SHORT STORY: Good Friday

Dedicated to all who are bravely battling cancer. 

His blurry vision looked over at the clock: 5:00 a.m.  If it was darkest before the dawn, it couldn’t get much darker than it was right now.  He rubbed his eyes and allowed his discomfort to wash over him.

Sleep had not come last night but depression sat by his bedside, holding his frail hand.  A concoction of poison had taken him to the lip of death’s canyon.  In 100 years, chemotherapy would be viewed as primitive as leeches. But right now, at this moment, it was the best friend he had.

Bryan Gates was fighting cancer. And he was losing.

He shuffled around in his bed, trying to get comfortable. Comfort was a concept that was foreign to him at the moment.  The irony of it all was that not long ago, he had come into the city triumphantly.  He was man at the top of his career. He made a lot of money and enjoyed every moment with his young family.  Bryan Gates could do no wrong. And then the phone rang. “You have cancer,” the doctor said flatly.

Those three words exploded his world into 1,000 pieces.

Now, he had lost his hair and his immune system. Chemo had destroyed so much in his life. He couldn’t even give his sons the hugs they so craved due to fear of illness.  But he kept fighting.  If he had had any more strength, he would have worried how his illness affected his family.  His wife had been so strong. Like an ant, she was carrying six times her weight in responsibilities.  He, on the other hand, barely had the strength to get out of bed.

It was Friday, and he was descending deeper and deeper into Hell.  Nausea cradled him in her arms, giving him an occasional death hug. He wished he could eat — he missed food. But his body would have thrown up anything he tried to put down his throat. His arm looked like a skeleton’s.

Damn cancer. Damn death.

He looked out the window. Darkness consumed the world. And his thoughts.

“Why have you forsaken me, Lord?” he cried out into the night. Self pity joined depression at sat by his bedside.

But he hadn’t been forsaken.

The chemo, for all its brutality, had begun to work.  The stone of disease was slowly being rolled away.  Scans would start to show the tumor shrinking.

Bryan slept through the night Saturday night. The affects of chemo began to release their grip on his mind. The fog lifted and the first rays of hope began to pierce the darkness.

Hope. The most powerful medicine of all.  Hope. The force that would get him out of his bed and bring him back to life.  Hope. Sunday was his resurrection day.

He would win his battle with his cancer and rise again. Like a tree waking from its winter slumber, life began to once again blossom within him.

Bryan Gates’ survived Good Friday.  And he never missed a sunrise for the rest of his time on earth.