1It's been hard to dream lately. They give me something to help me relax, since my other medications make me nervous, but the something makes my dreams go blank, like I am dead. I sometimes panic. I'll be slipping off in the lumpy pillows, but when it starts to feel like my body is dissolving into sand and stars, sometimes I have to jump awake because I suddenly feel that I am dying for real this time.
I don't want to die in a hospital room. Nineteen is not an age that you should spend here at all. Whenever I jump awake, I sit up straight and jerk my head around and it's all still here, the sting of bleach in the air and the choke of vomit from the stomach cancer girl next door and the keening of brain matter from neurosurgery down the hall. There is still the pressing dark of grey walls in blue crescent-moonbeams, and the tangled shadows of my IV cords, and the yellow square of parking lot light that falls across my molding flowers. Every crinkle of my white gown, every rub of my bare heels under the covers is blinding static. I never know if I can really hear the women screaming in the maternity ward or if I am just imagining it.
Sometimes I pass out anyway. The drugs are strong. But sometimes I strain to reach my laptop on the bedside table, with its careful stickers and glittering case. I take online classes for college, but more importantly, I am writing a book about dragons. I want to get it published more than anything in the world. If I do dream, it is of the questions that reporters might ask me.
"Miss West! Miss Lacey West! What's it like, being the best author in the world?"
~ Chapter III ~
There was a flash. A bright light. I winced and clutched my jewel-encrusted dagger.
A woman stepped out of the light. She was tall and had dark curls down to her waist. Her green eyes flashed, the color of life — the color of the forest dragon's scales. "Who…who are you?" I whispered.
"My name is Sylvia," said the woman. "I am the Dragon Spirit of the Forest. Who are you?"
"Princess Lacey," I replied.
April walks three miles to the hospital every day after classes end so she can sit by my side. She holds my hand and kisses my lips like she always used to do, even though my breath smells like hospital stroganoff.
Today she asks, "Is that permanent?"
"Yeah," I say, touching the eye patch. "They say the disease started eating the neurons that control my vision. So the eye just…died. Bleh."
"Is the other one gonna go soon?"
"Prolly."
April is quiet for a long time. Then she hugs me. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't worry about it." I lean into her. She smells like coffee; she must have taken the early morning shift so she could visit me. I attempt to reassure her. "I've already got the letters on my keyboard memorized."
"I can't just not worry, Lace. How can you be okay with this?"
It's my turn to be quiet. I just shrug.
Her gaze shifts. She is looking at something next to my laptop — a stack of terminal illness memoirs. A nurse had noticed that I liked to read and thought the books might bring clarity and comfort. Or something. April leans across to pick up one and read the inside flap. "God, these are depressing," she murmurs. "Are they…helping?"
"If I have to choose a last book to read," I tell her, "it will not be pity porn about someone's colon disease."
~ Chapter XII ~
"Again!" Delavon shouted. I glare up at him and push my chestnut bangs out of my eyes.
"I'm done," I growled fiercely "I'm tired of the same old drills, Delavon! I want to do real magic!"
"You will do real magic when you are ready" He told me.
"I am ready! I scream loudly. "Who saved Sylvia from the assassin! Me! Not you! I am ready. I understand! and I don't want you to keep talkg down at me just because I am a princess!"
Sometimes I think they forget that I exist.
When I say "they", I normally mean either the doctors or my parents. This time it is both. They are squeezed in my room, and they seem to have forgotten that I can't leave because they are arguing about me. I have recently lost all of my vision. Sometimes they think that I have lost my hearing, too.
"In these final stages of the disease," my doctor is saying, "it is critical for Lacey to keep her brain active. The online classes are as useful as her feeding tube."
"There you go," says Mom.
Dad has not liked this. The fact that he is a neurosurgery lab tech, as well as very opinionated, has made my large palette of brain-related diseases all the more stressful to the relationship. I am pretty sure he has been divorced from Mom for several years. But I have begun to forget some things. "Active?" Dad spits. "Lacey is failing every one of those classes."
"It's not about the grades, Mr. West," says the doctor.
"I don't care. I am not paying five grand a year for her to finish a degree she'll never get to use."
My mom is silent for a moment. Then she says, "Take that back, Philip."
"Take what back?" It's a challenge for Dad. "That your adult daughter has the brain of a five-year-old? And that it's only gonna get worse? That you're trapped in some — some fantasy that she's gonna magically get better one of these days? Do you dream about her walking up a stage to get her degree?"
