CHAPTER TEN - Teardrops that turn red.
I didn’t understand any of the stuff they said to me even though they explained it over and over. Ryan’s mom rubbed my back just inside the hospital room, as if trying to make me feel better, but her expressions and her teary eyes didn’t help. “Dannie,” she called to me gently. “Ryan has terminal brain cancer."
I stumbled back, shaking my head, laughing. “You’re kidding me right?” I looked from her to Ryan, who was now awake, sitting on his hospital bed with a weary expression on his face. “Stop it guys! This has got to be the worst joke ever!” I felt tears rolling down my face. “I don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s not possible!”
Ryan’s mom held me in her arms. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” And I couldn’t even get mad at her with the way she was holding me, the way her tears made my hair damp. “As a mother, I just wanted so badly for Ryan to live like a normal boy while he still could. I just wanted him to be happy. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this.”
I blinked back the tears and though my voice sounded so distant, heard myself speak. “It doesn’t matter.” I looked up into her eyes. “He’ll get better right?” I clenched onto her arm. “Right?”
The silence was so painful after that.
Ryan got up and walked slowly towards me. “No Dannie.” His voice was calm and his face lit with a soft smile, like it didn’t matter to him anymore, like he had already given up, accepted it. “I’m going to die.”
“No!” I screamed. “No, you’re not. You liar, you’re not! You’re not! I’m not going to listen!”
I ran out of the room. It wasn’t true. They were all lying to me. Why would Ryan die? Why would they take him away from me after I had fallen madly in love with him? Wasn’t that just too cruel?
My feet kept running and I wasn’t sure when I eventually stopped, but when I started to notice my surroundings I was in a garden of tall, well-trimmed bushes outside the hospital building. Ryan had chased after me from his room and was a couple of short metres behind me. He called my name softly, walking towards me hesitantly, trying to make me feel better like he always did.
But who was going to make me feel better once he was gone?
“Dannie, I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to be this way.” He looked at me longingly. “I wanted to tell you a long time ago, but I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t want to get too close to you, but I did. I didn’t want to fall in love with you because I was dying, but I couldn’t help myself. I never wanted it this way either!” Tears surfaced to his eyes.
“You know I haven’t cried since I was a kid,” I said sobbing. “But then you walk into my life and take me on an emotional rollercoaster ride. Congratulations Ryan, for being the only person in this world that can make me cry. Now just stop it! Make this pain go away! Please take it away!”
He stood there paralyzed, shaking his head. “I never meant for it to end like this,” he said. “I never meant to cause you pain and I never meant to make you cry. This isn’t what I wanted for us. I’m sorry.” He held out his arms and I quickly ran into them, drowning my sobs and cries into his chest.
Everything was so unrealistic. I could still hear it – feel it – the sound of his heart. He was still warm and still breathing. He was fine. He was completely fine. And yet, the next moment, he might not be.
So I gripped onto him as hard as I could because I wasn’t sure what else I could do.
“You know, I want to be able to say that I’ll always be here to listen to you, that I’ll always protect you, that I’ll always stay by your side even when your world is crashing down, but I can’t.” His words caught in his throat. “And I hate myself because I have to hurt you this way.”
“Why does the world want us apart when we’re finally together?” I asked, struggling for words. Babbles of tears rushed out of my eyes again. “I can’t live without you Ryan! Don’t go! Don’t leave me! I love you.”
He held me closer. “I’m sorry.” And because he couldn’t do anything more, he kept repeating the same two words. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
We sat inside the maze of bushes for a long time, holding hands until we were both calm. When it seemed like hours had passed by, he explained everything to me. I had been mistaken all along. It was never a summer to-do list that he wrote, it was a bucket list. Ryan’s doctor had suggested it, since he said Ryan might not live past this summer. Ryan could have gone through chemo, but that would have only dragged his life on a little bit longer and Ryan had eventually refused it. The tumour in his head was growing bigger every day, pushing against his brain, often giving him painful headaches and nosebleeds.
“Why won’t you go through chemo though? If it could let you live just a little longer, why won’t you?”
