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Clarke hated hospitals.
The rooms always smelled like medicine and disinfectant, and the food was shit. She’d argued with the nurse who was in that day, Miller—a young, tall and lanky kid with a beanie that he wore almost everywhere and lived on her same apartment floor—that they should bring up their game with the lack of seasoning in the food. Miller shrugged every time, humoring her and slipped her candy bars and other sweets between chemo rounds.
She’d gotten the flu in the middle of October, and was out of school for a week with her face stuck in a white bucket, puking her guts for a solid three days. She lost her appetite, and her weight dropped like a stone. Her mother tried to force something into her, resolving to warm broth, but whatever went in came out almost immediately.
Then, she’d woken up in the middle of the night with blood running down her chin, and Abby had rushed her to the emergency room.
Because of her doctor status in the hospital, Clarke was able to go right in, and she could remember the nurses in the ward staring at her with pity as her mother carried her in. She’d buried her face into Abby’s shoulder and cried.
Clarke had never taken well to being pitied. At her school, lots of people gave her sympathy about her dad’s death (which had happened nearly three years ago), and she’d shrugged it off, giving them the typical “I’m fine”, but she wasn’t. She didn’t want someone to tell her how badly they felt, because that wouldn’t change anything. She just wanted someone to understand.
But later, when she woke up with a host of tubes sticking into her from her arm, her nose, and other unmentionable places and a burning sensation crawling across her chest, Abby was sitting on a chair at the side of her bed, and she looked like she’d been crying.
Clarke didn’t catch much of what she was saying because of all the painkillers they’d hopped her up on, but she did remember her mother saying something about cancer and surgery and we removed the tumor, which chilled her to the bone and cut right through the daze of morphine in her system, and she’d started to cry.
She’d sobbed I want Dad back, and Abby had replied with a choked I know and gathered her up in her arms.
Clarke cried harder.
…
She was discharged from the hospital in a week, and she was back to school two days afterwards without missing a beat. Everything had gone back to normal, and none of her friends suspected a thing, and all she got were soft whispers of we’ve missed you, Clarke, and it’s good to have you back, Clarke.
…
The second time was when she was twenty-five.
She’d had a persistent cough that she couldn’t seem to make go away, and whenever she walked up the stairs to get to her apartment, she’d been out of breath. She’d shrugged it off, complaining that she had never been good at physical activities and that’s why she was an artist, but some of her friends saw right through her facade.
Especially her roommate, Raven Reyes.
Raven was nothing short of a loose cannon. She was an engineering student who was getting her PhD in mechanical engineering, and she always had metal parts for the robots she was building cast through the apartment. Clarke had once found a giant metal contraption in the bathroom where the toilet plunger was supposed to be, to which Raven had claimed “would unclog the toilet better than anything else!”
Needless to say, they had had to pay for a new toilet, and Raven had promised to no longer try and improve their household appliances.
Their floor of the apartment building was holding all the crazies, Clarke would say.
There was Jasper and Monty, two boys around their age who were attending the university to get their degrees in some kind of science, and their room always smelled like weed and chocolate brownies at the end of the hall.
(They’d left a pack of them at Clarke’s door, and Raven had thrown them out instantly.)
Then, there was Monroe and Harper, who were baristas at the Starbucks down the street and lived next door to them. They were relatively kind, and always gave Raven free shots in her coffee (Clarke found out from when Raven was up until five in the morning, growling at the blueprint of a robot set out in front of her, her eyes blown wide with caffeine and sleep deprivation).
On the other side of Clarke and Raven’s room was a triad of boys: Miller, Murphy, and Bellamy. Clarke had only seen Murphy and Miller, but when she’d questioned them about their elusive third roommate at Clarke and Raven’s moving-in party, Miller had shrugged. “He works weird hours” was the only explanation Clarke could weasel out of him, and she dropped it.
It was a particularly bad night, when Clarke just couldn’t seem to get her breath back, that Raven approached her.
