Excerpt: To Stand Against

It was one more day, and he was still breathing. It was shaky, but he was still breathing, still counting off the times his chest rose and fell, the times that he heard that tattletale rasp that told the whole world he was ill. He was still alive, he still had one more morning, one more amount of time to do whatever it was he was trying to accomplish. He was still breathing, his heart was still beating, and his blood was still flowing.

Hell, he knew his blood was still flowing in his body. There was enough of that in the bowl of the toilet to make any doctor or casual observer unhappy with the state of his health. Nahollo let out a shaky, weak breath, leaning his forehead against the wall, soaking in the cold and the contact, the feeling of something solid and not shaking. He still had breath in his body, even if it was drawn in ragged and harsh, painful with each rise of his chest, worse with each careful fall. He had to focus on this, just this, just breathing, and nothing else. He would keep coughing, otherwise. He would still hurt, he would still ache, his head would still pulse and throb with the force of those coughs, but he was still breathing.

He could face today. He wasn't dead yet, after all. Not yet, but maybe today. Maybe the next five minutes, maybe the next hour, maybe the next week. None of that mattered- not even that he had never been told what to look for, never been told what a definite sign of his impending doom was. All he knew was that his left hand still ached terribly, and he was still weak, still ill, still rasping and rattling every time he breathed.

Now it was time for clothes. Nahollo braced himself for the pain that came with pushing himself up along the wall, staggering out of the bathroom into his bedroom, feet on bare wooden floors and cold, but he was fine with all of this. After all, it kept the mess down, and blood came out of tile and wood easier than carpets. He hauled his closet door open, struggling his way into dark, warm clothing, catching only faint glimpses of skin and thin arms and legs as he did so. Today would be fine.

He just had to find something to do with today, after classes. Classes were first, but they were empty- he didn't expect to see graduation, though he'd easily smashed everyone's expectations for his lifespan to start with. Making it to fifteen was an accomplishment. Making it to sixteen was something that had all of his doctors confounded. He was supposed to be dead now, but he kept living.

He kept living.