PART ONE (July 8, 2018)

BOY'S POV

I know I'd spend the rest of my days lonesome and unhappy in this suffocating isolation room, where white happens to be the only color filling my eyes– be it close or open doesn't matter at all.

White. Purest of the pure. The curtains, the ceiling, the floor, the bed and the pillows, the couch, the table, and even the hospital gown I'd been wearing since day one– they are all white. It's funny how it brings me fear and peace, all at once. Fear for it symbolizes death which I'm not ready to face yet but I have to, and peace in the sense that when everything's over there's no need to suffer anymore.

I never believed all the people who told me that in every challenging situation comes a silver lining. Not until I took the risk of going out of the hospital just to make myself believe in a saying I once abandoned. I realized they were right when they said that. I am living proof of what a silver lining looks like.

It's a girl. A beautiful, eye-captivating, and stunning girl.

A pair of topaz eyes stand out on her face. Her skin reminds me of the snow– my favorite thing in the world. And her hair, I need not brag about how it makes her look prettier because it's a dumb act I would surely neglect. She has the beauty I'll never get tired of looking at– if only I'd be given a chance to look at it once more.

A starry, starry night. Lovely. My friend told me years ago that the best time to look at it should be around nine o'clock. Because it's when they twinkle the brightest. He's wrong. I'd been sitting on the same couch on the highest floor of the hospital over the years, yet I never found them to be this bright and beautiful. For me, they are just stars in the sky. Nothing special.

But tonight is different. I woke up this morning realizing they are not just stars in the sky. They are not just there for nothing. They're meant to play a role for every one of us. And for me, they're meant to remind me of a memory. My silver lining.

"Thinking of that girl again?"

I focus my eyes on the window and I see a guy in white sleeveless leaning at the edge of the wall. With his back attached to it, he crosses his arms on his chest and slips a little downward enough for him to block the doorway.

I smile. "Thank you for covering me up during that night."

He nods. "You're welcome." He releases his arms on his side and turns his head to the window. We gaze at each other through the reflection of the glass. "That was perilous. But we were lucky because nurse Jodily was off-duty that night. No one had to enter the room to check for you."

I smirk. "Right."

I spend half of my life here in the hospital as the subject of clinical trials, giving hope to the doctors and researchers that one day, a drug will be developed to battle my incurable diseases. I'm a lab rat. And they are just wasting their efforts and time believing I can be cured.

CHD is deadly. Chronic Leukemia is deadly. And I am lucky enough to have them both.

"You know what, that night was a fairytale to me." I stand away from the couch and pivot towards him.

"Really?" He let go of himself from leaning on the wall and treads onto my bed. He slams his body to the mattress and covers his face with the pillow. "Tell me about your fairytale, then," he splutters.

I lay next to him. "Once upon a time, there was a prince who was born to die. . ."

"What a bad start for a fairy tale."

"Let me finish first."

"Right. Go on."

I grab the white pillow from him and give it a cuddle. I fire my gaze to the ceiling and continue. "Once upon a time there was a prince who was born to die. He had these worse diseases that made him conclude it's better to rest six feet below the ground than to live a dreary life. . ."

"Hold your horses." He rises from the bed and renders me a dissatisfying look. "That tale is so terrible. No children deserve to hear that story."

While enduring the spiking sensation caused by the wound from my left hand where the dextrose tube settles in, I spring a scornful laugh and mimic a child's voice. "But I want to share the story."

"Stop it. Just cut right to the chase," he says in a sharpened tone, eyes narrowing down.

"You're such a mood breaker," I say.

"No. You're such a mood breaker." He stands next to the bed and goes directly to the table in the corner where on top of it are scattered pills and tablets. "You're not drinking your medicines again," he sighs, his arms akimbo stands, scowling with frustration before the white table.

"What for?" I place my arm on top of my forehead.

"How many times do we have to tell you that drinking your medicines is a must? Nurse Jodily has been reminding you this over and over and now you want me to say it again."

His incessant grump has no difference compared to Nurse Jodily. They are both annoyed easily, especially when it's something related to my medicine intake.

