Jack and I managed to fall asleep quickly. Of course, I felt horrible for saying no to him. I loved him with all my heart, and I really was planning on spending the rest of my life with him, but I knew that marrying him would be wrong. He wasn’t thinking straight and I knew he would regret it later on. Finding out that it was more likely that I would die than survive just took a toll on us. After trying to be strong for so long, he completely broke down. I didn’t blame him, nor judge him. I had had my fair share of mental breakdowns, it wasn’t just me who got affected by this whole situation.

While nothing was awkward between us, I could tell that Jack was still thinking about it. I didn’t know if he was upset or just going over what exactly happened, but he was in thought. Even after taking a shower, he still wasn’t as lively as he usually was. Normal Jack would probably jump around the entire room knowing he was going to go to Disney World. But, no, he wasn’t like that this time. He was sitting on the bed, just staring blankly in front of himself, picking skin off his lips with his calloused fingers. I was honestly worried.

“Jack?” I mumbled quietly after I had folded up my pajamas and put them back into my bag.

He didn’t move an inch, not even realising that I was no longer in the bathroom. It just broke my heart seeing him like this. He didn’t deserve to feel like this just because of me. Even though I loved him and would never do anything on purpose to hurt him, it was still all my fault.

I tried saying his name again, but it still didn’t catch his attention. I carefully climbed on the bed as well, careful not to make it bounce too much, and sat right behind him. His posture stayed the exact same, only to jump slightly as I snaked my arms around his waist and let my arms roam around his chest.

I rested the side of my face on his back, giving him a short innocent kiss on his neck first. “You ok?”

Jack hummed in response, raising his shoulders along, perfectly describing the mood I thought he was in.

“Want to talk about what happened last night?” I continued, secretly hoping he would say yes. I didn’t want him to think I didn’t love him. The reason why I turned him down was far from that.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled somberly, managing to break my heart even more. Just hearing him be so upset because of something I did was making me hurt even more as well.

“Ok, well then I’ll just talk...” I told him. Even though he wasn’t up to it, I knew it was going to be now or never… or at least until one of us had a major mental breakdown again. “So, yesterday was, how do I put it, eventful. First the nurse gave us that pretty bad report, then I somehow managed to convince you crazyass to take me to Disney World. You drove for over seven hours and I just slept most of the time. And when I try to bring up the the thing I wanna talk about, you're suddenly proposing to me. I know I said no, but I didn’t really give you a very elaborate reasoning behind it. So, I guess I’ll explain it a bit more. This has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve always told you that I would never want to get married in my life, and trust me when I say it wasn’t because I don’t love you. Because, frankly, I love you way too much, which was something that once terrified me, but now I know for sure that it’s nothing to be afraid about, because I love you, and there’s nothing I can do about that. It just isn’t the right time to get married now and you’ll agree with me. Not getting married does not mean our love isn't valid and real. We just have too much on our minds right now, and we’ll get married for the wrong reasons. I don’t want to rush into all of that. Now, with what I’ve said, you’ll probably be able to figure out that I never said I didn’t want to marry you at all, just not now. Maybe you will ask me again very far into the future, and maybe I’ll say yes, who knows? But then it has to be for the right reasons.”

I knew saying the far far future might have been a little far fetched. Nobody knew how long I’d live for; it could only be a couple more weeks, but it could also be a couple of years. Maybe they couldn’t treat me anymore, but they often had ways to keep me alive for longer. Plus, I wanted to be with Jack for longer and know it was the right thing to do before I started changing my whole opinion on something so big.

Jack took one of my hands and held it, looking over his shoulder. “Really?”

I nodded and sat up straight so I could look him in the eyes. “Really.”

He turned around so he was no longer sitting, but now kneeling between my legs. Cupping my face, kissing me delicately as he used his other hand to stabilize us while pushing me to lie down on my back. I greedily kissed him back, wrapping my arms around his neck to pull him closer to me. I couldn’t help but grin into the kiss, causing Jack to smile back.

“As much as I’d like to do this, we need to get going,” I whispered, running my fingers through his unstyled and slightly damp hair.

