Come like a cancer, spread all over my body.
But don't kill me.
Life can rush by so fast that you might not even find a small moment to stop and think about why you’re living. When the busyness of life wraps around your neck like a shiny chain, all you end up doing is bowing to that chain. But unlike you, some of us had helpers that made us break this chain and spend every day reflecting. I can guess what you’re thinking, but sadly, I must tell you that this helper was definitely not time. On the contrary, time was my biggest enemy. As it flowed, I swam closer and closer to death.
You might be wondering why I did all this nonsense. I needed to open a door to dive into my life, didn’t I? You can’t enter any room through a wall. I opened the door for you and invited you into my perfect life, with death waiting at the end of the tunnel(!) I’m not sure if you’d want to read a story with a known ending, but this story will always be here, waiting to be read.
As I scribble these, the clock in my room keeps ticking away, never once stopping to gift me a few extra minutes. On the contrary, it seems to speed up out of spite, spinning like a tornado, acting as a boat carrying me to death. A hysterical smile slipped from my lips at that moment. I gripped my pen tighter with my slender fingers, drawing strength from my thin arm, and after placing a period at the end of my last sentence, I continued with a capital letter.
Wanna know a secret? It doesn’t matter anymore. Do you know why? Because everyone dies. Today or tomorrow, what’s the difference? The important thing is what we leave behind when this crappy life ends. I’m leaving behind this novel, where I can live within its pages. I wish you more happiness in your life than I had in mine...
As usual, I woke up early and took my spot right in the middle of my bed, cross-legged, busy pouring the traces of my soul into the notebook in my hand. With the indescribable feeling left by every word that fell from my pen, I wanted to leave a part of me in this world even after I left it. Telling my story to people, inspiring those like me after I’m gone, was my only purpose left in this life. If I could achieve this before dying, I would have no regrets. But I had a problem that would tire me out and make my job difficult; Hodgkin Lymphoma. My little disease that gave my life meaning and made me realize I was going to die just a few hours after I found out.
For months, my defective cells were stubbornly holding their ground despite various treatments. The stem cells taken from my body before chemotherapy and radiotherapy were transplanted back to me after the treatment, but the doctors said this method didn’t work, and they needed to try their luck with stem cells from another donor. I was so lucky that none of my family’s stem cells matched mine, and I was thrown into the stem cell pool to wait for death(!) Considering other patients who had been waiting for a transplant for years, my hope was almost nonexistent.
I continued to receive treatment like an ordinary patient in an ordinary hospital with this hopelessness. The most extreme event in my life was occasionally getting out of the ward to go up to the hospital terrace and watch the vast Ankara. But today, something had happened that made me feel like everything would change. Something that led me to write this book...
I turned my gaze to my window covered with curtains in my room and took a deep breath. Even though I couldn’t see outside, guessing the weather wasn’t hard. The cloudy weather was like a baby who had nestled in its mother’s arms, peacefully sleeping. I guessed not even a leaf was stirring outside, and the cold was making people shiver. I wanted to put myself in their shoes and imagine for a moment. When my queasy stomach forced my eyes to open again from the dream I had closed them for, something clicked in my head. Whenever I let myself go and dream, my disease attacked my body like a ready army. This feeling came to my door with an indescribable horribleness, entering without knocking.
Speaking of entering without knocking, my hysterical laugh burst from my lips as the door opened.
With drowsy eyes and the numbing effect of the drugs I took, my eyes moved in their sockets and turned to the incoming person.
“I missed my favorite bald bear!” As soon as I heard that shout, the bear hit my chest and fell into my lap, and I caught it with a quick reflex. The person who came was none other than my troublemaker. The ugly brown bear he threw on me was Kont, the bear he never let go of. He named it Kont because it was short for Contramal. Contramal was one of those bad friends for patients like us who fought pain every day. You know how parents don’t want their kids to hang out with bad company and always scold them about it? Well, Contramal was that bad friend in this story. Despite its addictive nature, it was a friend we would continue to see, causing more harm than good.
“Good morning to you too, annoying witch(!)” Understanding the sarcasm in my voice, Yasemin smiled, showing her pearly white teeth. She pressed her index fingers to her chest and then quickly drew a circle in the air. Her sea-blue eyes held a mischievous expression.
