My father looked so small in the hospital bed. Shrunken. Like he was disappearing into the bedsheets. His skin appeared stretched over his bones, and I could see the sharp outline of his rib bones underneath his shirt.

The steady drone of the machines monitoring his heart, his vital signs, was driving me crazy.

Dad wasn’t conscious much anymore. He slept most of the time. His doctors said he had only days left. That I needed to start preparing myself.

I didn’t want to prepare myself.

I didn’t want to live in a world that my father wasn’t a part of.

He had been fighting for so long that I had convinced myself he’d defeat the disease that was eating him from the inside out.

It had become so much a part of our every day that it had become normal. Natural.

Disease. Death. Those were my constants.

I gripped my dad’s hand. It was so cold.

So, so cold.

I was crying. Silent tears that fell nowhere.

I didn’t cry for my dad who was dying.

I didn’t cry for my mother who was already dead.

I cried for me.

Because I was the one who would be left behind.

I cried because I hated my selfishness. That in these final hours of my father’s life, all I could think was what if that happened to me?

And I knew, without a doubt, I couldn’t go through this again. I couldn’t stand to lose someone I loved ever again.

Even worse, I never wanted someone to watch me fade away.

There were some things worse than death.

This slow deterioration was it. This limbo.

It was a living death.

My phone rang from the bedside table but I didn’t bother to look to see who it was. I knew it was Beckett.

He had called twice already.

I should answer it.

But I couldn’t. I was locked in this sick paranoia of death and dying. It was never ending.

I wanted it to stop but all I could do was shake.

My throat was dry and I wanted something to drink. But it hurt to move.

My chest felt tight and the fluttering in my belly was making me sick.

What was wrong with me?

I just wanted to know!

“I hope you live a long, happy life, Cor.” My mother’s words were meant to be reassuring. But sitting with her in the dismal hospital room, it sounded more like the desperate wish of a dying woman.

“What if I don’t?” I asked, watching as a nurse came in to take some blood from my mother’s arm.

“Don’t say that,” she chided, her voice so weak I could barely hear her.

“You’re dying. You won’t ever know what I do.” I was fourteen and really pissed off. I hated my mother for waxing on and on about this great, beautiful life she was convinced I’d have.

I didn’t want her passing on mother wisdom in frantic clumps because she knew this was the only chance she’d have.

I didn’t want her to look at me sadly, seeing in her mind the thousands of moments she’d miss.

I wanted her to stop crying when she thought no one was listening.

My heart hurt and I just wanted it to be over.

What kind of horrible monster did that make me?

The worst kind.

The most selfish kind.

“You’re right, Corin, I’m dying. I won’t get to see the woman you will become, but I know that you will make the most of your life. That you will live it to the fullest. Because you won’t just be doing it for you. You’ll be doing it for me.”

What a horrible thing for her to say.

The pressure that put on me was suffocating.

It was too much for my teenage brain to compute. Too much for my young heart to handle.

In that moment I hated her for putting those expectations on me.

Expectations I knew I’d never be able to live up to.

“I’d like to make an appointment with Dr. Harrison for as soon as possible,” I wheezed into the phone.

“Hi, Corin, how are you?” Lynn asked, recognizing my voice.

I hadn’t been seeing Dr. Harrison that long. I should probably be concerned that the staff could already identify my voice without me having to give my name.

“I’ve been better. Which is why I want to make an appointment. I woke up this morning with swollen lymph nodes and I’m in a lot of pain,” I explained. I sat up in my bed and tried to stretch out my limbs. I could feel the telltale ache in my groin.

“Okay, well, there’s an opening tomorrow morning. Does 9:00 work?”

I covered the phone and coughed. It sounded phlegmy. And my chest did feel tight. I knew there was a nasty strain of flu making the rounds. I wondered whether I had contracted it. I had gotten the flu vaccine as soon as it became available, but maybe it was one of those mutated strains that was drug resistant.

My panic piqued and I squeezed the phone to my ear. “He doesn’t have anything available today? I’m feeling really bad.”

“Let me put you on hold a minute and talk to Dr. Harrison,” Lynn said.

“Okay. Please let him know how bad I feel,” I emphasized.

“I will. Just one minute.”

I listened to John Tesh for three agonizing minutes. By the time Lynn got back on the phone, I was ready to dig my eardrums out and stomp on them.

“Dr. Harrison said to have you come in for some blood and we can run a flu test as well as some others. Then you can come in tomorrow and we should have the results. We’ll expedite the lab work.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Okay. That sounds good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll let the nurse know to expect you.”

I hung up and got out of bed, slowly making my way to the shower.

I didn’t think what I had was the flu. It felt more serious than that. With very little time to spare I opened up WebMD and looked up my symptoms.

A few minutes later I was pretty much convinced that I had throat cancer.

He stopped breathing and the doctors and nurses rushed into the room, making me leave. The long, steady drone of the monitor pierced my ears. He had flatlined.

His heart wasn’t beating.

“Don’t leave me, Dad,” I whispered, watching from the hallway as they worked on him.

But he did leave me.

Just like Mom.

And I was alone.

At least the feeling was familiar.

I thought about Beck and how quickly your life could change. He had been a healthy, active man, and in the blink of an eye he died.

Well, those were some warm and fuzzy thoughts for first thing in the morning. I really should have taken a job writing Hallmark cards.

It was already eight-thirty. I needed to get to the shop in an hour to help Adam open.

And I was supposed to go to Geoffery’s service with Beckett that evening. A funeral was just what I needed when I was obsessing about my own mortality.

That would provide fodder for my neurosis for months.

Once I was showered and dressed, I got into my car and headed toward Dr. Harrison’s office. I called Adam and let him know I might be a few minutes late. He seemed unsurprised. That should probably bother me. But I was too distracted by dying to think much about it.

I wondered whether Geoffery would be in a casket or if he had been cremated.

If he was in a casket, would it be open? Would we have to look at his waxy, dead face all evening?

I would have shuddered at the thought if I didn’t hurt all over.

I knew that I wanted to be cremated.

I had put in a lot of thought to how my remains would be handled. I had planned my funeral in excruciating detail years ago.

My will had been written and I had already completed a Do Not Resuscitate form in the event that one day I fell into a coma and was being kept alive by life support.