Ryan kissed my fingertips. “Because I’m happy,” he said. “God has given me everything I asked for; even when I thought it was unattainable. I thought it would be impossible for me to fall in love this summer and then God proved me wrong and sent me you. I’m happy Dannie. I don’t want to remember the last minutes of my life to be in a hospital bed, sick and lonely. It’s alright if I go like this.”
He kissed the teardrops falling down my face. “Don’t cry. I’m happy I swear, and it’s all because of you. I was always doing what other people told me to and I never expressed myself. I never felt alive once those years, but when I met you, I realized that my world wasn’t just black and white, and for the first time I saw a rainbow. I lived for the first time even though I knew I was actually dying inside. I have no more regrets.”
“But you can’t just die!” I argued. “What about telling the world what’s on your mind? What about showing the world who you really are inside? You haven’t done any of that!”
“But I have.” He smiled, touched my cheek. “I’ve shown you!”
And even though he smiled the same smile that always made me smile along with him – this time, I couldn’t.
“Dannie, I’m happy enough just being loved by you. So don’t think about it anymore. Let’s just be like we always have and when my time comes, promise me.” He held both my hands in his. “Let me go.”
I nodded and forced a smile through my tears, because even if I hadn’t, Fate wouldn’t have changed.
For the next couple weeks, we spent our time just hanging out and not doing anything in particular. We visited all the places we went to in the summer that we had enough gas money for. We went to the fruit farm again, the rose meadow, the beaches, the docks, the cliff where we watched the sunrise and lastly City Park, where Ryan performed his song that won first place. It was like we were tracing back our footsteps, trying to find a way to relive and rewrite our love story, but the thing was, no matter how much we changed, how much more we loved, the ending was still the same.
We went to the playground in City Park and swung on the swings silently, waiting for the night carnival to start. It was a carnival that was held once a year at City Park near the end of the summer – a tradition from the Natives that gave thanks to all the things that were harvested in the summer and a prayer to all the things that will be harvested later.
Ryan got off his swing after a while. “Want me to push you?” He asked me, smiling.
He smiled more lately, at me, at nothing, at everything. Maybe he didn’t know how much longer he had to smile. Maybe he wanted to leave a good memory. Maybe he wanted to make a good memory.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m fine. You don’t need to push yourself.” His body had become noticeably weak recently. The tumour was growing at a fast rate, pressing against his medulla oblongata, making it hard for him to breathe normally and giving him an irregular heartbeat.
It wasn’t long now. It wasn’t long.
He tilted my head back, stroked my hair aside and kissed me. “Just let me,” he said. “Since I can’t do anything more for you.”
It wasn’t true. He had done lots for me. It was I,
not him, that couldn’t do anything.
I let him push me for a little bit before we left the playground for the festival. Everyone was so happy there, chatting, playing and eating candy apples and cotton candy. I envied them because they smiled so easily, like they couldn’t care less if the sky fell down.
Ryan and I went on the Ferris Wheel after a few walks around the festival and a couple rounds of games. It was almost midnight and they were going to start the fireworks at any moment. At the top, Ryan said to me, “You know, our little town is really beautiful.” He pointed at all the lights around us, the bonfire by the food stands, the full moon that shone down, leaving a shallow reflection of itself on the lake. “It’s funny how people never see how important and beautiful a thing is until they’re about to lose it.”
“I’ve always known how much you meant to me,” I said. Sudden vibrant flowers bloomed in the air making a loud boom in the sky. “Look, Ryan! Fireworks!”
Ryan smiled and kissed my forehead before resting his head on top of my shoulder. “Dannie?” He said, clutching my hands tightly in his when the Ferris Wheel took us back up to the top.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.” He closed his eyes as teardrops ran down his face.
“I love you too,” I replied.
The late summer rain started to tickle down. It would heal the dry cracks on the ground over time and give birth to new buds from flowers that had wilted from the passion of the hot summer sun. They were tears from the sky that needed to be cried.
But right now, it would dampen our parade.
I felt Ryan’s hands slowly losing grip on mine, his staggering breath coming to a quiet end. “Ryan, don’t go,” I cried. “Just stay with me. There are so many things I still want to do with you, so many things I want to tell you, show you. There are so many days I still want to spend with you Ryan! You can’t go! You can’t leave me alone like this! Ryan! Ryan! Stay!!!”
