Voices

"Are you sure, Syl? That this is what you want to do?" Mum looks at me closely, tears in her eyes. I tighten my weak hold on her hand and try to smile.

"Of course. Why should I just rot in the ground when I can help people, even after I'm gone?" Dad winces, and I take a breath; remind myself to alter my words, to filter them more carefully around mum and dad. "I want to help people, please. Let me do this one thing."

Mum looks at dad, and dad looks at me, and I look at mum, because we both know that this is her decision; dad's hand on my shoulder and the soft look on his face already tell me that he wants whatever I want.

"Ok," she says, softly. "If this is what you want to do, Syl, then I'm ok with it."

"Ok with what?" We all turn towards the door, and Lance stands just inside of it, the door swinging behind him, his eyes dark and strangely frightened.

Mum opens her mouth and then closes it. Dad puts his hand on her shoulder and looks at Lance. "Syl wants to be an organ donor."

"Is an organ donor," I correct. "Is."

Lance does not smile. He looks at me, frozen in the doorway. "Let's give them some space, Ev," dad murmurs, steering mum out of the room, past Lance, darting me a quick look and closing the door behind him.

It is just Lance and I, in the room. And there are only a few metres between us, but the distance in his eyes is vast and endless. "Lance, I-"

"Were you not going to tell me, or something?" he asks, his voice quiet. And, for some reason, this makes me unfathomably angry. I have not gotten mad throughout this whole thing, my sickness. But I am the one who is dying. I deserve to be angry. I am allowed to be mad.

"Why does it matter to you?" I ask, my voice deathly quiet. "It's not your decision, your body, your choice. It's my body. My weak lungs, my strong heart. I can help people with this. It's mine and it's my choice to give it away! Why should you act like you get a say, when I'm the one who's dying!" My voice has risen to something close to yelling, and, in the absence of it, the room is silent.

Lance looks at me steadily. And I realise what I have said. And that of course it matters to him, because he loves me, and how could I forget that, when he is looking at me like he is now: patient and quiet and darkly intense. I can feel tears rising, burning in my eyes. And then I am sobbing, and he is climbing onto the bed beside me and carefully rolling onto his side, pushing my hair from my eyes, his long, slim fingers holding my face. And I am crying because I don't want to die I don't want to it isn't fair. I cry until I feel empty, until my lungs ache and my face feels strange, my skin covered in drying tears. And he stays there, running his fingers along my neck and over the bridge of my nose and beneath my eyes, his fingers catching my tears.

I breathe until my body remembers how to do it on its own, and then I look at him. At his beautiful, sharp face, etched with grief and pain and love, and loss that has not yet come. His familiarly brilliant amber eyes and the dark crescent of skin beneath; I want to trace the shape of it with my fingertips, but my hand is too heavy to lift, today.

"I love you, Syl, and I'll support you in whatever you think it's right to do. But I can't help that I hate the idea of parts of you inside of other people." He does not take his eyes from me, and I can see how it would unsettle other people, his gaze. But, to me, it is comforting.

"It feels weird, thinking that, soon, someone else will have my heart." His eyes darken, but he does not interrupt me to tell me that 'soon' is the wrong word; we both know it to be true. "But if it saves a life, then I'll do it. I won't need it, after this, anyway. Besides," I say, smiling a little as his thumb traces circles on the side of my neck, "you'll always have my heart. The one that matters, anyway." There is a slight smile in his eyes, at that, but it is sad. He kisses me, once, softly, and then rolls onto his back and takes my hand in his.

I close my eyes, and I think about last night, when Lance thought I was asleep; I saw him, sitting in the chair by my bed, taking a piece of paper from his pocket. Crinkled and folded, refolded and scrunched, he took it out and smoothed it, flat, on his leg. He stared at the words for a long, long time. And then he put the paper away and leant his head on his hand, closing his eyes.

I think about how my dreams no longer reside on my ceiling, at home, or even on this one, in the hospital. They are on that piece of paper. They are inside of the boy beside me.

I open my eyes, and we stare up at the ceiling, together. And, if I ignore the machines and the tubing and wires threaded through my body, then I can almost imagine that we are on my bed, in my room, staring up at my ceiling. But this one is uncluttered and free of dreams or words. This one is peaceful.

