Chapter 8 – Inevitable
Two months had passed like sand through fingers.
Summer had slipped in quietly, with longer days and warmer breezes. Trees on campus had become fuller, their leaves rustling overhead as students walked beneath them. Cafés overflowed onto sidewalks. The sun lingered later and later each night, golden and constant.
College had, to his surprise, gone well.
He had found a rhythm—morning train, classes, lunch on a bench or with friends, library study sessions, and back to his apartment as the sun began to set. Accounting was not exciting, but it was satisfying in a way he hadn't anticipated. The reasonableness of it was a comfort. Debits and credits and ledgers—it all made sense.
He had also made some friends.
Small exchanges had developed over time. Study groups after class, jokes shared before lectures, and the occasional walk back in the direction of the station together. There was familiarity in the routine. Charming faces and voices that did not require too much, but which gave just enough.
One of them—a square-glasses-wearing tall girl with a dry, sarcastic humor—had asked him to meet her at a café last week to study. They had sat across from one another with open books and iced coffees, exchanging quiet jabs about their professor's awful slides. It had been... normal. Maybe even pleasant.
But beneath the quiet pace of his days, something else had been hiding.
The headaches had begun in the first month. Mild at first—tiny throbs of pressure behind his eyes or at the back of his skull. He'd attributed it to getting used to his schedule, or looking at screens for too long.
But they didn't abate.
In the second month, he started taking painkillers off the shelf. They numbed the pain sufficiently to make it through classes and conversations. He never let it show, never mentioned it. What would he even say? "My head hurts, but not enough to sound serious"?
Nevertheless, after six weeks of silent pain, a thought had started to reverberate more loudly in the back of his mind.
He visited a doctor.
It had been a subdued visit—standard questions, gentle knocking of the knees, a flashlight into the eyes. The doctor had nodded, finally recommending an MRI. "Just to be sure," he'd said. "Could be nothing."
That had been a week before.
The MRI itself had been dull, chilly and slightly claustrophobic. He hadn't informed anyone. Not his friends. Not his grandparents. It wasn't real enough yet to say out loud.
The test results were due tomorrow.
It was an ordinary day, and he came home from class as he always did. His backpack was unusually heavy, the straps cutting into his shoulder. The sun was already lower in the west, casting bright yellow shafts through train windows during his commute.
His apartment greeted him with emptiness.
He set his bag on the ground beside the table and filled himself a glass of water. The windows were open already, the early summer air drifting in—a warm breeze, with a little dryness to it. In another universe, he would have taken a walk.
Instead, he sat and opened his book on accounting.
He gazed at the page.
He blinked.
And then, suddenly, the words appeared to run together—numbers and symbols curving into one another. A burst of pressure throbbed in his head, quick and stabbing. He let the pen fall from his hand and laid a palm against his temple, blinking furiously.
The pain lasted only a few seconds. Or so he believed.
He attempted to rise, but the floor had a subtle tilt under him. His sight dimmed at the periphery.
He hardly had time to catch himself when—
Darkness.
He had no idea how long he was out. A minute? Ten?
When he woke up, he was on the floor next to the table. The room was dark—sunlight just clinging on by the window. His water glass had spilled onto the floorboards next to him. His temple pounded, his breathing shallow.
He didn't move for a while.
He eventually hauled himself up against the wall. The world was far away, muted, like he was under water.
He looked at the window.
Tomorrow, the MRI report would arrive.
He leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes.
He had no idea what they would tell him. He had no idea what lay ahead.
But tonight, he simply needed to breathe.
(End of Chapter)