100 Things I Love About You
an excerpt

I love the way you hold my hand so tightly, like it’s a lifeline.

There was no pause. “Surgery. I’m doing the surgery.”
Instant uproar all around the room.
Aaron, who was crying next to the hopsital bed, clutched his fingers in his brother’s hospital gown. “Noooo… Cazen, I don’t know what I’d do if you didn’t make it.”
“You’d live.” Cazen answered emotionlessly.
Melodie was leaning over her son, though too strong to cry just yet, her lips were thin. Her hand was on Aaron’s head. “Just be safe… you have your whole life ahead of you.”
“If I was in a wheelchair, it wouldn’t be life.”
Robert put an arm around his wife’s waist, looking stricken. “There’s only a fourty percent chance of survival…”
“I don’t care.”
“Cazen…” A sobbing Wraith pleaded. “You can’t!” He crossed his arms and kicked at the floor defiantly.
“I can and I will. I am NOT spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair. That is FINAL.”
Everyone stopped, stunned.
Cazen continued his tirade. “It’s my choice, and you’re all being selfish. You can’t risk me dying, so you’re condemning me to a life I’ll hate? It looks like Flavius is the only one who really cares, he hasn’t said anything to stop me from doing what I want. Have you, Flavius?”
Flavius looked up from his side of the bed, where he’d been crying quietly to himself since Cazen had been brought in- almost two days, now. His eyes were sunken in from lack of sleep and his hair was dirty and mussed. “Suki da yo.” He mumbled under his breath with what little voice he had left. Cazen gripped his hand tightly, like it was a lifeline.
At the moment, that was exactly what it was.

Suki da yo= the equivilent of 'I love you' in Japanese.