Lengths For Love (2 page)

“Are you sure you’re okay with this? Everything that has happened?” I began. When she started to nod, I cut her off. “You know, you don’t have to put a front for me. If you’re afraid, just say so. I’m not going to judge you because of it.”

“Ian, I can’t deal with it. I know you won’t believe me but it’s not because I’m afraid. It’s because I know what will happen.” She shook her head. “I haven’t even started my treatment, but I know I can’t stand it. I’m afraid that it’s the end of the line for me.”

“You’re just getting cold feet right now,” I assured her. In reality, I felt the same pressure she did. “It’s going to be fine. You’ll see. I know it doesn’t sound pleasant at all, but it’ll cure you.”

“Nothing will cure me. Ian, they don’t think I have much of a chance. They say that my cancer spread so far that surviving this long was a miracle!” She rubbed her temples and sat down on her bed. “I’m sorry. I want more than anything for it to go away, but I have to face the truth. I’m not getting better.”

“You’re just saying that!” I shot out. “Come on, Alexis, you don’t know...”

“No, Ian! I mean it! It’s real! There really is no hope for someone like me! None whatsoever!” she exclaimed, flinging “Kiss From the Vine” across the room. It hit the wall and landed on the floor, half-open. “I spent so long thinking everything would be okay. I dreamed that I was going to be fine! I was so sure I could beat this if I tried! Other people have beaten it! I thought I would be like those other people! But it’s not. Nothing’s fine.” She swallowed and repeated, “Nothing’s fine.”

I went over and picked up her book. Just because it was a crap book didn’t mean it deserved this treatment. “Don’t let this get to you, babe. I know it looks hopeless, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep fighting.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She leaned down on her bed and took out one of the many vampire-related magazines she had subscribed to. “I can’t go down like this. I have to try and hold it off, even if I can’t win.” The optimism came back and I saw her smile. “Yeah, I can keep fighting. I don’t know how this will end, but it can’t hurt. At the very least, I can say I did my best.”

“That’s more like it.” I squeezed her shoulder and lay on my stomach to join her. Stroking her dark hair, I added, “I know they made it seem hopeless, but it won’t be. I won’t give up.”

“Then I won’t either.” She leaned in and our foreheads touched. “Thank you for setting me straight, Ian. I’m glad I don’t have to go through this alone.”

“I wouldn’t leave you for a minute,” I promised as we went in for a kiss. “I know you will be fine on your own, but I wouldn’t be. Someone has to be there in case something goes wrong. If your family can’t make it, then at least your boyfriend should. I’ll be there as long as you need me.”

“I knew you would say that,” she murmured. “You amaze me, Ian. You do so many things for someone you’ve loved for only two years.”

“Well, those two years are enough to know that I love you.” I helped her get comfortable in bed. “I think you need some rest. Screaming about it isn’t going to change anything. I hate to lay it out like that, but you know I’m right.”

“I do. And maybe if I have a clear head, I can approach everything with a better perspective,” she said. “It kind of makes me wish I was a vampire.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Oh yeah. No more pain for the rest of my life.”

I knew that wasn’t true, but I decided not to argue. Instead, I kissed her forehead and covered her up. “Try not to think about it. I’ll see you tomorrow night, okay?”

“Yeah, tomorrow night,” she agreed. “I won’t try to depress you.”

“You don’t depress me.” It was true. She never depressed me, but the situation broke my heart. I felt helpless here. I wanted to have the cure, but I didn’t. No one did.

I headed toward the door as she settled into her bed and lay her head on the pillow. “Have a good night, babe.”

“Good night right back at you.”

I turned off the light and left her room, locking the door behind me. Despite calming her down, my nerves were still rattled. I slid to the ground and sat there. It was times like this that I wished her vampire fantasy could come true. It was the first time I wanted them to be real. I wouldn’t care if it made her immortal and helpless during the day. She’d be alive and free of pain, like she wanted.

Walking out of the building, I looked up to where her dorm room was. The lights were out, but I knew that she wasn’t sleeping. With the news that hit her, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she vowed never to sleep again. She wants to be like the vampires in her stories and movies, going through every night without rest. She’d feel like she had to spend every minute.

