[ WP ] How to kill your best friend and get away with it .

I could n't bear to leave her there in that hospital bed. 
 
 Maggie. She and I were friends ever since we were both seniors in high school when I comforted her after some kids harassed her. She was fragile. She was balding. I saw her at her locker, trying to ignore the bunch, but they would n't stop harassing her. 
 
 `` What's wrong with you? Huh?'' 
 
 One of them slammed their hand against the row of lockers to make her jump. She started shaking. Another ran his hand through her hair, and pulled a little and managed to take a tuft of it out. He threw it in her face, and it stuck to her clothes. She tried to rub it off quickly. She tried to grab her books out of her locker and run away, but on her closing her locker with her things in hand, they knocked it all to the floor. She just stood there looking at her books and papers on the ground. They spread out on the floor, and a book that was tucked within a textbook was shown. A short thin one, as a pamphlet, by the name of *Glioblastoma*. 
 
 `` What's this? Is this the name of your cancer?'' 
 
 `` Yes,'' she said meekly. 
 
 `` Ha, ha. Cancer! You're going to die! You're going to fucking die! How fucking hysterical. The little nerd from Eastrennington who reads books all day... gets what? What is this?'' 
 
 He quickly flips through the pamphlet, skims one of the first pages: 
 
 `` Gets a brain cancer! You have a brain cancer! How classic.'' 
 
 He tooks the pamphlet spread open and pushed it into her face. She squirms away from her and crouches to the floor. He pushes her head down to the floor and she resists; he tries again repeatedly but she holds out, her head bobbing up and down, until he gets bored and he and his group of idiots leave. And through all that, I just stood at the corner of the hallway, stopped on my way to class. Just staring at the injustice and stupidity. Not helping her. Letting her suffer. 
 
 I could n't allow myself to leave her alone. I should n't have allowed myself to not stand up for her. I felt morally obligated to right my wrong and help her out. Help in some way. Relieve her pain. I went over to her. I crouched to her and smiled to her eyes full of tears. I tried to comfort her, saying, `` Do n't worry about those idiots. They never knew the pain you're going through. They're idiots who just to raise their own self-worth by bringing everyone else down. They're worthless imbeciles and you'd do yourself a disservice if you take any of their comments seriously. They do n't deserve consideration. They're a worthless blip, and I'm sure you're not.'' 
 
 She smiled back at me, sarcastically. 
 
 `` Thanks for trying. You do more than most, but it's no use.'' 
 
 `` Why is that?'' 
 
 `` This is the first day I've come back to school after chemo and a month of rest. I have pain ad a persistent headache, but I try. And there's always that idea in the back of my mind that I'll need more of that damn chemo and surgery. That was the first thing they did. Tried to take it out. I feel terrible. I vomit all the time. I'm so scared the cancer will come back. That I wo n't make it. My doc says it's likely it'll come back. My prognosis is but a couple months. He said the best thing to do at the later stages is to stay in hospice under morphine and some other medication for the seizures. There's nothing to cure the brain being all for shit at the end. Fuck, I'm as much a blip as them. And do n't you see the fucking irony in counting them as blips and me as not, while shitting on them for putting down everyone else to have some sense of self-worth?'' 
 
 `` I did n't - but ca n't you see - I do n't know. I just want to help.'' 
 
 I was almost surprised at how angry she was after being so meek and seemingly helpless towards those jerks. There was a pause, a silence, where she and I took up her papers, and she collected them all in her hands. We stood up and stared at each other. She sighed and heaved her shoulders, looking to the floor. 
 
 `` I'm sorry that I burst out to you. That was uncalled for. I'm just fucking angry. I did n't want to do anything with my anger against those assholes, and here you come along, an easy target. You did the best you could to help me. I appreciate that, but I do n't need you to elevate me above anyone. I'm worthless and useless and dead, or might as well be. I guess all I could want is a friend, someone to vent to, someone to spend the last moments with.'' 
 
 `` I can be your friend until the end.'' 
 
 `` Please.'' 
 