“Do you have a history of cancer, Clarke?”
Clarke had jumped a little, placing her book on her lap and looking surprised at Raven. “Why do you need to know?” she asked, and Raven sat down on the side of her bed.
She looked worried, and Clarke had never seen Raven look worried before in her life.
“Well, I Googled your symptoms, and I’ve started to get worried, Clarke. It just says that you might have signs of lung cancer,” Raven explained, looking down at her hands as she played with the hem of her tank top.
“Raven, just because I have a cough doesn’t mean--”
“Clarke, I care about you, okay? Just...go get checked in, for me?”
“Fine. Whatever.”
(She didn’t.)
…
After a few weeks, her cough seemed to subside, and Clarke didn’t think much of it. She’d felt fine coming up and down the stairs, and she hadn’t dissolved into a hacking fit in the middle of her art tours at the local museum or her classes.
Because of that, she never saw it coming.
One night after class had run late, she was climbing the stairs, trying to get her breath back after each step, but nothing was working. It was a Thursday, which meant Raven had night class, so she wouldn’t be home for another hour or so. Which meant that if she had a heart attack or something, she would die alone.
That freaked Clarke out.
As she got to the top of the stairs, she threw up and collapsed onto the ground and freaked out even more.
She heard someone swear in front of her, and she raised her fingers to her lips, coming back with her nails wet with blood. Her heart began to race, and she started shaking as she looked up at where the voice had come from.
It was a man, who was so tall that Clarke had to raise her face fully to see his. He had lots and lots of freckles, and his big brown eyes were wide and worried, and he swore as he knelt down next to her, cupping his warm hand to her cheek as he raked his eyes across her shuddering body.
“Oh, God, what do I do? Are you okay?” he asked hurriedly, kneeling down next to her. Clarke chuckled and rolled her eyes, trying to not puke again. “Help,” she rasped, and he laid a hand on his shoulders as she felt more blood dribble down her chin, and her vision was getting blurry.
She’d only felt like this once before, when she was fifteen all those years ago.
And that time, it had been cancer.
“Okay, you’re going to be okay” he reassured her, stroking her hair. Clarke reached out, grabbing his hand and squeezing it, looking deep into his eyes. “Please don’t take me to the hospital,” she whispered, and his eyes grew even wider, before narrowing to slits.
“You just puked blood all over the fucking wall, and you don’t want me to take you to the hospital? Bullshit,” he hissed, scooping her up wordlessly and ignoring Clarke’s weak groan of protest.
Clarke barely registered what he was saying other than an occasional you’re gonna be fine as she felt herself beginning to wheeze as he ran down the stairs and out to his car.
The last thing Clarke felt was the leather of the back seat and the bump of the car as it growled to life, and she clutched her chest and passed out.
…
Fast-forward two months later, and she is stuck in a hospital bed, latched up to all sorts of tubes and machines with no hair left on her head and a blue bandanna wrapped over it.
It was cancer, the doctor had said. It was another tumor that had grown from the one she’d had when she was younger, and had returned with full force. He’d given her the news with a sad smile on his face, and left as she stared at the blank blue wall next to her.
She knew why he looked sad. She knew what lung cancer was and what it meant.
She was going to die.
…
After the diagnosis, she’d called up Raven, who had brought her almost all of her stuff from home.
“I’ve got your sketchbook, a few books that I thought you’d want to read, a charger, your laptop and your tablet,” Raven listed off, dropping each item onto the small table in her room. Clarke rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to do this, Raven,” she rasped around the tube stuck in her nose, and her friend had given her the scariest look in the world.
“Well, I am. I just want you to be comfortable,” she whispered, sitting down in a chair and holding her hand to her forehead, staring at her knees.
Clarke reached out and took Raven’s hand, rubbing her thumb softly across her skin. “Raven, I-” she began, but Raven stood up abruptly, walking to the other side of the room with tears in her eyes.
