Dying of cancer

The clock ticks. Time moves slowly. Nothing happens, he waits. Waits for the end to come.

It has been coming for five or six years. Then he only had one cancer. He had medicine, had to go to the hospital every now and then, but he could still live normally. Drive. Visit his grandchildren.

At Christmas he sat down in a comfortable chair and couldn't get up. A slipped disc caused too much pain. No problem, said the doctors, we'll just fuse it to a neighboring disc. Except the neighboring discs were like sponges. Eaten away by cancer.

His emaciated body is now racked with pain. He gets morpium, to ease the pain, but that causes him to hallucinate. The dose is now three times what it was to start with, and he still hurts.

He gets up to eat at the coffee table, a hospital bed has replaced the dining room table. But he doesn't eat, doesn't drink. He gets weaker every day. He listens to TV, but it doesn't really make sense. Maybe it doesn't anyway. He can't read anything except the large headlines in the tabloid newspaper. He waits for the nurse to come, once in the morning, once in the evening.

The phone rings, his sister calls. No, he's not dead yet. He's waiting. The clock ticks. Time moves slowly.