Chapter 1: The Aid

Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The Aid

Jared Rex had three jobs at the hospital. He pushed wheelchairs, he restocked supplies, and he pretended not to care about the people in the wheelchairs. He was very good at the first two.

"Sir, you can’t sleep in the hallway," he said.

The old man on the bench cracked one eye open. "I’m not sleeping. I’m resting my eyes."

" Well then, your eyes are snoring."

"They’re very tired eyes."

"Then take them to the ward before security rolls you out like a rug." Jared folded his arms. "I’m not carrying you."

The old man sighed, shuffled upright, and wandered off, shivering in his thin gown.

Jared watched him go.

’It’s freezing in this hallway. He’s got no sleeves. Somebody should have given him a blanket an hour ago.’

He stood there for about three seconds. Then he turned, stomped to the supply closet, grabbed the thickest blanket on the shelf, and jogged after the old man.

"You dropped this," he lied, dumping it in the man’s arms.

"I didn’t ."

The old man accepted the gesture though hesitant.

He walked away before the old man could say anything. His ears were warm. He told himself it was the heating.

That was Jared. Seventeen years old, the youngest aid on the floor, and the loudest complainer in the building. He had a gift for sounding like he hated everyone, and a worse gift for being caught doing nice things. The nurses had a running bet on how long he could go without helping someone and then pretending he hadn’t.

His record was 2 hours. He was a real nice boy even if he wouldn’t like to admit it.

* * *

The operation came on a Tuesday.

One of the doctors, a tired man with a permanent line between his eyebrows, was short on hands. A patient had come in with something strange, a condition nobody had a name for, and everyone else was already tied up. So the doctor looked down the corridor, saw Jared, and pointed.

"You. Gloves. Now."

"I’m not qualified."

"You’re breathing and you can follow instructions. That’s all I need."

"That’s a low bar."

"It’s one I’ve set."

Jared pulled on gloves.

The operation took 4 hours. Jared held clamps, passed instruments, and mopped up when things got messy. He didn’t faint, which was a small victory. He didn’t complain, which was a bigger one. At one point the doctor said "Good work" without looking up, and Jared nearly dropped a tray.

’He said good work. To me.’

"Don’t make it weird," Jared muttered out loud this time.

The doctor turned to look at him.

"I didn’t say anything." He pivoted.

"Good."

Nobody noticed the fluid that splashed across his sleeve near the end. Nobody noticed the mask that slipped for a few seconds when he leaned in to hold the light steady. Not even he, himself.

He showered afterward and forgot about it entirely.

* * *

The cough started a week later.

It was nothing, he decided. A tickle. He coughed into his elbow while restocking bandages, and again while pushing a wheelchair, and again while arguing with a vending machine that had swallowed his coin.

"You sound like a dying walrus," one of the nurses told him.

"It’s allergies."

"In winter?"

"Very seasonal allergies."

She raised an eyebrow and let it go.

By the second week, the cough had company. His chest felt tight in the mornings. His clothes sat looser on his shoulders. He pushed a heavy cart down the hall and had to stop halfway to catch his breath, and a patient in a passing wheelchair asked if he needed a seat.

"I’m fine," Jared wheezed. "You’re the one in the chair."

"I’m just saying, it’s available."

He kept going.

On day fourteen, the doctor from the operation caught him in the corridor.

"Jared. A word."

"I’m busy."

"You’re coughing like a dying engine. That’s been going on for what? Fourteen days?Come to the lab and let me run a test."

"I’m fine."

"You’re not." The doctor’s voice was calm. "It’s only a blood test and a scan. It takes an hour."

"I can’t afford it." The words slipped out harsher than he intended. Jared’s jaw tightened. "I don’t have money for tests. I’ll sleep it off."

"We aren’t charging you."

"I don’t take charity." ’ I’m not a charity case’.

"It isn’t charity." The doctor stepped closer and lowered his voice. "You worked a 4 hour operation for me with no training and no complaints. If you think I’m going to hand you a bill for a blood test, you don’t know me very well."

Jared stared at the floor.

’He’s being kind. Say thank you.’

"Fine," he said instead. "But I’m only doing it so you stop nagging."

"Of course."

"I mean it."

"I believe you."

The doctor smiled as Jared accepted.

Jared followed him to the lab, grumbling the entire way, and felt something warm loosen in his chest that had nothing to do with his lungs.

* * *

The results came the next morning.

The doctor didn’t speak at first. He just sat across from Jared in a small office, a folder in his hands, his thumb tapping the edge of the cover. There was a clock on the wall ticking too loudly. Jared hated that clock and it’s ticks.

"Well?" Jared said. "Is it a cold? I told you it was a cold." He sounded confident yet dismissive as he said so.

"It isn’t a cold."

The doctor opened the folder. Jared could see rows of numbers and a scan that looked like a gray smudge.

