get mad. Hearing him say such things was a buzz kill, and I was afraid that Julian heard everything he said, but he came downstairs with a smile on his face and sat with us after he got his plate.
"Well someone's in a good mood." My mom chuckled as he sat down next to me.
I looked over at my dad who was leaving the table with his plate, rinsing it off and putting it in the sink. "Where are you going?" My mom asked after wiping her face with a napkin.
"In the basement to watch the football game" He grabbed a beer out of the fridge and left us alone at the table.
I sat there staring at my food thinking about the hospital again. I didn't want to go back because I thought I was fine, and I didn't want Julian to start worrying about me either. He left after dinner, and I was on the phone with him for a while until I fell asleep while he was gaming.
My dad had always felt weird about my friendship with Julian, and it bothered me because I always thought he had a problem with my best friend being a boy, not to mention that he'd always be checking on the two of us whenever he thought we were being too quiet. It's just a little obsessive. I mean, what's wrong with my best friend being a boy?
I think he gets his head too far into the gutter. Even my mom agrees. She says that it's a little intrusive for him to always ask him questions during dinner. I'm not sure how I view my friendship with Julian. I never knew if I liked him or not and I wasn't sure if he liked me, but I kept that kind of information to myself since my dad was so worried about us. Even if he doesn't want us to be friends, I'm not going to let him ruin our friendship.