One more glance. Her room was still dark. I thought for a second about running up the stairs and peeking in, to make sure she was there. Giving up, I headed back to my own dorm for another sleepless night.

I was getting used to those.

From that point on, I visited her whenever I could and stayed as long as possible. She spent most of her time in bed now, so I decided not to do anything big. Whatever vampire-related thing she wanted to do, I would do it without fail. Sometimes all we could afford to do was talk all night. It worked for me. By then, my exams were over and I was ready to help her with anything else.

Yet I didn’t know what was happening with her cancer. I wasn’t sure when she was going to start chemotherapy or if she had even started it. She wasn’t telling me very much about the treatments or the illness. At first, I figured she was just embarrassed by it, but she never felt like bringing it up. Worst of all, I had not heard anything from her family. I had no idea if they even knew she was sick. Who was driving her back and forth from the clinic? Who looked after her at night? Why did no one come around while I was there? To make matters worse, her stress was giving me stress. I would look in the mirror and notice the same skinny black-haired, brown-eyed guy that I had always known. The difference was that he was worn out.

I kept my silence about the whole thing until that night, when we had a date. It was our first date since her exams started. Alexis was feeling well enough to go out. I made my way to her dorm room and found her sitting on the bed again, reading the rest of her book. She was in her pajamas and looked surprised to see me.

“Ian, I had no idea you were coming,” she said.

“Well, of course I’m coming today. You said I could. You ready to go?” I asked.

“It’s a date night, isn’t it? I completely forgot.” She closed her book. “Oh, I’m sorry. I swear I’ll get better at remembering things.”

“Ah, don’t worry about,” I sighed, sitting down with her. “I can wait for you. Is there any place in particular you want to go?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “We should just get pizza and a movie and stay in here. You can always rent ‘Interview With a Vampire’ again.”

“You have the movie, babe. You have every vampire movie ever made.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, you choose something.”

“How about that vampire documentary that you taped some time ago?” I suggested. “We don’t have to rent it and we’ll just get them to deliver the pizza here. We’ll have your favorite: mushrooms and red peppers.”

“Delicious. You know what I love, Ian.”

I ordered the pizza while she popped in the movie. For the next hour, it was just the two of us. We sat and ate in silence, not sure how to break the ice between us. Alexis kept looking up at me like she wanted to say something, but no words came out of her mouth. It was as though she was afraid. I decided to give her a little help and see what I could pull from her.

“You know, I wish you didn’t have to go somewhere else for better treatment,” I said. “I don’t see why they can’t do it here.”

“These doctors are good, but they aren’t the best,” she explained. “At this point, I want the best. I want a chance at living. My parents aren’t upset with me going away. I wish they could be here to help me with this, but it’s impossible at this point. Work, money... all that’s getting in the way. It’s going to cost a lot in terms of medical bills and I can’t stand it. I don’t care if I only get one more year or even six months of life. Heck, I’ll take two more months of living. That’s more than enough for me. But so far, no one can predict that much.”

“So you think that if you go away, someone can tell you?” I felt the pit in my stomach getting larger. I did not like where the conversation was headed.

“Ian, remember what you told me back in the day? That you’d go to any length for love?” she began, picking up her plate and dumping it in the trash.

“Um, yeah. What about it?”

That had been a big mistake on my behalf. Not the question to ask. I knew what Alexis knew—there was no way we were going back to the way we were. Even if Alexis had six months left, it would not feel the same. We would not be able to go everywhere we wanted or do everything we had left to do. I could keep hoping and wishing things would change, but I had hoped and wished she would get better, and that didn’t happen.

“There’s not much you can do,” she said, taking my hand and squeezing it. “I want to have hope, Ian. I’m desperate for anything that can take this cancer out of me. I’ve started my chemo, but it hasn’t done much. Sure, I just started, but I don’t feel like it’s going to help no matter how many times I take it. At least not the treatment here. I’ve got to face the fact that I’m dying. However, it doesn’t mean I’m out of options.”

