Chapter 23

“I know you said you wanted to be alone, but I can’t leave you here by yourself. We don’t have to talk. We don’t even have to touch. I just want to be here with you,” I heard Sidney’s voice say. I turned to look at him. It had only been half an hour since I’d kicked everyone out.

“I’m not going into surgery,” I told him bluntly. He pulled his head back like he’d been slapped.

“What do you mean? The doctor just said that they wanted to,” he asked, confused. I looked away from him.

“I’m not going to let them.” He was silent for a minute and I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the look on his face.

“What do you mean you’re not going to let them?” he finally choked out.

“I mean what it sounds like. I’m going to tell them I don’t want the surgery or the chemo,” I told him.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” he shouted. His sudden outburst surprised me and I whipped my head around to look at him.

“Hi. Cancer. You were here when I was told,” I snapped at him.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it,” he snapped back.

“Yeah, yell at the brain cancer patient. Great plan,” I spat at him.

“Don’t even change the subject, Tanner.” I sighed and turned away from him again. He didn’t understand. No one would understand.

“I don’t want to be sick,” I confessed.

“Obviously. That’s why you do those things. They will make you better.” I laughed, but without humor.

“No, Sidney, they will make me sick,” I corrected him. I heard him groan and he made his way to the side of my bed and took my hand.

“You have to do it, Tanner. It’s ridiculous not to. You heard the doctor. It was caught early,” he pleaded.

“I don’t have to do anything. It’s my decision and I’m choosing not to do them. I don’t want someone drilling into my skull and then having to spend the next however long being sick because of the chemo. Not to mention it’s brain surgery. Things go wrong during that. I may not be able to talk, or walk, or maybe I’ll have seizures,” I told him firmly. He grabbed my hand in his.

“You just have to fight through it. You’re strong, Tanner, I know it.” He was begging and now that I was looking at him, I could see the panic in his face.

“I’m not strong. I don’t want to fight anymore. I’ve been fighting everyday for three months. I’m sick of fighting. I don’t have any fight left in me,” I explained. He ran a hand through his hair and I could tell he was struggling for something to say.

“You just have to fight a little longer. It’ll be bad, but it will save your life.”

“You don’t know that! I could do it and still die at the end. If I’m going to die I’m going to do it on my terms. I don’t want to spend the last months of my life sick. I want to be normal and I can’t be normal when I have a hole in my head, no hair, and I’m throwing up all the time.”

He was quiet for a while. He was thinking things through and I knew he was trying to figure out what to say to convince me to change my mind. I saw a tear run down his cheek and I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see him cry.

“What about your family? The girls? You can’t fight for them?” he asked. I shook my head.

“Don’t you dare bring other people into this. Don’t try to speak for them. If they don’t like it, they can come talk to me themselves.”

“What about me? I can speak for myself. You won’t fight for me?” I didn’t respond. I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell someone you don’t want to fight to stay alive for them?

“I want to spend the rest of my time doing things I’ve always wanted to do, not be stuck in bed because I’m too weak to get out of it.” I’d made my decision, and no one was changing my mind. After a few minutes he got up from the chair he was sitting in and walked to the door.

“We fly to Washington tomorrow for Sunday afternoon’s game. I was going to stay here and be with you, but you don’t need me for anything since you’ve already made up your mind. I love you, Tanner, no matter what. Even so, I never pegged you as a quitter.”

With that he walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. I let the tears fall after he left. When my parents came back and I told them my decision, there was a lot of crying. They begged me to change my mind, to give it a try, but I wouldn’t hear it. They didn’t know what it was like to spend months fighting just to wake up from a coma only to fight through painful rehab and then find out you had brain cancer. I just didn’t have any fight left in me.










Sidney got into his car, put his head on the steering wheel and cried. He’d been holding it all in for Tanner, trying to be strong for her. Now that he was alone, he couldn’t hold it in any longer. What the hell was she thinking? Why the fuck did she want to die?

He cried until he couldn’t breathe. When he finally stopped he started the car and drove home. He walked into the house using his own entrance to avoid seeing anyone in the Lemieux family. He just couldn’t handle seeing anyone right now. He walked into his living room and collapsed down on the couch.

He just didn’t understand why someone would give up without even trying. He didn’t understand why she’d give up on them. He’d just gotten her back, and now he was losing her again. This time the problem was that he didn’t need to lose her. She could just do the chemo and she’d be fine. Why wouldn’t she do it?

