Word Count: 1010

“I’ll be okay.”

It was an easy thing to say.

He’d said it to his boyfriend that morning, on the phone with him over a quick breakfast he hadn’t tasted and could barely keep down. Paris thought he’d sounded like he meant it, and that surprised him because that certainly wasn’t how he felt. He felt fear and sorrow and almost took it back, almost asked Chris to skip class and come with him—sit with him, hold his hand—but he’d shut his mouth around the compulsion and listened to his boyfriend’s reassuring voice instead, let the sound of it wash over him and soothe him and make his words seem true.

He wanted them to be true. A part of him needed them to be true, because he was so tired and so afraid and he just wanted something to go right for once.

He wanted a happy ending.

“I’ll be okay.”

It wasn’t so easy the second time, reassuring his mother over the phone once his father was taken back to be prepped for surgery. His voice shook a little, but he cleared his throat and then it was back to normal—falsely chipper but believable to anyone who didn’t see his face. No, he didn’t need his mother to keep him company. No, he didn’t want her to fly down to be with him. She was overreacting and he told her as much. She should stay where she was, go to work and live her life—the one she’d always wanted; the one she’d left them for.

And if she felt the same fear, the same gut-wrenching, guilt ridden pain for her ex-husband that Paris felt for his father, she never said so and he never asked her.

Knowing would only make him feel worse.

“I’ll be okay.”

The third time was the hardest, because Momma Gallo’s voice trembled on the other end of the phone even though this wasn’t her pain to manage. More than anything Paris wanted to sit in her kitchen, watch her bake cookies and listen to her talk about her newest hobby—yoga or scrapbooking or any of the other numerous activities she rotated through like clockwork—but he couldn’t. Not today. When she offered to come sit with him instead he declined, not because he didn’t want her there but because he wanted her too much.

Sometimes the thought that Chris’s mother was now more of a mother to him than his own mother was made Paris feel guilty, and then the old bitterness rose up again because he didn’t think that he should.

Momma Gallo said she’d pray for him and his dad. Paris thanked her and hastily said his goodbyes before she could hear his breath hitching.

No one had ever prayed for him before.

“I’ll be okay.”

It got easier again from there—the fourth, fifth, and sixth times. He sent it in texts. To his boyfriend. To his friends. It was easier to pretend when he didn’t have to speak, and he almost managed to convince himself that it wasn’t a lie. Even if he wasn’t okay right now, at this very moment, he knew he could be one day because he had been before. Once this was all over and things went back to normal, maybe he would be able to look back at it all and laugh. He could be overreacting. He could be afraid of nothing. He could wake up tomorrow and be happy.

But the pretending and the silent reassurances didn’t last for long, because the chair was uncomfortable and he had nothing to do, and the magazines didn’t hold his attention the way he wanted them to and soon he was pacing.

Back and forth, back and forth, over and over and over again.

It didn’t do anything. He didn’t expect it would, but moving felt better than sitting still.

“I’ll be okay.”

The seventh time was the last. There was something undeniably final about it, standing in front of the doctor and feeling every emotion he’d ever had—anger, sadness, fear—seep out of him like it had never been there at all. He didn’t know where it went. At that moment, he didn’t care. He should have cried. He thought he might have had tears in his eyes, but he was too numb to really notice.

He used to think of grief like it was this dark, ugly creature tearing away at his insides with sharp claws that left nothing behind but a pain so powerful and urgent it seemed it would never end.

But that wasn’t grief. Grief was numbness, a state of non-feeling so profound it took over every last part of his being. The pain was gone, and the fear, because the reason for it was gone, too.

The doctor spoke quiet, clinically sympathetic words Paris didn’t hear. Paris could do nothing but nod and give his empty reassurances. No, he didn’t need anything; everything was under control. Yes, he knew who to contact. Of course he’d known this was a possibility, that no matter how many times the words “common” and “routine” were thrown around, they didn’t rule out “serious” and “risk.” There had always been that tiny voice in the back of his head that warned him that death was lurking around every corner.

He’d thought about it before—what his life would be like when and if his father died.

Now he knew that imagining it and living it were completely different, because one was pretend happiness after a period of sorrow, and the other was this place he was in now—bleak and barren and empty of everything except the ghost of his father’s hand around his, and the words he’d spoken before he was wheeled away.

“Je t’aimes, Paris.”

The numbness lingered long enough for him to call his mother back.

“You should come down now,” he said.

She asked him if he was okay and Paris couldn’t lie anymore.

He hung up the phone and ran.

Nothing was ever okay.