“Clarke, I just...I don’t want to lose you, okay? You’re the only person that understands me, the only person who will put up with my shitty sleep cycle and eating habits and finding pieces of metal scattered around the house!” Raven explained, and Clarke sucked her bottom lip in between her teeth.
“Raven...you know I’m not going to--”
“Shut up, Griffin. Don’t you dare say it. You’re going to live.”
And with that, Raven sat down heavily in the chair again and began to cry as Clarke held her friend’s head to her chest, running her fingers through her knotted hair.
Clarke had never seen Raven Reyes cry, and it terrified her.
Everything seemed to terrify her now.
…
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Princess.”
Clarke jumped and let out a small squeak, blinking her eyes and looking over at the table. Raven was gone, and in her place was a very attractive guy with freckles across his cheeks and wild curly black hair.
It was the guy who’d driven her to the hospital.
“Oh. Hi,” Clarke squeaked out, and he chuckled, moving his chair next to her bed. “That was quite a scare you gave me in the apartment building,” he said, and his voice was so low it rumbled deep in Clarke’s chest, making her shiver.
“Yeah, uh...thanks, I guess? I probably freaked you out, didn’t I?” she asked, blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. He let out a chuckle and shrugged. “You look better without blood all over your face, anyway,” he said.
“I’m sure a lot of people look better without blowing bloody chunks across an expensive apartment floor.”
“But you’re much cuter without blood all over your face.”
Clarke stopped abruptly, her eyes widening as she looked at the man’s face, who must have realized what he just said and leaned back in his chair. “Oh, God, was that too forward?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck.
“No, it wasn’t. You’re fine,” Clarke stammered, a small smile coming to rest on her lips.
He smiled back, and got up to leave, pausing at the door.
“I’m Bellamy, by the way. Bellamy Blake.”
…
Clarke eagerly told Raven who had shown up in her room, and she’d burst out laughing.
“Wow, Clarke, way to impress the elusive neighbor by drooling blood all over him,” she managed to get out before doubling over in laughter again, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Clarke made a move to smack her friend, but was out of reach, so she settled for pouting.
Raven immediately apologized, and settled down next to Clarke, stifling her laughter. “I don’t get what’s so funny,” Clarke mumbled, reaching for her water and taking a sip.
“Was he hot?”
Water sprayed everywhere out of Clarke’s mouth, and she coughed, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve and looking incredulously at Raven. “W-What?” she sputtered, and Raven smirked.
“Was. He. Hot? I mean, according to your waterspout episode, I think I’ve got my answer,” she explained, winking at Clarke and getting up.
“Yes. He was,” Clarke admitted, and Raven broke into a sickly white smile. “Wow, Griffin, you meet a hot guy and you’re probably going to die,” she joked, and Clarke rolled her eyes, rubbing at the IV stuck into her forearm. “Shut up,” she said through a smile, and Raven flounced out of the room, humming “Here Comes the Bride”.
…
Abby had visited her the day after.
She’d brought cupcakes, and Clarke had eagerly bit into one as her mother shared her stories about working at the hospital across town. “Clarke, it’s like working with amateurs,” she had groaned, and Clarke had to stifle a laugh as her mother droned on about how one of her co-workers had forgotten what an IV was, and another kept losing scalpels every other day, presumably throwing them away (“it’s like she forgot she could actually clean them!”).
Then, Clarke had to mention Bellamy.
She’d taken a small sip of her water after her third cupcake (which had forced Abby to scold her about eating too much sugar and confiscate the wonderful pastries), and she’d mentioned that the man who had found her in the apartment building.
Abby was silent for a moment, carefully reading Clarke’s face.
“Clarke, I…I don’t think seeing this man will make you feel better,” she started, and Clarke slammed her water bottle down on the side table, feeling a wave of anger smash through her body.
