[WP] When I reached out for her, the reaper took my hand instead.

I've been sick for about six months now. Well, longer than that, but I only found out about six months ago that I was sick. I am sick, I should say.

I collapsed six months back as I was taking a walk around the block. I used to be a runner. I loved it, really. I would go out and run every single day, sometimes twice a day. It felt so great to just walk out the door, take off and take in the sights and the smells with no particular route or path to take. I ran because it cleared my head, but since I'm older now, the running had to become walking. It was essentially the same thing, I just wouldn't be moving as quickly.

Anyway, I collapsed on one of my walks. I was about two miles from my home and someone walking out to get their mail saw me. Thank God, too. He called 9-1-1, they called my wife and then I woke up at the hospital.

Turns out I'm terminally ill. Lung cancer. Lung cancer which metastasized through the lymph nodes, which, as the doctor explained to me, is like a monorail at an amusement park. It brought all these conniving little cancer cells to different organs, tainting the immaculate and marring my health.

"You've got no more than eight months, John."

I just laid there, motionless and speechless. My wife grabbed my hand and kissed it, then asked the doctor to leave. He obliged. She tried to talk to me about it, but I wasn't ready.

I'm still not ready to talk about it. It's weird though, considering my wife and I talked about everything in our marriage. We were very open with each other. She talked to me about her little act of indiscretion and I told her that I was disappointed in her, but I was ultimately willing to move past it. I told her that I wanted children and she agreed, but when it turned out that I was sterile, she told me she loved me just the same. When she told me I needed to quit smoking and I told her that she didn't need to worry about such trivial things because I was a runner, she told me that I was a horse's ass and that it was all going to catch up to me one day.

I don't know if I have ever seen someone so disappointed in being right.

Now with tubes running out of my nose into green tanks with warning labels, tubes running from an IV bag into my vein, another tube that is connected to a morphine drip and even a tube up my pecker so that I don't have to worry about peeing (different tubes, thankfully), I only wish that I had more time.

Because I was running out. The gears in my biological clock were withered, fractured, rusted and not turning as smoothly as they did ten years ago, five years ago, or even ten months ago. No. The gears seem to have grown more teeth now.

I can feel my chest getting tighter and my muscles getting weaker. I should assume that this is painful, but the morphine drip dancing in the corner of my eye has numbed me considerably and I feel comforted, almost at peace. I wonder if that is why people tell others that death is a peaceful experience.

My wife hasn't left my side at all, sitting next to my monitor, reading her book through the faint glow of my heart rate, seemed so tired.

I could feel myself fading, so I tried calling for her, but my throat felt like it was full of dust. I tried to sit up, but my back felt like it was made of plywood.

I tried to reach for her and grab her hand one last time. One last time before I left her. But when I reached out for her, the reaper took my hand instead.

"Please," I begged, with a throat no longer full of dust, "Just one last time."

"It doesn't work like that, John."

The reaper, draped in a black cloak, has a simple and serene way about it. It doesn't seem cold or callus and it doesn't carry around that sickle.

"I think you're misrepresented in the mortal world, you know. You don't seem all that bad."

It just nodded. That's when I realized that the morphine wasn't what was comforting me in the end.

/r/WritingPrompts Thread