“You know me, I don’t usually exhibit normal human behaviors.” Her words made me laugh, and I closed the notebook in my hand. Yasemin dragged her tiny body and slowly sat at the foot of my bed. The baby blue blouse she wore highlighted the color of her eyes even more. Every time I looked at her, my gaze inevitably drifted to her eyes, feeling as if I found the peace that even oceans and seas couldn’t give.
“It seems you’re writing something again,” she said. Her gaze was on the closed notebook.
“Yeah.”
“So when am I going to read it?”
I puckered my lips, pretending to think. “Hmmm, let me think.” As I said that, Yasemin made a move to grab the notebook in front of me. Since I was closer to the notebook, I quickly grabbed it and hid it behind me. “Because of that move, you won’t get to read it until it’s finished,” I said, laughing. Yasemin quickly stood up, and I followed her with my eyes. Tightening the string of her floral cap, she stood in front of me, wagging her index finger threateningly in the air while placing her other hand on her hip. “You’d better hide that notebook well, Mr. Eray, because I’m going to read it when you’re high on chemo.”
“Do your worst, Ms. Yasemin.”
Joking with her using these serious phrases made me happy. It seemed to have the same effect on her as well.
At first, our friendship was the need of two sick bodies to keep their spirits strong. But later, I began to see her as a sister, worrying more about her than myself. That beautiful, incredibly strong girl for her age; made this hospital bearable for me.
After throwing her funny threat, Yasemin turned her back on me and walked towards the door. She suddenly stopped and looked back at me. There was a mischievous look in her blue eyes that I couldn’t understand. “By the way,” she said with a half-smile. Her eyes roamed over me as she continued, “You might want to pay attention to your appearance.” Just as I was about to ask why she interjected. “A new nurse has arrived. Totally your type.” Laughing at what she said, I threw one of the crumpled papers from my bed at her. “Oh, Yasemin! Go draw a picture of a flower-covered lung.” The paper hit Yasemin’s shoulder as she laughed and quickly left my room.
The need to share information given by being in the same room a short time ago was now tripping me up. She enjoyed using the things I told her against me. It sounds bad when I put it like that, but it wasn’t. It was proof of how we could be such good siblings despite not being related by blood.
I met cancer at 22. Although I noticed some symptoms, I always postponed and ignored them. Until I could barely breathe after a long match. I’ll never forget that night. It was the first time I thought I was going to die. My thick-headedness that didn’t appreciate life until then suddenly thinned with the difficulty of not being able to breathe. The curtains over my eyes lifted one by one, leaving me exposed to the harsh realities of life. A few days after that night, I learned I had cancer and started treatment without wasting time. But according to the doctors, time had already been wasted. Because by the time I was diagnosed, I was facing a disease that had progressed to the 3rd stage. The tumor had spread from the nodes in the upper part of my diaphragm to my lung, spreading to a part of it.
Although I initially received home treatment, through the son of a close friend of my father who was a doctor here, Emre, I was admitted to this hospital, and a much more realistic, painful struggle began after I started staying here. Now, every time I opened my eyes, I saw I was in the hospital. Because of my damn disease, my heart was sinking into the swamp of sadness, causing me to be pulled deeper as I struggled.
Every staircase I had climbed up to this day, I tumbled down every single one of them. I had cut ties with my friends, imprisoned myself in loneliness. At the time, it seemed like the most logical thing to do was to die alone. Even though it still feels that way, I realized that I wanted to live long enough to see Yasemin get better. Even though I had only known her for a few months, I noticed that the feeling that filled my heart when she was around was something I couldn’t even get from my parents. I had allowed her to get as close as anyone could.
As I was thinking about these things, I started hearing voices getting louder in the corridor as they approached my room. When the door to my room was knocked and quickly opened – the door was symbolically knocked because they never waited for my response before coming in – I looked at the nurses who entered, dispersing my thoughts. One was Nurse Ayşe, who had been taking care of me for years and whom I nicknamed “Granny” – this nickname had nothing to do with her age, I just got inspired by her purple nurse uniform she always wore. The other was the young nurse, the one Yasemin had mentioned as the new addition.
“Good morning, Eray Beha,” Ayşe’s cheerful voice echoed in the room as I closed the notebook in front of me and looked at them without saying a word. She always addressed me by both of my names. I always thought it was such a tiring thing. Why give a person two names?
As my queasy stomach started to tingle, I had to focus my thoughts elsewhere and ignore the nausea. No one would want to throw up in front of these two beautiful women, right?