"Lance?" I say, after a while.

"Yeah?" he says.

"I need to sign the papers, to be a donor." I turn my head to the side, and it takes so much more effort than it used to.

He blinks up at the ceiling and then sits up. And then he passes me the papers, and watches me sign away parts myself.

After I sign, I let the pen linger on the paper, a small dot of ink growing, spreading on the page. "You know, this is just like making a horcrux," I tell him. He turns his head and looks at me, unflinchingly.

"Except, this isn't Harry Potter, you're not a wizard, and you won't be able to come back."

"It wouldn't be fair, if I could come back, when for everyone else it's a one way ticket." I put the lid back on the pen and hook it into the top of the clipboard holding the papers.

He takes the board from me and looks down at my signature, frail and indelicate on the page. "It's not fair that you need a ticket at all," he says, not looking at me.

"Everyone has a ticket, Lance, even you."

"But why does yours have to be so... so..."

"Early?" I ask, as he struggles for words. He sighs and sets down the board and pen on the chair by my bed.

"Let's hold off on the analogies for a while," he says.

"Ok," I tell him. "I'm going to die because life sucks."

His mouth turns up at the corners in a reluctant smile. "Life sucks," he agrees.

"Tell me about something happy," I say, because I want to hear his voice for as long as I am able to.

For a while, he sits beside me and holds my hand, and he is quiet. But then he is not quiet; he is telling me, in a soft voice, about his parents. His mother had inky hair, black as his, while his father's was blond. He doesn't know where he got his eyes from, as his parents had blue and brown eyes, respectively. Maybe a grandparent; he doesn't know. He never met them. His mother was a swimmer, like him. He doesn't remember what his father did. The memories are fading away, he tells me. He's scared that, one day, he'll forget them, but he'll never forget how it feels to miss them. You don't forget that kind of love, I tell him.

Mum and dad come back, with Tom; Olivia's out shopping. "Taking care of your presents, like you wanted," Tom whispers to me, and I smile. Lance excuses himself to see his sister and then get some sleep, kissing me lightly as he leaves. He doesn't promise he'll come back, because, between us, we don't need promises. Promises are for those who need reassurance, and I don't need to be assured that Lance will come back; he always does.

Tom entertains me for a while, and then stops talking when I yawn.

"Tired?" he asks, and I nod. "I'll sing you to sleep," he says, smiling in a way that makes me unsure if he is joking or not.

"Are you serious?" I ask, and he nods, his face suddenly becoming sober. "Alright." I lie back and close my eyes.

"My grandfather used to sing this to me," he says. Dad makes a comment about earmuffs, and Tom laughs good naturedly. And then he starts to sing.

His voice is low and even and strangely lovely, in a rough way. It is the sort of voice that sounds as if it should have a guitar backing it. It is not perfect, but it is wonderful. The words of the song are slow and soothing, even and smooth.

I don't know what language he is singing in, but it is not English. I listen to the sound of the words, the curves that they make, their own brand of lettering behind my closed eyelids.

When he is done, the room is oddly quiet. I open my eyes and look at him. He frowns, sitting in the chair by my bed, in Lance's usual spot. "Damn. It always worked for me."

"What language was that, Tommy?" I ask. He shrugs.

"You memorised a song, but you have no idea what language it is, or what the words mean?" dad asks, and there is a hushed reverence in his voice, no trace of the teasing from his earlier comment.

"My grandfather lived with us for seven years. And he sang it to me. Every night."

In the corner of my eye, I see mum, sitting in a chair against the wall, beside dad, who stands. She looks so tired, dark rings beneath her eyes. But, sitting in that chair, the last notes of Tom's grandfather's song still ringing in our minds, her eyes closed, she looks peaceful.

"Could you sing it again?" I ask.

Tom smiles, a sweet smile, and reaches through the rail on the bed, taking my hand. "Anything for you, Syl," he says.

And he sings the song again, and I close my eyes. This time, I fall asleep. And I dream of darkness, and Tom's voice lighting my way through it.