"You have a degrading ailment," the doctor said slowly. "It’s attacking your body from the inside. It steals nutrients. It’s the reason you’ve lost weight, and it’s the reason you haven’t grown at all in the past year. Your growth period has effectively halted, among other things."

Jared frowned. "I’m 17. I thought I was just short."

"You are short." The doctor almost smiled. It didn’t last. "But this is something else."

He reached into a drawer and pulled out a newspaper, folded and creased, the paper yellowed at the edges. The headline was printed in a language Jared didn’t recognize. There was a photograph underneath, a grainy picture of some kind of a laboratory.

"This was sent in from another country," the doctor said. "A few weeks ago. It’s brand new. Nobody has a cure. Nobody has a treatment. They only just discovered it exists."

Jared looked at the paper. He looked at the doctor.

"What are you saying, doctor?"

The doctor sighed. It was a long sigh, slow and heavy, as if it had been waiting in his chest for hours.

"You might..." He stopped. Started again. "No. I won’t lie to you. You won’t make it."

The clock ticked.

Jared sat very still. The words didn’t land with him right away. They hovered somewhere in the room, like something waiting for permission to be real.

’He’s joking.’

"How long?" he asked.

"I don’t know. Weeks. Maybe less."

Jared nodded slowly. He stood. His legs felt strange, like they belonged to someone else.

"I’d like to be left alone," he said.

"Jared..."

"Please."

The doctor looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded, rose, and walked out. The door clicked shut gently behind him.

They let him be.

* * *

The next seventeen days were the longest of his life.

He shrank. That was the strangest part. His arms grew thin, then thinner. His uniform hung off him like a coat on a hanger. The cough turned wet and violent, tearing at his ribs every few minutes. Blood came with it, and later, blood came from places blood was never supposed to come from, until the nurses stopped looking surprised and started looking tired.

The same nurses who had bet on his kindness now brought him soup and sat with him at night, pretending they had nowhere else to be. It was a little gesture Jared made sure to notice.

"You don’t have to do this," he told one of them.

"I know."

"I’m not good company."

"You’re terrible company." She tucked a blanket around his shoulders. "I’m staying anyway."

He smiled hearing that.

’Thank you,’ he thought, and said nothing at all.

The next day , he couldn’t even hold a cup.

On day nineteen, he couldn’t stand. On the twentieth, the pain became something he couldn’t think around. It sat on his chest like a stone and refused to leave.

He asked for the doctor.

The man came in, and sat at the edge of the bed.

"I can’t wait for it," Jared whispered. "I don’t want to wait. I don’t want my last days to be this."

The doctor said nothing for a long time.

"I’m not asking you to be okay with it," Jared said. "I’m asking you to help me. I don’t want to die in pieces. I want to do it on my terms."

The doctor closed his eyes. His hands were shaking, and he pressed them flat against his knees to stop it.

"You’re sure?"

"I’m sure."

"There’s no going back."

Jared didn’t need time to deliberate or give an answer. He had thought about it along time.

"I know."He simply said, a tear rolled off his eye.

The doctor argued once, quietly, and then he stopped. He understood. Jared saw it in his face, the way the argument drained out of him. He nodded.

The papers were prepared that afternoon. Jared signed with a trembling hand, his grip on the pen feint. His name coming out crooked and small. The doctor signed beneath it. A nurse stood by the door, wiping her face with the back of her wrist.

"I’m here," the doctor said, taking his hand. "I’m not going anywhere."

"Don’t get sentimental," Jared whispered. "It’s weird."

The doctor laughed, there was a crack in there somewhere. "Noted."

The injection was quick. A pinch, a cold line running up his arm, and then a heaviness that felt almost gentle. The pain loosened its grip for the first time in weeks. He could breathe without it tearing at him.

He smiled.

’At least this is better.’

He stared at the ceiling, at the water stain shaped like a beast he’d been looking at for days.

’I’m choosing it. Nobody gets to take that from me. Not even this sickness.’

The doctor’s hand tightened around his.

’Thank you,’ he thought. ’For everything. I never said it. I should have said it.’

His eyes closed.

The room faded.

* * *

Light.

Not the hospital kind. Not the harsh white that buzzed overhead and made everything look sick. This was soft and golden, pulsing slowly, like something breathing.

Jared opened his eyes.

He was lying on nothing. There was no floor, no ceiling, no walls. Just a vast, quiet darkness stretching in every direction, and floating in the middle of it, enormous and silent, a sphere of pure light.

He sat up. His chest didn’t hurt. He coughed out of habit and nothing came. His arms were whole and strong. He stared at his hands.

’I’m not sick anymore.’

The sphere hummed, soft and steady. It was bigger than the hospital. It was as bright as it could be.And it was, unmistakably, looking at him.

Jared swallowed.

"What is that?"

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