The Doctar And The Other: Part 4
The middle of winter. A shelf of books before him. He wonders why he bought them all? He never had time enough. The day was always too short and there were always more pressing matters that deserved his attention. But he did like coming here, laying on the carpet, looking up at the ceiling. He couldn’t count the times he had gone to sleep here, the light from the sun shining through the glass-plated doors in the early morning.
Sometimes Kathryn would join him. The back of her head would rest against his chest. His arm wrapped around her side. The light shining on their faces. It had been so long since he had held her. So long from the time they first met.
They were sitting in a classroom in college some six years ago. The room’s only light came from the window. She took a seat from the teacher’s desk and placed it across from his. She sat down and began to speak. Over and over. She began to speak.
She told him about the date that she had the night before. She told him about the test her history teacher gave. She told him about some crazy thing she did with her girlfriend a week earlier. Those things didn’t matter to him. His mind glossed over them. It wasn’t until one day she asked if he thought she was attractive that she got his attention.
It wasn’t the first time a person from the opposite sex had asked him that. They always expected a rise in him. He was supposed to be the quiet shy one, the one who couldn’t handle the attention. He remembered laughing her off. It didn’t stop her. She repeated the question. He noticed no fear in answering it. He thought she was attractive. He told her so.
She asked him what part of her was attractive to him? Her face? Her mind?
“Well, no,” he told her, then.
He started off by explaining that he didn’t know her well enough in that way. He remembered her being agitated by this, as agitated as she could get. She had a way of unknowingly toning her anger with her body gestures, or the sound of her voice, or even the way she slammed things. Every act lessening the blow of her intent.
He remembered one day going through his soliloquy, the one where he explained why he loved her, but how he couldn’t act on it. He had been planning that little scene for years. It didn’t matter what woman he was with. It was the scene.
He told her how his love for her was strong. He thought about her constantly. She was the only thing on his mind. But, he was lost, dying deep inside without her. He made it sound metaphysical, otherworldly. But truly, he knew he was really being eaten from the inside-out.
Tumors had spread through to half of his body, the biggest one lodged deep within his brain. Sometimes he could feel it pushing against the side of his skull. It had become normal for him to trace, push, and rub the lump that was continuously growing on the side of his head. He would wear caps to numb the presence of his cancer. It was always better if it was cold than hot. He feared if he lost anymore weight, his friends would know. He had told no one. He was intent on dying alone.
He learned to live with the fact of death. Sure, he was young, but he was okay. The forces that be had destined his death to be a young one. At first, the fear froze him, stopped him from living. But now his soul was covered by an invisible hard-surface. The only stipulation he had made to himself was that he would not involve anyone in his tragedy. That would be wrong.
And it felt like an eternity. He tried to plug every hole in his theory. He wanted her to love him, but at the same time, not want to be with him. Hopefully, he thought, she would move on. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out that way. Six years later, they would be engaged to be married.
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