"And how many times do I have to tell you that these medicines are not death antidotes?"

He is speechless. I am speechless.

Yes. They are not death antidotes. And of course, my life is not a fairytale where a happy ending is expected.

"What excites you from dying? Tell me." His eyes flare straight onto mine.

"Nothing. I'm not excited. No one is excited to die." I breathe in.

"Then stop being unreasonable and just drink them." He fills a glass with water and picks up new medicines from the drawer beneath the table. He gathers the scattered ones and piles them on the edge.

I breathe out. "I'm not excited to die. But I'll still die anyway. I don't know what takes me so long before I get vanished from this world. I don't see any reason to continue living."

"Really, huh?"

"Maybe I'm just waiting for the time when my parents would finally get back together." I breathed in, again. "Maybe that's it. Maybe that's my last mission-to make them reunite. So they could both give me their last kiss, offer me their last hug, and bid me their last goodbye. And when that time comes, there's nothing to feel ungrateful of. At least, my death would bring them back together again."

Benjie releases a deep sigh. A sincere sigh telling something reciprocal to what I believe.

"That way of thinking is an influence of reading too many heavy drama novels." He walks toward me, and sits on the other side of the bed, looking at the opened door with his back on mine. "You know there's no way for that to happen. Your mom has a new family. Your dad has a new family. They both support you in your treatments but that doesn't mean anything. They're doing it only because you are their son. Not because they are still together and you are still a family."

"If that's the truth, then maybe I don't have any reason to live anymore." My eyes water milliseconds after I let go of my statement.

"Forget about me?" He looks away.

"No, of course not. You are the greatest person I've ever met. You are like a family to me. A brother that acts as a mother and father, and as a nurse, and even as a doppelganger." I lean my head on his back. "But hey, you've suffered too much from me already. You've sacrificed too much that even my own life will not be enough to pay back all of them."

"I'm not asking for payback. I'm doing it because you're my friend. And I'm doing it with all my heart. You are now a part of my life and I can't stand a day without seeing you. I don't know what would I feel if you die." The crack in his voice has proven the truthfulness of his words. I feel how the vibration of it breaks through my bones and sends the most chill sensation I could ever resist. "Please. I hate moments like this as much as you love them. Enough with the stubbornness and just drink your medicines. We've been exaggerating things too far."

He's the best. He's always right no matter how wrong I see him. My life must have ended already if Benjamin didn't come to save it.

I often think of death. When I read books, I think of it. When I drink my medicines, I think of it. When I undergo surgery, I think of it. When I'm in therapy, I think of it. I think of it almost in everything I do, but when he's here, all of it burst like a bubble. When he's here, I feel immortal. . . and safe.

"Look outside," he whispers, so much air in his voice.

Without any response, I do what he asks me to do. I center my attention on the window, and I see hundreds of thousands of stars twinkling at each other.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asks.

I nod. "Yes, indeed."

"When you rush your death, you will never see them again. There will be no stars in your coffin."

"I know that."

He leans his head on mine. "I see, they are more than just stars for me. And they are more than just stars for you, too."

He recovers from leaning and rotates himself so we can see the same window together.

I jounce my head. "They remind me of the girl I saw last Friday night."

He smiles. "Do you want to see her again?"

"Of course!" I exclaim. The switching between sadness and happiness happened so fast that I forgot I am sad and all I know is I'm happy on the spur of the moment.

"Then don't die. We'll find her." He stares at me, his face only centimeters away from mine. "I'll help you."

Time freezes upon the moment he unleashed those words. Surely, my lips stretch as far as they could go on my cheeks, and so is the inflating of my eyes. I am the happiest person when he said that.

"You said you know where she lives, right?"

With a steady grin on my face, I reply, "Yes! She lives in the subdivision near the park. Her house was one of those houses near the fountain by the cul-de-sac!"

"Great, then. You can write her a letter and I'll be sending it to her house tomorrow," he drawls. He hangs his left arm on my shoulders with his fingers worming to mess my hair.

"That's kilometers away." I doubt. "Are you sure of that?"

"I'll do it for you." He rubs his lips together. "In one condition."

"What?"

"Don't die."