“And you,” he poked my nose, making me scrunch it up, “need to take your meds, missy.”

I groaned as he got off me, sticking my arms up, expecting him to help me up. After chuckling at me, he grabbed me by the wrists and pulled my body up while I barely did anything to help him. He turned to the backpack he had brought along and made a brown bag appear from it. Normally, I would think he would be smuggling booze, but I actually knew all the pill bottles were in there. Reading from a small piece of paper, he started taking out exactly which meds I had been ordered to take that morning. It was painful to say that I only had to take a third of everything given to me, which was only four bottles. Yes, that meant twelve in total--wait, no, there were fourteen, but who was counting? It seemed like I was basically going to be having these as meals.

He filled one of the glasses provided in the room with water, handing it to me while making me hold out my other hand so he could give me the assortment of pills. I didn’t even bother asking him what exactly I was taking, I trusted the doctors to give me stuff that I needed, and I trusted Jack to make sure I actually took the right ones.

“I love you,” I whispered instead of thanking him.

“I love you too,” he grinned before swooping down to capture my lips with his in a quick, yet tender, kiss.

I swallowed the medication one by one, not even daring to try to take more than one of those monstrous capsules at a time. It was absolutely worse that having a needle stuck in you 24/7 for chemo and nausea medication. Some of these things would dissolve in my mouth before I could even reach for the glass of water. The terrible bitter and powdery taste was absolutely the worst. It just inhibited my mouth for the rest of the day, reminding me of how screwed up my health was.

Jack went to the reception to check-out while I got comfortable in the car. I found out that there was a pillow in the back--something Jack had brought to the hospital pretty early on when he realised how painful his neck was every morning--and stole it so I had something to curl around while I tried to catch some more sleep, or at least something to rest my head on.

As soon as Jack entered the car as well and started it up, I stopped him. Picking up his glasses from the dashboard, I put it on his nose, slowly pushing it up. Not only did he look really cute and hot in them, I actually wanted him to be able to see the road properly. I knew for a fact that he was a lot more tired than the day before, and I wasn’t going to risk an accident happening just because his eyesight decided to fail on us.

I, of course, started dozing off not even after we had been in the car for fifteen minutes. It was difficult for me to stay awake for longer periods of time. Seriously, the longest I had been able to do was two hours. I really needed to sleep now if I wanted to be able to spend a whole day at Disney World. It would seriously suck if I couldn’t deal with it all. I just really wanted to go, so maybe my excitement would give me that extra energy boost.

I didn’t even get to fall asleep before my phone started ringing. Jack raised an eyebrow at me while I groaned and grabbed it from the place I had given it in the center console. I saw it was my mom calling and decided to answer, not wanting her to think that something had gone wrong. She was probably just checking up me.

“Hello?” I said, trying to wake myself up so I wouldn’t fall asleep while talking to her.

She replied back in a panicked tone, “Ireland, is everything ok? Did something happen? Did they make you stay longer?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine, I got released yesterday. Why?”

“I came over to your house to visit you as see how you were doing. Also to bring Taco back over, of course, but nobody answered the door. I figured you guys might have been out grocery shopping or something, but when I tried later you still weren’t there. Where are you?”

“Oh, Jack and I are driving to Disney World.”

“What?!”

“Jack and I are--”

“Yeah, I heard you loud and clear. How stupid do you think you are? You can’t do that! You’re not in the right shape to be in a theme park for that long. And driving? There’s no way you can stay in a car for that long! Ireland, it’s a whole day away! You can’t do stuff like this. I swear to god. Jack is so unresponsible. Who does he think he is allowing you to do all that? He has no right to take you after you have just been released from a hospital. Does he even know how dangerous this is? Anything could go wrong! Why would he even think something like this is good for you?”

Jack gave me a worried look as he heard me not talk for a while. I shook my head at him, telling him not to worry. I sighed at my mom’s overprotectiveness, “No, that’s not what happened. I convinced him.”

“Well, he shouldn’t give in to you so quickly!” She snapped, losing her mind.