I screamed at the top of my lungs, letting the sound of the fireworks drown out my cries, and when his hands completely let go, I finally realized I was alone – that I was the only one still holding on.
EPILOGUE
I watched the little kids run out of their classrooms as I made my way back home from the last day of school. A year had went by, slow and suffocating as each day passed, but when I turned around, it had come and gone. Summer was already here and it was only a matter of time before the sun would blaze heatedly again. It would replay and remind me of the tragic tale that won’t fade from my mind no matter how hard I try.
A red helium balloon escaped from a young girl’s hands. “My balloon,” she cried. “Mommy, my balloon!”
I ran out into the middle of the highway and jumped up, just managing to grab the tail of the balloon’s string. Cars honked and screeched, breaking into a stop. Two cars sandwiched me, both barely missing my body. I squeezed out of the crack ignoring their curses and made my way back to the little girl. “Your balloon,” I said. “If you love it, don’t ever let it go.”
The mother gazed at me shocked with a hint of anger on her face. “Are you out of your mind?” She yelled. “You could have died!”
“I can’t,” I replied. “There’s a really mean boy in Heaven that won’t let me meet up with him.”
It was true because I didn’t know how else I’d explain it. Death was such a funny thing. One minute Ryan was right there beside me and the next he wasn’t. Time just passed by, and I’d wake up every morning, eat breakfast and expect him to casually pop by my house. Only I’d just sit there at the breakfast table and wait until night came, hoping to hear the sound of his beat up car.
Any minute now. He’s going to be here any minute now.
Sometimes I would see his shadow pass by from the corner of my eyes and I’d spin around, my heart beating violently. But he was never there. Every time I heard his name, I would turn and look, knowing very well it wasn’t him. He was gone yet his every smile, every laugh, and every kiss was vivid in my mind. It was unbearable and went on until it drove me insane, like an endless game of hide n’ seek with only one player.
I remember gathering my courage to go see Ryan, a month after he passed away. I went up to Crescent View Hill, to a bridge that linked two parts of the cliff together; there was nothing there except a deep fall into the thunderous water below. I was trying to climb over the bridge’s wooden rails when something knocked me back down and when I opened my eyes, white feathers were falling all around me like falling snowflakes. There were hundreds of doves that had suddenly flown up from under the bridge. One by one, they took a place along the rails of the bridge, making it impossible for me to climb over and jump.
From then on, I knew he had become my guardian angel. He was there when I needed someone to listen, there protecting me, making sure I was safe and there to hold my sky up when my world was crashing down.
One white dove had followed me back home from that incident and although it flew away sometimes, it always came back and I always knew it was the same one. Sometimes it would wake me up at 3am, knocking on my window with its beak. Sometimes it would sing, chirping a love song to me in a different language. Sometimes it would crawl under my bed sheets even though I didn’t like it, but it would always get its way, just like he always did.
I took a detour to my house and skipped by City Park which I did whenever I felt the urge to cry. I would swing in the swings by myself with no one to push me from behind. I would sit in the sand and eat ice cream or watermelon with no one to share it with.
Sometimes I’d go pick a dozen red roses at the meadow and bring it over to his mom. Sometimes I would get up extra early to see the sunrise on Crescent View Hill and I’d bring his guitar that he left for me. Sometimes I would borrow his dad’s old canoe and drag it out into the middle of the lake at night on the weekends. But there was never a meteor shower and there was never a Ryan.
They say it takes time to heal a broken heart. I wonder how much time?
The white dove that always followed me appeared by my side as I was digging a hole in the sand trying to bury my pain in it. It started tweeting then dancing, motioning me to chase it. I followed it as it led me along the shoreline, before it suddenly stopped and began pecking something shiny in the sand. I bent down and brushed off a lot of sand before pulling the object out. It was a message in a bottle and I recognized at once whose it was.
It was Ryan’s.
