White was all that surrounded him when he finally woke up. The white, poorly plastered walls gave one a nauseated feeling. The brightly lit florescent lights force his pupils to dilate as he finally opened his heavy eyelids. His lips were already beginning to crack as he opened his mouth. His brain always seemed to go at a faster pace than everyone else's, but today he couldn't seem to think of anything.
He was tired. His body was tired, his mind was tired, and even his sould felt like it had taken a beating from all the drugs that were being pumped into his system.
He struggled to turn over to his side, hoping that the scenery on the other side of him might have something that isn't the color white. Turning over was something that took a lot of effort for him right now. His chest felt like there were 50 bricks sitting on top of him right now, and the pain was almost unbearable.
If not for the morphine running through his system, he would have surely passed out by now. However, thinking about the imaginary bricks on his chest made him remember a movie he watched a little while ago where an old man died trying to stack as many bricks on his chest as he could.
Despite the horrible circumstances, this brought a smile to the boys face and his lip finally burst open and blood started to seep into the perfect white sheets under his chin.
Luckily, a hand carrying a paper towel started to wipe at his face until all the blood was gone. His head slowly gravitated towards the owner of the hand, and he was met with a sad smile that seemed to fill up his fathers face.
Looking at his dad, the boys mind reeled from the shock for a moment. The person sitting next to him was indeed the father he had known and loved, however he looked like a completely different person.
His usual dashing blue eye balls looked as if they had sunk into his head an inch since the last time he had seen him. His usual cheery personality was nowhere to be seen as he looked at his son; his eyes glancing over the terrible state that his boy was in.
The boy's grin slowly turned into a frown as he saw his fathers gruesome appearance. Throughout all the surgeries, his father had never shown such weakness in front of him before. He had always remained positive, and the boy needed that.
If his father, the proud man that the boy had looked up to and admired his entire life, had lost hope... well, he didn't even want to know what would happen to his psyche. His father was like a steady rock in a stream of sadness. Without him, the boy would certainly drown.
"...Dad?... What's wrong?" The barely audible words seemed to drizzle out of the boys mouth. However, his father immediately understood the words of his son. In fact, one could say that the father didn't even have to hear the boy speak at all and he would know what was said.
That was because, the father had been waiting for those exact words the entire night. His gruesome appearance, his sad, tired demeanor, these were all the result of anticipating those exact words for the last twelve hours.
"The surgery was a success, they removed your heart tumor." The father's words seemed to contrast the image that the boy was seeing in front of him. A tear rolled out of both the father's and the son's eyes at nearly the same time.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The father bent over and used another paper towel to wipe at his son's tears.
The boy closed his eyes and for the first time in the past two years, he felt a sense of relief. For the first time, he was hopeful that he could live a normal life again after what felt like a century.
Before the surgery, his mom loved to tease him and call him a romantic. When he was around 10 years old he found a book in his mothers clauset, "How to raise a sensitive child." It used to bother him, but his father told him that there were many positives to being a romantic.
"Being extremely sensitive and passionate is something that I wish I was," said his father. "However, I'm not. You must have got it from your mother," he said with a wink.
These past two years would be devastating for anyone, let alone a sensitive child. After going through seven open heart surgeries, his ribs felt play dough. Every surgery he would wake up in more pain; his body was starting to become addicted to the morphine and it's numbing effects were becoming less and less apparent.
However, he was also starting to enjoy the feeling and he would dread the time spent between surgeries without it. He was becoming a morphine addict at the age of 14, and he was aware of it.
The stress that the physical pain along with the morphine addiction put on his brain was insurmountable. He was a smart child and he was constantly thinking about all the pain he was putting his family through, until about the fourth surgery.
By the fourth surgery he couldn't take it any more. If he kept agonizing about his situation and the past surgeries, he would surely go insane before it was all over. As his brain was about to snap, he decided to become completely apathetic.
What was once a energetic, happy boy now looked devoid of any life. To make it to the seventh, and final surgery he had basically been a living corpse with no emotions; addicted to morphine, barely hanging on to life. That was, until now.
His father's words opened him up again for the first time in over a year. With it came all the memories and experiences of his pain and suffering that he had to endure to survive. He started to cry. He couldn't remember the last time he cried, and as such he cried with all his heart and cried until he could cry no more. He felt like a human again.
Once he was finally done crying, he wiped at his tears with his shaking hands and looked up at his father. His father was crying too, however where there was once a smile there was now a frown made up of quivering lips with tears running down the corners of them.
The boy had never seen his father cry before, and seeing him like this scared him. "..Dad?" The boy asked hesitantly.
"Vince.." *Hic* he said through his sobs, "...your mother has leukemia."