REBIRTH : Chasing The Limelight

Chapter 181: Terminal disease.

Not wasting any unnecessary second, Elara had left the lounge. "I’ve got to go. I’ll be back later," she said.

Ziva immediately stood up, concern flashing across her face. "What’s wrong? Let me go with you. Did something happen to Zia?"

But Elara only shook her head and told her to stay, that nothing had happened to Zia.

When she arrived at the hospital, the nurses immediately recognized her. One of them had led her to the ICU unit where Grandpa had been admitted.

Zia’s mother was already there standing beside the bed with an unreadable expression on her face.

And there he was. Grandpa. Lying on the hospital bed with an expression Elara wasn’t used to seeing. He looked smaller somehow. The sight alone made something twist painfully inside her chest.

Zia’s mother told her everything afterward.

Apparently, it had been Zia who noticed that Grandpa’s condition had gotten worse. The little girl had been complaining for days that Grandpa was coughing too much and that he kept hiding tissues from her whenever she visited.

If not for the fact that Zia constantly went to see him after school, nobody might have realized something was seriously wrong until much later.

The thought alone made Elara feel uncomfortable. Strange how a child noticed things adults overlooked. Strange how the person who paid the closest attention to him had been Zia.

One afternoon after school, Zia had gone to Grandpa’s house like she always did.

Her mother was busy at work at the time. Then suddenly her phone rang. The screen showed Grandpa’s number. At first she thought he was calling her himself. Instead, Zia’s voice came through the phone.

Nobody had ever appreciated the fact that the little girl had memorized her mother’s number until that moment.

"Mommy," Zia had said very seriously, "Grandpa and I were playing Pasta Slam. I already defeated him six hundred times but he still won’t admit it. I’ve been waiting for fifty hours and he hasn’t moved. I think something is wrong. My friend said if people sit too still they can slowly turn into spaghetti. If Grandpa turns into spaghetti before you get here, can we still keep him?"

It took a while before her mother understood what she was actually trying to say. By the time she rushed over from work, she found Grandpa unconscious.

What disturbed Elara the most was learning what had happened before that day. During the period when his cough had become much worse, he had kept telling everyone the same thing.

That she had important things to focus on. That she was busy. As though protecting her time was more important than protecting himself. That had always been his habit. Putting other people first. Especially her.

But honestly, it wasn’t really his fault. It had been hers all along. She rarely called. She rarely visited.

Once, back when she was still at Voice, she had even suggested that he move to Starfall so she could see him more often. The old man had refused immediately. He said the house meant too much to him. Too many memories lived there. Too many people he wasn’t ready to leave behind. At the time she hadn’t thought much of it. Now she wished she had insisted harder.

He had hidden lung cancer from her for months. Or maybe even years. And now his condition had become critical.

What made everything worse was realizing that even during his first hospital admission, nobody had told her the truth. The doctors hadn’t said anything. She wanted to be angry at them and demand why they had hidden something this serious. But she already knew the answer before the question could even form properly.

Adrian.

Adrian had been handling everything. And if Grandpa had asked people not to tell her, Adrian would have made sure they listened.

* * * *

Elara’s eyes reddened as she stared at the sleeping figure on the bed. She wanted to cry because she knew she should. He was dying.

People cried when things like this happened. But nothing came. No matter how hard she tried to force it out, nothing came. She felt ridiculous sitting there trying to convince herself she wasn’t a terrible person.

A normal person would cry. A normal granddaughter would cry. Yet all she could do was sit there, stare at him, and keep talking nonsense.

"Zia asks about you every day," she said quietly. "Her mother doesn’t even know what to tell her anymore. The story about you travelling stopped working months ago. She said that’s the same thing people used to tell her when her dad went away. They kept saying he would come back soon too. But he never did."

Elara lowered her head. "She’s starting to look at people strangely whenever they say someone will come back."

"At her school’s prize giving ceremony two months ago, she won the Peacemaker Award. She got a gift for it too. But she refused to open it. She said she’d wait until you came home so she could open it with you."

Elara paused and bit her lip hard. "Aren’t you surprised she got a Peacemaker Award?"

A small breathless laugh escaped her lips as she recalled the story. "It happened because of a PTA meeting last term. The teachers were exhausted. They kept asking parents for help. The parents were yelling at them and they were yelling back. Everybody was blaming everybody."

Another small laugh escaped her. "While all the adults were busy arguing, Zia climbed onto the stage."

Elara could picture it perfectly.

She looked at all the parents and said, ’My grandpa told me that when big people fight, small people get crushed. So please stop fighting our teachers. They need help. Somebody needs to fix the broken swings. Somebody needs to paint the cafeteria walls because they look scary. And my class teacher needs more money because her baby eats like a dinosaur and she’s always complaining about it.’

A real smile finally appeared on Elara’s face. "Everyone was too shocked to speak and when they thought she was finished and climbing down from the stage, she suddenly ran back up again."

She pointed at the Grade Four teacher and said, ’Please make Mrs. Vence happy again. She always sit in her car during lunch break and cry. It’s so sad.’