Tugging the cork out, and pulling my elastic off the rolled piece of paper, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure if I should read it, although I had always wanted to, but what if it said things that weren’t meant for me. The dove looked at me from the ground and cocked its head as if waiting. I sat down beside it and unfolded the letter.
“Dear Dannie,” I read. “I’m writing this to you from Heaven.”
I began to cry.
It’s a nice place here so you don’t have to worry about me. I’m sure that by the time you get this, if you ever, you would have already learned the truth about me. That I have fallen in love with you, that I can give you nothing and will leave your life as quickly as I entered. It was probably selfish of me to drag you into this, but the moment you came up to me that day at lunch, I couldn’t pull myself away. I had seen you so many other times before, always walking down your own path, wearing your heart on your sleeve. I wanted to be like that.
As time passed by and we got closer, I realized that our feelings for each other were mutual and my hatred for myself grew. I knew that in reality we were actually drifting further apart from each other and that I would have no choice but to hurt you and leave you in the end.
There were times you made me stay up all night asking why I had this sort of sickness, why I couldn’t be healthy, why I couldn’t be with you, if not forever, for a little longer. Then I realized that if I didn’t have this illness, we would have never spoken to each other that day and we would have never gotten to know each other. So if someone gave me a second chance to forget e
verything, go back and live without the illness, I wouldn’t. I would rather have loved you, been loved by you and end our love story as a tragedy than be lovers that never loved at all. I want you to know that I don’t regret ever getting to know you and I hope you don’t either.
I hope that you don’t remember all the things we did and places we’ve been as tragic things because I don’t want you recall me as a sad memory. That’s not how I want to live inside your heart. I hope that you would remember our time together as a fun and happy memory and smile whenever you think about me, not cry. I hope you can open your heart after I leave and fall in love again, deeper and more passionate than you’ve ever loved me.
Sometimes in life Dannie, whether it’s love or just a mere friendship, we find people who have the ability to touch our hearts. They come in our lives, share something special with us and then move on to share it with someone else. I don’t know if I touched your heart Dannie, but I know you touched mine. So now you have to move on and brighten the lives of others, the way you did for me.
So promise me you won’t cry for me anymore. I want you to move on. I want you to smile, live your life to the fullest and show me that strong personality of yours that I had fallen in love with. Know that I can hear you when you talk to me. Know that I try to catch your tears when you cry. Know that I’m watching over you even if I’m not right there by your side. Lastly, know that I love you.
Thank you for making the darkest days of my life the brightest.
Forever Yours,
Ryan Proud
And I cried because this I promised him would be the very last time. I knew that I had to move on somehow, that I couldn’t linger onto his broken fragments forever.
The dove rubbed his head against my cheeks, wiping the tears that rolled down my face until the feathers on its head was wet. I stroked his wings and brought him up close to me, giving him a hug. “You should probably go too,” I said.
It tilted its head and stared at me.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’m not sure if you’re just a dove or you’re really Ryan himself, but thank you for keeping me company for the last year. I’m going to be strong and I’m going to live my life to the fullest from now on.” I sniffed my nose.
“Tell Ryan that I know there can’t be just 10 things he wants to do, let him know I’ll do everything and tell him all about it one day. Tell him, I’m going to have twice as much fun, laugh twice as hard, love twice as much, and share it with him when it’s my time to go to Heaven. Tell him that I’m strong, that I’ve moved on and lastly, tell him I love him.”
“And when you delivered my message, just stay in Heaven little dove. You don’t belong here.” I threw the dove up in the air, giving it a boost to fly, but the dove refused to leave. It circled round and round above me, chirping a painful, agonizing cry.
Maybe I’ve secretly believed the dove was Ryan all this time. That was why it had to go.
“It’s alright,” I said. “I’ll be fine. You need to extend your wings and become an angel. I’m moving on and you shouldn’t linger on the past either. It’s time Ryan... that you moved on.”
The dove kept crying above until it finally decided to leave. It slowly flew away, chirping that same old love song it always sang for me as it faded into the sunset.
That was the last time I ever saw that dove. But it was still around watching over me even if it wasn’t in my plain sight. And I knew, because I’d always find a red rose by my windowsill “every Wednesday night.”
THE END
When It Rains Page 10