While Granny Ayşe headed towards the window in my room, my gaze was fixed on the newly appointed young nurse. She had short, dark brown hair and brown eyes framed by long lashes. Her height was no more than a hair above one and a half meters. Unlike Nurse Ayşe, she wore a blue uniform. While examining her, I couldn't help but agree with Yasemin. She was exactly my type, but I was no longer that old flirty guy. The pre-cancer me and the me crushed and broken into pieces by cancer were definitely not the same person; it was impossible for us to be. If it had been the old Eray, he would have used all his charm to impress this woman, but I preferred to just quietly look at her face. Perhaps one of the main reasons was that I no longer had any charm to impress her. I started to think that the confidence my old self had given me was also destroyed by chemotherapy.
Nurse Ayşe said, “I guess you wouldn’t open these curtains if it weren’t for me,” as she performed her morning routine and opened the curtains to let light into the room. I shrugged indifferently and remained motionless where I was. After finishing with the curtains, she looked at her watch and said, “Dr. Murat will be here soon.” Although I was annoyed by her saying this as if I didn’t know, I didn’t respond. I think I had exhausted all my energy fighting with Yasemin. I didn’t even have the strength to lift my arm. All I wanted to do was lie down, lie down, and believe it or not, lie down some more.
Dr. Murat had explained very nicely to me and my family that I could only live a few more months unless a suitable transplant was found, without upsetting us too much, and he had also bluntly added that I would have to spend the last days of my life rotting in this room (!). I couldn’t be mad at him. As they say in public service announcements, “It’s not cancer that kills, it’s being late.” Being late would kill me too. Despite all this, the hopes and optimistic attitudes of my doctor and nurses for my recovery made me feel a bit better.
Ignoring my attitude – she never cared – Nurse Ayşe turned her gaze to the short-haired young nurse standing in the room. As I followed her gaze, I felt a soft expression form on my face. When the pretty nurse’s gaze met mine, the smile that appeared on her face mirrored on mine. For a brief moment, this feeling spread throughout my body, only to disappear with Nurse Ayşe’s voice.
“This is Eftalya, your new nurse. Eftalya, this is the most docile member of our hospital, Eray Beha.” She had emphasized the word “docile” with air quotes.
“Hello,” the new nurse said, smiling. I was just about to respond when the door behind her opened, and my superhero-looking doctor, who could never save me, walked in. “Good morning, my young warrior,” said Dr. Murat. He was right about that. I was a warrior. A warrior doomed to lose in a battle I could never win...
His large belly and short stature made him look like a teddy bear, and teddy bears always seemed cute to me. Of course, excluding the white coat that looked tight on him but which he had to wear, misleading us into thinking its color was white despite it witnessing hundreds of deaths. When I thought of the teddy bear Yasemin had thrown on my bed, my face twisted. The new nurse must have seen this. I felt my face blush, imagining she might think I slept with a teddy bear. Embarrassment!
“Everything seems fine,” he said, smiling at me. While the unending optimism of the nurses and doctors was annoying, I prayed for today’s rounds to be short. I sat up in bed and dangled my legs off the edge, trying to suppress the constant urge to roll my eyes. I couldn’t tolerate anything happening around me anymore. I could understand that I was slowly dying because of this exact reason. Because to me, intolerance was a side effect of approaching death. As my body slowly decayed and death approached step by step, I was more intolerant than ever.
Dr. Murat asked, “How are your pains?” I looked at him and said, “They’re doing great. The pain in my back says hello. It says you’ve gained weight.” I said with a careless mischief. The doctor moved his large body closer to me and scratched his graying head with the back of his pen. “I wish everyone received treatment with your zest for life,” he sighed. It was really funny that he called my joking about my imminent death a zest for life, but I didn’t need to tell him that. Just like I kept the nicknames I had for them to myself, I kept my thoughts about them to myself. After all, I was a man who lived not in the world but more within himself. They didn’t need to know these things. I wanted to always be remembered for my cheerfulness, the man who could smile even while dying. When they remembered me, I wanted their minds to light up with my ever-smiling face, making them smile along with me.
“Yes, now I’d appreciate a serious answer. Let’s do this. You rate your pain for me. On a scale of one to ten, what’s the intensity?” he asked, without raising my head, I just turned my gaze towards him from under my eyebrows.
“When I answer this, will you leave, Doctor?” I asked, and seeing his face slightly drop, I quickly added, “Six.”