“What, because it’s like I have an expiration date? I can’t be happy while I’m still alive because soon enough, it’ll hurt him beyond belief?” Clarke snarled, and Abby reached out towards her daughter, only to be swatted away. She sat back in her chair, looking down at her hands.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she whispered, and Clarke rolled her eyes.
“Mom, I think I get it perfectly well. You don’t want me and Bellamy together, because that means that I’ll leave him alone in this world. But honestly, I think he’s fine with that,” Clarke explained, and Abby sighed.
“Do you love him?”
That made Clarke settle back into her bed.
Did she love Bellamy? He’d only been in a few times, but she felt like she’d known him a lifetime. The second time, he’d brought flowers to “lighten up the room”, and the third time, he’d snuck in a box of Ghirardelli chocolate bars because “you said the food was bland as hell”. They’d eaten them all, and hid the wrappers in the sides of Clarke’s bed, and Miller (who’d been assigned as Clarke permanent nurse) had cleaned it up without a fuss.
And they’d gotten into the routine where Bellamy brought her snacks and she drew him on her tablet as he read one of the books he’d brought, which was mostly history. She never let him forget it, either.
Clarke hadn’t known Bellamy long but it was one of those things where they just clicked.
Clarke had talked to Bellamy about her dad, who had died in a car accident when she was thirteen (something she hadn’t mentioned to anyone excluding her mother), and Bellamy told her all about his mother, Aurora, who died of lung cancer when Bellamy was eighteen.
He told her about his sister, Octavia, who he had to fight for custody and eventually got it, and was working odd jobs to bring in enough income to get her into college (hence the weird hours he’d arrive back to the apartment complex). Clarke felt like she could tell Bellamy almost anything.
“Yes. I do.”
Abby stood up and left without another word, and Clarke covered her face in her hands. “Fuck,” she breathed as the door closed with a snap, and she started to cry.
Because she’d never get a life with Bellamy.
She’d never get to kiss him, or see him at the altar, or have kids with him, or grow old with him. She was going to die, at twenty-five with a shitty art job in the middle of the city and with her life going positively nowhere, and nobody would remember her. She tugged at what was left of her hair, and more came off in her hands.
“Fuck,” she sobbed again.
…
Bellamy stopped by the next day, and Clarke refused to see him.
“Get out,” she moaned from her mountain of pillows she had surrounded herself with. She had had a really bad night after a rough round of chemo, and Miller had had to come in and help her with her IV and her nasal tube, since she started choking because no air was getting into her lungs.
She heard him sit down, and she looked up blearily. He was soaking from the rain outside, and it sprayed everywhere as he ruffled his fingers through it. He looked tired, but his lips quirked up into a smile as she slammed her head back into the pillow.
“I heard you had a rough night,” he said softly, and Clarke felt him take her hand in his own, intertwining their fingers.
“Well, when your oxygen depletes by over sixty percent and your chemo session is stronger than normal, your night does get a little rough,” she said, her voice muffled from speaking through the pillow. She heard Bellamy let out a low chuckle, and she couldn’t help but laugh at her statement as she sat up again.
Then, her face fell as she looked down at their hands.
She could see Bellamy looking at her in the corner of her eye, concern lining his face. “You okay, Princess?” he asked, and Clarke felt tears prick her eyes.
“Why do you waste your time on me?” she asked, her voice shaky as she looked up and met his gaze.
He scooted closer, rubbing his thumb across her skin. “What?” he asked, truly perplexed, and Clarke sniffled.
“Well, I didn’t know why you wanted to be invested in an expiration date,” she explained hoarsely, and she froze as Bellamy raised his hand to her face, cupping her cheek.
“Clarke, you don’t have an expiration date. Nobody does. What matters is what you do with the time that is given to you. And if that means that I might lose the one girl I love, then so be it.”
Clarke’s eyes widened to saucers.
“Y-You love me?” she stammered as Bellamy drew closer, their noses bumping against each other, and he rolled his eyes. “I don’t bring Ghirardelli chocolate bars to just anyone,” he teased, and Clarke took both her hands and wound them in his shirt.
