Through Death Comes Life

Seven hundred and Ninety four thousand Days before the Apocalypse.

The day he died was a normal one for him. It was an expected day, one that had years of buildup for it. He'd been slowly dying for sixteen years, born cursed and living through nothing short of miracles and a stubborn will. But no matter how strong a will, sixteen years would wear anyone down, would erode the staunchest of wills and souls.

He had lived a cursed life from before he was born with a congenital heart defect. At the tender age of three days, he underwent his first surgery, where they repaired the hole. All seemed well and good. He lived the first few years of his life happily, like a normal child. Until he was rushed to the ER after he suddenly passed out at the park and had almost no pulse.

The doctors found out that the initial heart surgery hadn't been done properly and the hole had reopened, worse than before. There had also apparently been an issue with his valves that hadn't been seen when he was a newborn, but had grown with age.

At five he was put on the transplant list while he was stuck for a while in a hospital bed, hooked up to more machines than his young mind could count. Several doing the work his damaged heart no longer could until a temporary solution was found. He barely remembered that time. It was all a blur of white coats and scrubs, being carried to and from the hospital. He was lucky, he got a transplant incredibly quickly; he only had a year to wait as opposed to the average of three to five years.

He suffered the normal symptoms of a new organ, his body adjusting to the foreign heart. After three months with no severe reactions, he was released to live his life again. He was six, almost seven, by then and expected to rejoin society and school for the first time. It was hard. He was weak in comparison to his peers and behind on the subjects they'd been learning.

He couldn't play at recess or gym, always made to sit to the side under the watchful eye of an adult while his peers got to frolic and enjoy being kids.

He had three years this time, where he slowly gained strength and began to live once more as a child. Making friends, going to sleepovers and parties, going on vacations to theme parks. His parents spoiled him, their only child and one they'd almost lost twice now.

However, it all came crashing down when he was looking forward to his eleventh birthday. A big party had been planned at a local theme park, where he was determined to get himself sick on cake and rollercoasters. The pain that had been slowly plaguing him was finally too much to hide. The agony in his leg made him collapse in tears and his parents had him bundled up in the car and on the way to the hospital once more.

They found out he had bone cancer. It apparently had a high survival rate, provided the cancer didn't metastasize. Which, with his luck, it had. It had already started to spread to his lungs. The shortness of breath he'd pushed aside as a result of his transplant had been the cancer growing, as had the pain in his legs.

Surgery was prepped and planned for them to try to remove the largest tumors. He was out of it for a while afterwards, though when he woke there were gifts from his friends and classmates around h

his bed. The gifts were dulled with the knowledge that he would need to undergo chemotherapy to try to manage the other tumors either too small or too precarious to remove.

At eleven, he had more scars on his body than any of his peers, and by the time s

he was close to twelve, he had far less hair than them as well.

Not that he was too sure, as he'd been pulled from public schools with the start of his chemotherapy because of the hit it gave to his immune system. Combined with his transplanted heart, his body was simply far too delicate to be around others his age, in a place where germs grew and gathered en masse.

Every time they thought they'd cleared the cancer and the tumors, he'd go home with some level of hope in his heart. Until he went for a checkup only to find out the cancer had regrown once more. It was like a morbid game of whack a mole. And slowly his body wasted away until at fifteen he was in the hospital full time.

He barely saw his parents by then. They were pulling so many overtime hours they hardly had time to sleep just to cover the cost of his medical bills. He knew his college fund had been drained to pay for the surgeries and chemotherapy by the time he was thirteen.

Yet they still managed to give him presents, small things to brighten up his days in the dreary hospital room. Gaming systems and new games for him to lose himself in.

Books that would take him far from the world and failing body he inhabited. He had no friends to speak of, the ones from his younger days long gone.

He was friendly with several other children in the ward he was in, other children with terminal illnesses and their futures stolen by failing bodies that refused to work as they should.

Yet it was depressing to see them fading away, much as he was. Even more saddening was when they disappeared from their beds, gone forever. Their life cut short far too soon.

So he threw himself into games, where she could be strong and powerful. Where the things that would hurt her were nothing more than 'villains' he could defeat. All the evil in the world condensed into singular beings that, once defeated, returned the world to a perfect utopia.

Where no teenage boy had to watch his body become nothing more than skin and bones because radiation made him puke up whatever small bits of food he could get down his throat.

So it was a few days after his sixteenth birthday, when he had just finished replaying his favorite game, Realm Of Hope, for the fifth time that he knew his time had finally come.

He had fought death so many times before, shoved his scythe from his neck with bared teeth. Cursed him until he was blue in the face with his chest heaving. Yet this time, when the familiar specter haunted his room, he couldn't find the energy to put up a fight. He'd lived sixteen years cursed with a feeble body that was breaking down slowly.

The boy knew he would never see his twentieth birthday, and had heard doctors telling his parents that very thing when they thought he was asleep. He'd never get to travel the world, see other countries. He'd never get to go to prom, or learn to drive.

He'd never go to college, or join a sorority. What was he fighting for? A miserable life filled with white hospital rooms and serenaded by the discordant beeping of machines?

So he smiled at Death like an old friend and when he reached out his hand this time, he grasped it.

As his world faded to black, he heard the shrill screaming of medical machines calling for aid. Heard the rushing of doctors and nurses as they tried to reignite the smothered fire of life in his chest. Yet this time they couldn't bring him back from the calm void that called to him.