After a few examinations, Dr. Murat scribbled something in his notebook and, without asking any more questions, left me alone. I lay back down and tried to ignore the pain in my body. While the whiteness of the ceiling reminded me of death, the greenness of the walls – believe it or not, they also – reminded me of death.
Sitting up in bed and looking out of the window that Nurse Ayşe had opened, everything I saw reminded me of death. Everything and everyone that reminded me of death would one day be that very death. Death and oblivion would find them too. So was there any need to be sad? In a world where everyone dies, what did it matter who died first? In seconds, I comforted myself from worrying about death to the idea that everything would one day cease to exist. When I was lost in thought, I reluctantly opened my eyes at the knock on the door. The fact that someone waited for a response after knocking indicated it was someone different. Smiling to myself, I said, “You probably need to come in.” The door slowly opened, and a moonbeam shone through.
“Is it okay to come in?” the nurse asked, and I nodded in agreement. Her slender body seemed to get lost in her blue uniform. Her short hair suited her face, completing her soft facial features. The harmony between her brown eyes and hair with her skin tone was more than enough to highlight her beauty. Realizing that I was staring at her, I blinked and reminded myself to stop describing her.
“Well, I wanted to talk to each of my patients individually,” she said, filling the room with her shy voice. I didn’t understand why she was doing this, but I attributed it to her professional enthusiasm since she was new to the job.
“What’s the need to get to know us? Anyone here today might be gone tomorrow. Don’t wear yourself out. We’re used to being referred to by our room numbers. You should do the same,” I said with a flat voice. The coldness in my gaze and the emotionless pupils seemed to frighten her, and I tried to understand why. As I slowly got up and headed towards the bathroom, her gaze never left me.
“It seems you’ll be taking care of us very closely,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. Oh, I looked terrible. My eyes were swollen, and the undersides were dark. My nonexistent hair and eyebrows cast no shadow on my face. That was the worst part
. The shadow my eyebrows used to cast on my eyes gave me an attractive look. My current state was no different from a pumpkin.
I missed my old self. I had brown hair and well-shaped, thick eyebrows. With my well-groomed beard that I never let grow too long, I used to be handsome enough to be noticed. Now, after a single chemotherapy session, I had turned into a plucked chicken, and then I was left with a pale, bald head. In short, there was no trace left of my former self, and I had turned into the most disheveled version of myself that a disease could make. Looking at this reflection, I now understood why the new nurse was afraid of me. I was literally like a ghost.
Quickly washing my hands and face, I dried them with a tissue. Forcing my steps to move as if I were walking through a swamp, I turned my direction back to the room. My pretty nurse tucked the short hair on both sides behind her ears. She must have been waiting for me to come into the room to respond to what I had said.
“I’ll take close care of all my patients.”
My gaze wandered over her beautiful face first. Then it lingered on her tiny body, which barely reached my chin. Standing so tall and big next to her made me feel good. That sense of strength that I hadn’t felt in a long time caressed my soul and then vanished.
"In the beginning, they always say that," I said, clearing my thoughts. A look of confusion settled on my new nurse's face. Unable to stand any longer, I reluctantly sat on my bed and began to clarify my statement. "Nurses, doctors, paramedics..." I elongated the words, giving examples from different medical fields. "They're all very eager and enthusiastic when they first start. But as they progress in their careers, they begin to fill with coldness and resentment. I think you'll be the same..." I wanted to say her name at the end of my sentence, but due to my terrible memory for names, she reminded me, "Eftalya."
"That's right, you'll be the same, Eftalya," I finished my sentence. The strange feeling that filled me when I said her name—I couldn't tell if it was due to the uniqueness of her name or the peculiar harmony in it, but the word felt very foreign in my mouth. Eftalya.
Eftalya smiled slightly. This smile was devoid of joy, a faint smile meant to soften what she was about to say. "You don’t know me yet. If you did, you'd know that I never tire of things I love."
"You don't know me either. If you did, you'd know how many nurses like you I've seen."
After my words, Eftalya’s face maintained the same expression. She glanced over my body and suddenly looked me in the face. "If you need anything, I'll be in the nurse's station." I nodded in agreement as I lay down on my bed. Eftalya headed toward the door and disappeared from sight. As she closed the door behind her, my gaze lingered on it. Then, a message alert on my phone broke my focus, and I picked up my phone. The message was from Yasemin.
Little Witch: I saw the new nurse leaving your room. How is she? Totally your type!
Me: I hate that you're right!!
Little Witch: I was born right ;)