“If you say so,” I said unemotionally, not caring about whatever she had to say about Jack. She always used to like him so much, so I couldn’t believe she could suddenly change her mind about him.

“You know what? I’m going to call your dad so he can make you hear what I’m saying!”

With that she hung up on me. Well, she was really mad. We never ended a phone conversation just like that. Not like we ever argued over the phone anyway. But we always said that we loved each other before we hung up. This time is was definitely the opposite. It actually left me feeling kid of guilty, while I knew there was nothing for me to feel guilty about. I hadn’t done anything wrong, nor had Jack. My mom was just too quick with her judgement this time, jumping to conclusions without even knowing all the details.

“Everything ok?” Jack finally asked, grabbing my hand as if the phone call had just really hurt me. If anything, however, I was confused rather than sad.

“Umm, yeah, but she might just hate you now,” I told him while I was still trying to figure out what had happened, “Scratch that. She totally does.”

“What, why?” His expression immediately changed from concern to a hint of sadness.

I continued to hold his hand to support him. "Apparently she came over, but we weren’t there, so I told her that we’re going to Disney World. She basically flipped out and blamed you. I didn’t even get to explain that it was completely my idea. But, hey, I’m also not her favorite right now.”

“Oh.”

Before I could make it seem less bad than it actually was, my phone started ringing again. This time it was my dad. I dreaded what was awaiting me and I hesitantly let my thumb hover over the answer button. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just decline his call and act like nothing happened. I had to accept my fate.

Once again, I answered the call with a hello, not sure how I was supposed to react to him calling me right now.

“So, your mother told me what’s going on,” he sighed, and I was completely ready for disappointment, “but I can’t help but say that I completely disagree with her. I know how you’ve always wanted to go there, you always begged me to take you when you were still a child. So, I’m trying to convince her that everything will be fine, but I had to leave her so she could cool down before I actually start. Don’t worry, she’ll be happy again in no time.”

“Thank you, daddy,” I grinned widely, knowing he could probably hear how much the corners of my mouth were curled up.

“I wasn’t done yet. I assumed you and Jack didn’t have a place to stay yet. So, since I used go often for conferences, I managed to get you guys a room at the Four Season hotel at the Disney World Resort. Remember how you always wanted to come with me whenever I had to go there again? Well, you finally get to go.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, bye.”

Jack gave me a quick look, before staring back at the road ahead. “So?”

Before I could reply, I got a text message. It was from my dad, making panic rush through me. Maybe he got into a fight with my mom already. But when I unlocked my phone to check, I saw that he had just given me more details about the hotel Jack and I were staying at. Once again, I told him I love him, adding another thank you. Sometimes it just made me that tiny bit happier that my dad and I also had a great relationship, caring about each other no matter what.

“My mom’s still mad,” I told Jack, putting my phone back where I had originally taken it from, “But dad’s ok with it. He actually got us a hotel to stay at and paid for it; something about it being a super late birthday present for you. So, we get to stay at the Four Seasons hotel for three nights.”

“What? Isn’t that, like, super expensive?”

“It’s my dad, don’t complain. I’m pretty sure he got some discounts though. He’s been way more often than I’d like to admit. Seven year old me definitely threw a couple of temper tantrums just because he wouldn’t take me along.”

Jack chuckled, knowing better than to make me text my dad that we would sort it out ourselves. “Spoiled child much?”

“Umm, excuse me!” I gasped, bringing a hand up to cover my heart as if he had just really hurt me, “I’ll have you know that I’ve never been to Disney World!”

“And we’re going to change that now.” Jack brought my hand to his lips, giving it one careful kiss.

Notes

I keep thinking this story is almost going to be over and that I'll be able to start the sequel soon, but I just keep writing more and more. Some time skips will be needed to be put in place....
Anyway, no hints about the sequel other than that you shouldn't get your hopes up. Don't take this as Ireland surviving, because it seriously won't be all good and happy, just wait for it. Would you guys going to read it no matter what happens? (I secretly hope so because I've already planned out the whole beginning and the end, not what\s in between yet. I hope to make sure it won't be as long as this instalment).