xavier clarke {d5} fin

My mother says I have a heart of gold. I laugh at that now, a heart of gold, something precious and valuable. Perfect, sought after, something everybody wants in their possession. But nobody wants mine locked in-between their rib cage. I have too much blood to bleed, too much love to give, a beat of life too strong for my pulse to take. The thing that gives me life is the thing that is slowly killing me.

They say I have less than 2 years.

'They' say a lot of things. Doctors are sparse in these parts. Drugs and medicine even more so. Yet they pumped me with all that medication when I was small - blood problems, scorching temperatures, glassy eyes, the list goes on and on. We'll fix him, they told my parents. We'll fix him right up. Medicine fixes everything. My parents sold everything to pay for my life and they threw it back in their faces. Medicine doesn't fix everything. Medicine can damage a little boy's heart in the hands of a barely-trained doctor who blindly gave me tablets and pills and injections. Medicine heals and medicine hurts. My veins were infiltrated with foreign blood and I felt myself fade away, slowly, day by day, until I wasn't a sick little child anymore but a brand new being. I could run again, jump again, dash through the rain without fearing the cold it brought. 

And then I, and all that came with me, crashed. 

Or rather  - I collapsed in the middle of a road not far from the District Square.

Being told you have a heart that's too large for your body to handle shouldn't make you laugh, but I did. I sort of chuckled to myself as I stared out the window of an ever-familiar room of my childhood belonging to the sole health clinic District 5 has. What they were expecting me to say probably wasn't what fell out of my mouth. Twirling the little thing in my hand, I raised the bottle cap that I'd unscrewed from the nurses' drink and raised my eyebrows to say "Can I keep this?"

"Oh... well I suppose-"

"Excellent!" I remarked, a beam now prominent on my face. I flicked it once and pocketed it, 247 becoming 248 in my collection. One thing I've learnt about being a sick kid - if you want something, people hardly ever say no.

My mother, as usual, was speechless. My father muttered some words in a baffled tone, voice raising with irritation as the nurse fired textbook answers back at him with every question. Eventually they concluded that 8 or so years ago when my collection first grew from 1 to 2 I was given far one  too many drugs and they damaged my heart. The holes that pump blood from A to B are too big, much like my wide blue eyes, or my feet that can barely fit the biggest size of shoes. Someone should have seen the signs when the medicine would make my limbs weak, my eyes blur, cause my body to crumple to the ground in fits and seizures - but I don't hold grudges. Instead I held a bottlecap in one hand and my mother's hand in another. Clasped between her fingers was a ticking time bomb of a son and since that day I've heard her pray that she could stop time altogether and keep me forever. She's a dreamer. I'm a realist. Don't let the wide smile of crooked teeth that grins from ear to ear fool you.

I don't walk like you'd expect sad people with a grenade in their chest to walk, all slouchy and sad and depressed. In fact, I'm rather the opposite. I'm not supposed to run for long periods of time but I can't help jogging along the streets with a spring in my step, hopping from one, two, three cracked pavements and dodging out of the way of some poor passer-by in the nick of time. I'm scared to stop moving because if I do I run the risk that at any moment I could


fall


down


to


the


ground


again


and I won't be that happy kid on the street and things will get bad and I'll hide away from the world for a day or two (or ten). I won't wake up with a smile on my face. I'll hate to wake up at all. Loathe to open my eyes to the daylight blocked out by my curtains. Hair that needs cutting will fall into my eyes and I won't care. Clothes will stick to my sweat-covered body and I won't care. Patches of hair will dot my chin, cheeks, under my nose, and I won't care. I won't care because I'm going to die, right? and I won't care because this always happens I will get up and it will be okay again and I won't care because my heart is breaking but not in the way people think it should. 

Those days are the hardest. But, eventually, I get back up. I wash my hair. I change my clothes. I shave, and smile, and walk out of the door because I am not going to die yet. The heavy clutches around my heart fade (for now) and I look up to the sun and breathe, because I am alive. I have two years left and I shall rise and fall with the current that speeds through my veins. I will fall and hit the concrete every once in a while and I will fall and hit something far heavier than the ground more often than I'd like to think, but for now I am alive and I will keep on living for as long as I've got.

sources/links/more info:

www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/enlarged-heart-causes-symptoms-types

www.healthline.com/health/depression/terminal-illness

(also i got a little bit of info from watching red band society)

because researching is what all the cool kids do these days!!!