“Just kiss me,” she whispered, and he did.
He tasted like rain and spearmint toothpaste, and it was the best kiss Clarke had ever had in her life.
…
Not long after Bellamy kissed her for the first time, Clarke threw up again.
Miller had snuck Bellamy in after visiting hours (since he didn’t have to work tonight for once), and he was asleep, his cheek pressed against her leg underneath the covers, a soft snore slipping out of his mouth. Clarke had tangled her fingers into his unruly curls and settled back to sleep.
Suddenly, she felt a burn in her chest.
She sat up, rubbing her chest with her free hand, and her eyes widened in horror as she felt her stomach start to boil.
“Bellamy,” she croaked, and he jolted up, blinking his eyes just in time to watch her spew chunks of blood all over the sheets.
“Oh my God!” he shrieked, jumping away from the bed and hitting the call button immediately. Clarke was shaking, blood dribbling down her chin and staining her blue shift a light pink as she looked over at Bellamy.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” she whispered, and violently heaved again as Miller rushed in.
“Fuck,” Miller breathed, looking around the room for a gurney and seeing none. Bellamy looked panicked, and Clarke screwed her eyes shut, wrapping her hands around her chest, trying her best to not vomit again as he started yelling at Miller.
“God, she was fine, and then she threw up and blood was everywhere, Miller, and I’m scared as hell!” he yelled, and Miller looked over at Clarke.
“Does your chest hurt?” he asked, and Clarke was about to shake her head when she cried out and lurched forward, gritting her teeth.
It felt like somebody had suddenly thrust a knife into her chest and was twisting it around, and she let out a scream.
Clarke felt Bellamy pick her up, and she took his hand in hers as she felt Bellamy move forward, running down the hallway, presumably after Miller after he mentioned something about emergency room.
“I’m getting blood on your shirt,” she slurred, rubbing at the bloodstain on his white shirt and peering up at him through her eyelashes. She caught his soft brown gaze as a small, worried smile tugged at his lips.
“Wouldn’t be the first time, Griffin,” he whispered jokingly, and Clarke let out a small laugh, which turned into a strangled groan from her chest and the blood bubbling in the back of her throat.
She heard a squeal of wheels, and she was back on soft sheets again with another IV being forced into her arm. She squeezed Bellamy’s hand and gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the blinding white pain in her chest.
“May we meet again,” she whispered.
She barely caught the may we meet again from Bellamy’s lips before she passed out.
…
Clarke woke up to white.
At first, she didn’t open her eyes. The pain in her chest was gone, and she didn’t feel the wetness of the blood on her shirt. She wiggled her fingers, and they moved, so she still had her arms. Her legs were there as well, and that’s when she felt it was safe enough to sit up and open her eyes.
Wherever she was, they liked white.
She couldn’t tell the floor from the ceiling, and when she looked down, she was still dressed in her blue hospital gown. The blood was gone, and the material was softer than it had been before, when it had scratched against her skin and made her itchy.
She stood up, testing her legs, and looked up to meet the eyes of Jake Griffin.
“Dad?” she squeaked, and Jake opens his arms, his eyes crinkling as she jumps into them, pushing her nose into his shoulder and wrapping her arms tightly around him. She felt him bring her close, practically crushing her in his grip before they simultaneously let go, Clarke stepping away first.
“You’re not real, are you?” she asked, and Jake’s face falls. “Well, it’s complicated,” he said, and Clarke drops it.
“So, where am I?” she asked instead, and Jake gestures around him. “In between, I guess. You can either choose to move on, or go back,” he said simply, and Clarke furrows her eyebrows. “Is this like some Harry Potter shit going on here?” she questioned, and Jake shrugged.
“In a biblical sense.”
“That means absolutely nothing.”
