“Yes,” the doctor answered, “less alive. You should talk this over with your family.”
Deirdre was ready to support either decision, treatment or no treatment. She was like that, a partner and ally to the very end. She went with Jared to the cancer care center at the hospital, held his hand as he waited for the treatments, and kept the house running as he withered. It made Jared love her all the more. But as nice as Deirdre’s support was, it wasn’t especially helpful for making decisions. Jared needed someone to tell him what to do.
Ethan, the man from the television studio, seemed to think continuing the radiation was a good idea. “If I were in your shoes, I’d want every second I could have with my kids. But it’s your choice, Jared.”
Jared didn’t know why Ethan was so interested in his health—he didn’t even remember telling Ethan about his dilemma—but thought it was nice that the man cared. Besides, it was the only real advice Jared was getting, so he took it.
The treatments continued.
***
Glio was under assault. Searing, blinding streams of fire were slicing through him like Darth Vader’s lightsaber through Luke Skywalker’s arm. That’s just what it feels like, Glio thought, like I’m being attacked with a lightsaber.
With tendrils too numerous to count and stretching simultaneously into different parts of Jared’s brain, Glio had grown large. The lightsaber was managing to cut off small pieces, each one shriveling and dying as it was severed from the central tumor.
The radiation was making the pathways through Jared’s memories feel like an all-night rave gone wrong. Flashing strobes and thundering sounds restricted Glio’s movements; he could hardly get from one neuron to the next without losing his way. And it wasn’t just the focused blast of ionized electrons that were causing distress; Jared Stone’s entire immune system was attempting to wage war against the invader, his corporeal being was at DEFCON 1.
Jared’s brain, Glio realized, was fighting back.
Glio was stunned enough to pause, but only for a second. Jared’s brain had made the classic mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Steeling his resolve, Glio bared his metaphorical fangs and tore through Jared’s gray matter, unleashing a force more terrifying than hurricanes, earthquakes, or tornadoes, more terrifying than anything in heaven or on Earth. He didn’t know or care that he made his host fall over. The only thing he could do was satisfy his appetite.
And so he did.
***
“A reality series?” Hazel asked the question into the headset tethered to her computer. She had asked for Bluetooth- enabled wireless headphones for her birthday, but her parents, looking for any possible way to discourage the hours Hazel spent playing online games, bought her a wristwatch instead. Hazel, after pretending to admire the delicate chrome braiding on the band, buried it in her sock drawer the minute she was alone in her bedroom, forgetting it was there a few days later.
“Yes, a reality show,” the voice came back through her headphones. Hazel, or rather her character, Guinevere the Glad, was standing on the edge of a sparsely wooded forest deep in the heart of Azeroth. She was talking with a fellow guild member, Kirkadelic, a level fifty-two Night Elf Rogue. “It’s called Life and Death, and it airs next week.”
Despite her stomach-turning worry, the revelation of Hazel’s true identity had turned out to be a nonevent in the World of Warcraft. Three other guild members even drew inspiration from Hazel and confessed their own true identities. In one fell swoop, a policeman became a retired schoolteacher, a sommelier became a sanitation worker, and a nineteen-year-old female college student studying meteorology became an unemployed thirty-seven-year-old man.
“So, what,” Hazel asked, sounding more perturbed than she wanted to, “we sit at home and watch Jared die while we eat Doritos and drink Coca-Cola?”
“Hey, don’t kill the messenger,” Kirk answered, “but yeah, something like that. I’m sure that’s who’s sponsoring it. ‘Enjoy a refreshing Coca-Cola as you watch a fellow human being succumb to the joy that is brain cancer.’ ”
“Ugh. I think I need to go lie down. I’m going to log off for a while.”
“You mean people play this game sitting up?” Kirk asked the question just as Hazel clicked “quit” and whooshed out of the game. She took her headphones off and flopped down on her bed.
“No way am I going to watch that show,” Hazel said with conviction to her ceiling fan. Both Hazel and the ceiling fan knew it was a lie. She was like a drug addict swearing off her next dose. It never worked. And for reasons she couldn’t understand, Jared Stone had become Hazel’s drug.