“Not out of options? You mean there’s a cure?”

“Not exactly. But it will fix what was broken.”

I took a step back when I saw her eyes. I knew that look; she got it whenever she was scheming. That look had never been my best friend. One way or another, I was going to get roped into something I would hate. Still, I was curious. She knew that would get to me and I’d want to know everything. Damn, Alexis. I needed to have less weaknesses for her to manipulate.

“Do you remember,” she began, “what you said to me when I first found out I had cancer? Do you remember the promise you made?”

The promise. Oh God, the promise. Still, I held in my disappointment and nodded. “How can I forget? Those words came from my mouth, right?”

“You said you would do anything for me. Come hell or high water, you’d give me anything I wanted.” She nodded to the magazine on the table. “Bring that over and turn to page fourteen. Look at the ad and tell me what you think.”

I took the magazine and started flipping through it. I found a ton of vampire-related items, from clothes to statues to inappropriate-looking objects before getting to the page she wanted me to see. “I knew this was going to bite me in the ass. So what’s the new vampire thing you want?”

“The Vamporium.”

“The who?” I looked at the ad she was pointing to. There was rather nicely drawn house with the words, AUGUSTIN MANSION WELCOMES ALL written underneath. Then underneath that was the following:

From Here to Eternity, You Will Find Where You Belong

I stared at it and at the numbers and emails to reply to. The place was in Vienna, Austria, which was definitely not next door. The drawing of the house was nice and I guessed that the slogan was catchy, but I had no idea what this had to do with anything. This was Alexis’ last request? She wanted to go to this place in Vienna? Unbelievable. It was much more simple than I expected.

“Sure, babe, I can take you,” I said. “Once you get through with your treatment and I can get through this next semester, we can take a trip to Austria and visit this place. It’s not exactly what I think about when I think of Vienna, but okay. I can pay for the trip myself.”

Alexis chuckled. “I don’t want to visit this place, Ian.”

“Oh? Then why show it to me?” I kept reading the line from the ad. From Here to Eternity, You Will Find Where You Belong. Huh. I had to admit that it caught my eye, so kudos to them for that.

“The Augustin Mansion is also known as the Vamporium,” she explained. “Rumor has it that vampires live there.”

I nodded slowly. “Right. And let me guess, there are werewolves in a place called the Werewolfian here, too?”

She was not amused. “Listen to me. I doubt that anyone would go here if they didn’t believe in vampires, which means they must exist, or something like a vampire exists. There has to be a vampire in here that’s willing to turn people.”

“You really believe that?” Because I did not.

“It’s a shot in the dark, I know. But at this point, that’s all I can afford. I got in touch with the owners and they seemed nice. They can fix what is wrong. And there’s so much wrong with me right now. I’m so sick that I don’t even know when my last day will be. So this is my...”

“Don’t you dare say it.” I put my finger to her lips and she fell silent. “I do not want to hear you talk about how this is your last chance at life.”

“But it is. So that’s where I’m going, Ian. That’s where I’m going to start chemotherapy. And if it turns out that it’s hopeless, then...,” she shrugged, “then I’ll take fate into my own hands.”

I was appalled by this decision. So much of it did not make any sense. She was jumping too far ahead and not thinking any of it through. “You want to go to Vienna to get treatment? Why can’t you do it here?”

“I don’t have faith in very many things,” she sighed. “In fact, I was pretty sure I would die. But then I saw this ad and my hope came back. I asked my doctor and he said it was fine if I believed it would help. As long as I was getting everything done, I would be okay. Of course, I didn’t tell him about the Vamporium.”

“But...” I started to protest.

“Ian, believe me on this. I have taken care of everything. You don’t need to worry about my treatments or the doctors or anything is. I have it all under control.”

I was not convinced. “You sure about that?”

“I know that for a fact. I’m not in the best of shape, Ian. I’m just hoping that I live long enough for the transformation. I could die before then, you know.”

I knew and it scared me, but I didn’t want her to smell my fear. It was a quick decision on my behalf, but I opened my mouth before thinking things through. “I better not hear it while I’m watching you get treatment.”