Jake threw back his head and laughed, and Clarke felt a tug in her heart. “I miss you,” she blurted out, and Jake nodded, looking at her with downcast eyes. “I do too, kiddo,” he said,moving forward and placing his hands on her shoulders.
They sat down on the floor, Clarke crisscrossed and Jake with his legs splayed out in front of him. They sat in a comfortable silence for a few moments, and then a thought appeared to Clarke.
“Do you think I should go back?” she asked.
Jake was quiet for a moment before rubbing the back of his neck with his hand and sighing.
“Let’s just say that I had the same choice you do now, and I didn’t. And I regret it every day of my life,” he answered, and Clarke looked down at her bare feet. Would she want to leave Bellamy, all alone in that hospital with nobody except for Octavia? Would she want to break his heart?
“I’m gonna go back,” she said, and Jake smiled at her. “I knew you would. You were always your mother’s daughter,” he said, and brought her in for another soul-crushing hug. “I’ll see you later,” he whispered, and Clarke let a few tears slide as she felt him back away and the white room to fade to black, and she was running, listening to someone calling her name.
“Clarke!”
…
“Come back to me.”
Clarke felt a warmth in her hand, and she began to cough as she realized there was a tube hanging down her throat, rubbing against her esophagus and causing her to start choking.
The warmth went away, and the tube did soon after, and Clarke opened her eyes.
And there was Bellamy.
He looked like he’d been crying, since his face was blotchy and his eyes were rimmed with red. He was pale, and there were dark bags underneath his eyes. Clarke rubbed her eyes and smiled sheepishly, reaching for him.
He slammed into her and wrapped his arms around her tightly as she weakly whispered his name into his shirt.
“Bellamy.”
He pulled slightly away, planting a long kiss on her lips as she wove her fingers into his hair. “You’re okay,” she whispered against his lips, and he pulled away just enough so that their foreheads were touching, a wide smile on his lips. “Says the one who had surgery and was out for four days,” he scoffed, and Clarke chuckled, ignoring the four days part completely--she’d had a tumor, for Christ's sake, she was planning on sleeping for two damn weeks--relieved that there wasn’t a pain in her chest anymore.
“Am I going to be okay?” she asked suddenly, and Bellamy pulled up a plastic chair, smiling even wider.
“Yeah, you’re gonna be okay. They were able to operate on you and clear out the blood, and they ended up removing the tumor. It had attached to your lung, and they went through and took it out, and there wasn’t anything left of it when the surgery was over,” Bellamy explained, reaching over and taking her hand in his own.
“You’re going to live.”
Clarke burst into tears.
…
Raven cried when Clarke told her she was cancer-free.
“Oh my God, you’re okay!” she screamed as she ran down the hallway and slammed into Clarke, knocking her clean off of her feet and scooping her up into a tight hug.
Clarke hugged her back, and caught Bellamy’s awkward look out of the corner of his eye.
Raven let go and gave Bellamy a once-over before returning to Clarke.
“Nice pick, Griffin. He’s hot. Raven Reyes, mechanical engineering,” Raven stated, and Clarke choked as she held her hand out to Bellamy, who graciously shook it. “Bellamy Blake, the guy who always seems to get Clarke’s blood all over his nice shirts,” he answered back, and was rewarded with a smack in the arm from Clarke and had Raven bent double in tears laughing.
And later, when Clarke was back home and her and Bellamy were curled up in their bed together—their bed, Clarke thought—she ran her fingers through his hair as they stared at each other.
“God, you’re more beautiful without blood dripping down your chin,” he whispered, and Clarke was tempted to smack him.
“Are you ever going to let that go?”
“Nope. Never.”
Clarke kissed him to shut him up.
“I’m just happy you’re alive, honestly,” he whispered against her lips, moving until he was on top of her with his knees on either side of her chest and his hands cupping her cheeks.
Clarke ran her nails across his back and down his chest, feeling satisfied when Bellamy shivered.
“Me too.”
...
And she did.