"Take it back," Mom repeats, harsher. The voices are rising. The doctor is trying to intervene, but it's not working. My father forces a laugh like a cough.
"God, what's she even studying, anyway? English? Say she survives, you think she'll ever be able to get a job? Who the fuck wants to hire a blind, paralyzed writer?"
"SHUT UP!" Mom screams.
"No, I won't! Because sometimes I think I'm the only one who really gets what's going on!"
I cover my ears.
I think security is called. There is a scuffle and a nurse hurries to my side to console me. But I am not listening to her. When I next take my hands off my ears, my father's voice echoes down the hall.
"You think I'm wrong? Have you read any of that shit she writes? Look me in the eye and tell me it's fine art! That's what you're making me pay for!"
The door closes.
"I want my laptop," I tell the nurse.
~ Chapter XXIX ~
I rushed forward with my blade stretched out and screamed. Dragon lord Vyelnus flew back on his wings and use his magic to cast lightening spells at me it hit my side and it hurt teribly as I fell backward
"Victory is mine!"dark dragon lord Vyelnus yelled.
I almost started to cry. Then suddenly I catcht a flash of green on his claw. An emerald ring—green like sylvia's eyes.I pushed myself up and reached for my sword agian. "Why are you getting up!" Vyelnus yels. "you have been defeated!"
"No," i say. "you cannot defeat love."
The room has never been so crowded. I don't particularly care. A doctor. Some nurses. Mom, on the other side of the room from Dad. Some other relatives. I don't remember their names.
I cannot see and I cannot speak. I can feel very little. It is very difficult to hear. I have a headache from the ringing in my ears and the quiet, the quiet is invasive. It's worse because I know there's people here. All of the voices are jumbled and do not make sense. I am in pain, all the time, and the tick of the second hand is like dissolving into sand and jumping and waking all over again.
I have my laptop open. Everyone wants to talk to me, but I just want to finish the book.
I think they are calling me selfish. They want to be with me now. None of us know how long this will last; could be days or could be moments. They think it's awful that I don't want to be in the moment, that I don't want to grieve with them, and that I don't want to accept reality. It's not even a guilt trip — they're right. I am almost paralyzed; my brain is pitted with necrotic tissue. My heart flutters, a baby bird. The only thing I can do is listen to the muscle memory in my fingers, slowly peck the words I can't help but imagine, letter by letter, letter by letter, one, then another, then another, then another.
A hand rests on mine, stilling my typing. She still smells of coffee. I can't remember if April is someone who would understand. I think she used to. But to an extent, she's always been just like everyone else. Asking if I was going to write about my life story so that the world could cry for it. She was always an artist, always admired how Van Gogh's best work was borne of screams in the dark, and I think she did truly love me, but I also wonder how much of the love was fascination, a clinical observation of a star gone supernova. An experiment — of a sort — watching the process of pain as it cleaves from a dying artist.
I suppose she is disappointed. I suppose they all are. They will never see a memoir. They will never see a masterpiece. Perhaps, if I put myself to it, I could have made one that they liked. Something that leaked with pity and self-reflection and vast statements about the cosmos. But I haven't. I did not want to spend the rest of me on a story that they would have liked.
The error in their experiment is that they think they know me. They had decided their results before they knew what would happen. And what has happened is indeed a memoir, a masterpiece. Just not the one they want.
I think I'm okay with that.
~ Epilogue ~
We stand on the castl balcony together hands claspe d lookng t at the valley
"Together" i ask ?
"for ever,' she finshes. she ksses me.
we wtch a kingdom at peace . we watch the sun rise.
There is a flash. A bright light.
As the cameras meet me, crescent-moonbeams blind my vision. The tangled crowds push and pull at the red velvet cords. They throw yellow flowers that fall at my feet.
I am tall. I have dark curls down to my waist. I wear a white dress with heeled shoes. Before me is a fine red line, a carpet just for me, and I walk down it with pride. I am holding my book under my arm, with its careful binding and glittering cover. Initially, my gut is tight with nerves, but as I see the crowd's smiling faces, all apprehension dissolves into sand and stars. Everyone wants to see the book. Everyone wants to see me. They scream my name and I know I am not just imagining it.
"Miss West! Miss Lacey West! What's it like, being the best author in the world?"
I make my way to a podium. I stare into the supernovas and black holes. Camera flashes and broadcast microphones.
"Lonely," I tell them. "It is very lonely."