 And so we were friends. We would walk with each other through the hallways everyday she was at school. Our schedules were vastly different, but I'd run to her at the end of class, comfort her with my presence, and run to my next period. It was a hassle, but it was worth it. I made sure to always defend her when those idiots came by, but I never told put them down in return. I told them to try to be considerate, to understand what exactly they were saying to a girl with cancer. She did n't deserve the abuse they were dishing out. I verbally reprimanded them, but I did n't decry them as permanent assholes. I knew they could change, and dammit if I would n't be the one, if we would n't be the ones to give them a bit of empathy. 
 
 But soon, she was confined to hospice. I visited her after school and on weekends. We talked for hours about nothing, to pass the time, to distract her away from the death right before her eyes. The morphine helped. The hospice was pleasant. Green walls, incense from burning sticks on a corner table, a comfortable bed. We used to lay on it together. I next to her. As we talked, I laid my left hand on her right. She turned her hand over and we would hold each other's hands in comfortable silence, staring into each other's eyes. 
 
 `` Are you not worried about my dying? Why are you allowing yourself to get attached to me?'' 
 
 `` I do n't care. I'll be happy now. Let's be happy now. That's all that matters.'' 
 
 And as time passed, her memory and cognition decreased to nothing. We would still sit by each other, and she'd still hold my hand, but it was like a reflex. She could n't understand what it meant. There was no depth in her eyes. It's like she was a shadow of what she was before, a shell of reflexes and instincts. She'd stare at the wall, and tears would form in her eyes, and I'd ask what she was crying about, but she'd would n't respond. The tears would grow in strength, one after the other going down her face, but she did n't know she was sad. There was no whimpering, no lip biting. Just tears. I wiped them away but she'd just slap my hands away. Sometimes she would look at me and push me off the bed, and then forget that she did it. It was infuriating but I had to be there. I cried every time I went to her, and so did she. But it was all quiet. It was all tears. Nothing more. 
 
 On her final day in hospice, on a Saturday, her family came by and we gathered all around her. She did n't even look at us. She was in another universe of bliss and ignorance. She did n't recognize any of us. She could see, but she did n't see. She could hear, but she did n't hear. She could feel, but she did n't feel. We all just looked at her in silence. Her mother was at her left, squeezing her hand. 
 
 `` Maggie, it's your mother.'' 
 
 Maggie just moved her hand away from her mother's and onto her stomach, still staring forward, still with a blank expression on her face. 
 
 `` Maggie!'' 
 
 Her mother shook Maggie's shoulders but Maggie only resisted. She did n't scream for her mother to stop or anything. She did n't process it or anything. Just the simplest response to stay as still as possible. 
 
 `` Gretchen. Stop. She's already gone. Just grieve for our moments here, and we'll leave her be. She's as much a corpse now as she'll be in however many hours it takes for her body to die as much as her brain did.'' 
 
 `` Thomas! How could you!'' 
 
 `` You know that it's true as much as me.'' 
 
 And so the silence continued, with the aunt and the uncle, the brother and the sister, the mother and the father, and me. We stared, and we whimpered at the cruelty and injustice of the world. An alive corpse we stared at, and then they left. 
 
 I was the last to leave. 
 
 I could n't bear to leave her body there in that hospital bed. If she was gone, her body had to leave, too. I took the pillow off her head, and that fell to the one underneath. I placed the pillow on her face and put pressure on it. She squirmed a little, but no screams came. The body stopped moving after a bit. I took the pillow off, propped the corpse back up, closed the eyelids, messed with her hair and made the bed around her. I went to the door and stared at the corpse, and a tear fell on my shoe. 
 
 I tried to forget it, to repress it. Christmas season came, and when I went to church at midnight, the priest swung about the incense, the same as of the room. And it all came back, and I just could n't do it anymore. I stormed out of the church and ran to the street corner and sat under the street light with my head between my kness sobbing like my eyes were faucets. 
 
 
 *Note: I did only a bit of research. A lot of this was made up on the spot. *