When she was in the coma he spent half his time willing her to wake up and the other half thinking she never would. Even so he was at her bedside everyday, talking to her, holding her hand. Then she’d woken up. That had been the happiest day of his life. Now she was going to let herself die and he’d lose her forever.

“Hey, where have you been all day?” he heard Mario ask. He turned towards the door and saw Mario leaning on the door jamb. “Have you been crying?” Shit, not what he needed right now.

“I was at the hospital with Tanner. She’s dying,” he choked out feeling tears building again.

“What? Sid, what happened?” he asked walking into the room and sitting down in a chair.

“She’s been sick and asked me to take her. Turns out she has a brain tumor. They think it’s malignant.” Mario was quiet for a while and Sidney just stared at the floor.

“That doesn’t mean she’s dying. I had cancer too and now look at me,” he said.

“She won’t let them do the surgery. She also won’t do the chemo. She’s giving up. She said she’s tired of fighting and won’t do it. I tried to talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

"She's probably in shock. Just give her a little time," he told him. Sidney shook his head.

"No, she was clear. Perfectly clear. I could see it in her eyes. It's her final decision."

“As terrible as it is, if that’s her decision, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. You just have to be there for her now,” Mario said.

Sidney didn’t say anything else. He didn’t know what to say. Eventually Mario got up and left the room. Sidney made his way to his bedroom and collapsed down on the bed. He pulled the blankets over himself without changing and tried to sleep.










I didn’t sleep most of the night. Instead I just stared at the ceiling thinking about what I was having taken from me. I wasn’t going to graduate from college. I wasn’t going to get my dream job. I wasn’t going to get married or have kids. I didn’t even know if I’d see my brother’s new baby.

As the sun came up I decided to change my thoughts. I started to think about what I was going to do in the rest of the time I had left. I wanted to go to Europe. I’d been dreaming of going to Venice, Paris, and Prague my whole life and I was definitely going to do that. I was going to read every book written by Jane Austen that I hadn’t read yet. I was going to spend time with my friends and family, and Sidney if he’d let me.

I hadn’t told the doctors I wasn’t going to do the surgery yet. I guess I just assumed I’d tell them when they came to get me in the morning. I doubted my parents had said anything. After I’d convinced them that there was nothing that would change my mind they’d left. I figured they were still holding out hope. I knew that the nurses would be coming in to get me pretty soon to bring me. When I heard the door to my room open I turned expecting to see one of them. I was shocked when I saw who was standing there.

“Mario? What are you doing here?” I asked him. He smiled and walked over to my bed, taking a seat in the same one Sidney had vacated the night before.

“I just thought I’d come and see how you were. Sidney told me what was going on,” he answered. I sighed.

“Honestly, I’m not doing so great,” I told him.

“I had cancer,” he said. My eyes opened wide in surprise.

“What?”

“I had Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” I didn’t say anything for a while, really not sure what to say.

“How did they treat it?” I finally asked.

“Radiation.”

“Was it bad?”

“It was awful. I was sick a lot of the time. I had almost no energy, and the energy I did have I used up on the ice,” he explained honestly.

“Wait, you played hockey while you were going through radiation? How did you manage?” I asked in shock. He shrugged.

“I loved the game. I didn’t want the cancer to run my life and playing hockey was normal for me. It gave me a couple of hours a day to get away from all of that.” I thought about that for a while.

“Did you come here to try to change my mind?” I asked quietly.

“Not at all. When I was sick I didn’t know anyone who’d had cancer. Everyone was there for me, but none of them understood what I was going through. Unless someone is in the same situation they’ll never completely get it. As much as I loved everyone’s support, I sometimes wished I had a friend who had the same experiences as me that I could talk to. I came here to tell you that you have me to talk to if you ever need it.”

“I don’t know that I have the energy to be strong anymore,” I confessed.

“No one said you had to be strong. It’s just not possible to be strong all the time. I certainly wasn’t. If it hadn’t been for Nathalie I don’t know what I would have done.”

“I think Sidney hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you. He just doesn’t know how to deal with all of this. He loves you, I can see it. No matter what you decide to do, he’ll be there for you.”

Mario only stayed for a few more minutes before he had to leave. I thanked him for stopping by and talking to me. I thought about what he had said. I still couldn’t believe that he had undergone radiation and still played. I thought about Sidney. As I allowed the nurses to wheel me up to the OR for the surgery I wished he was going to be there when I got out.