Breathless by Lurlene McDaniel Page A

in it, muffling a bad cough. “The cancer’s spreading.”
    This news hits me hard. I want to heave. First the amputation and cancer. Then remission andrelapse. Then the spread to his lungs. Now more. I’ve watched him endure every bit of it. “But all that chemo they gave you. It was supposed to help. Why didn’t it help?”
    “Luck of the draw, I guess.”
    “Your mom will find other doctors. She’s a bulldog.”
    He presses the pillow to his face and coughs hard. When the spasm’s over, he says, “I don’t want to fight anymore. Contest is over. I lose. Help me go out.”
    I blink, swallow a knot of emotion. “No, I can’t.”
    He catches my arm. “I want a say-so in how this all ends. I want to decide. I don’t want the cancer deciding for me. My body. My choice.”
    “But you might get better—”
    “I’m not getting better.” He coughs and curses. “Mom’s giving me shots and pills round the clock. Oxycontin, vicodin, morphine—none of it stops the pain.”
    I shake my head. “I can’t do it, bro.”
    “Yes, you can. And I won’t ask you to do anything that makes people think you helped me. I’ll do the deed. I just need your help to do it.”
    I’m dog tired from all day at school and working a full shift. I’ve come over late because I know he’s awake and alone and in pain. Tonight I wish I hadn’t come. “Killing yourself is wrong.”
    “Why? It’s not like I don’t have a good reason.” He sits up. “I’ve researched it all on the Web. There are sites that support a person’s right to choose to die. Doctors do it for terminal patients every day. It just isn’t talked about.”
    “I’m not your doctor.”
    “Mom wouldn’t let him do it anyway. She’s already said as much.”
    I’m reeling. “Why ask me?”
    “Because you’re the one person I can count on.”
    “I don’t kill people.”
    His eyes never leave my face and his voice goes quiet. “If you ran over a dog and it was still alive and suffering, would you help end its suffering?”
    “You’re not a dog. You’re my friend.”
    “Then be a friend. Help me. If you don’t, I’ll find someone who will.”
    I’m cold all over. Really shivering. I know he isn’t bluffing. He means it. “It’s the pain. If they can control your pain—”
    “They can’t. I won’t die on cancer’s timetable.” He’s getting upset. “I’m going to die. Don’t you get that? All I want is to control the timing. Me in the driver’s seat. Me going out my way.”
    My chest feels like it’s being crushed with a ten-ton weight. I think about his parents, about Emily, about how they’ll feel if he does this. “What about your family?”
    “They’ll bury me either way. And don’t worry, I’ll do it in a way so they won’t know I did it. I have a plan.”
    “And what way is that?”
    He coughs hard into his pillow, looks over my shoulder, turns pale.
    I turn and see Emily standing in the doorway wrapped in a pink bathrobe. “What’s going on?” she asks. “It’s one-thirty in the morning. What are you two so worked up about?”

Emily
    I
march into the living room, not one bit self-conscious about being in my robe and pajamas, because the looks on their faces tell me I’ve interrupted something important.
    Travis shakes his head. “Nothing. Guy talk.”
    Cooper won’t look me in the eye. He studies his hands.
    “I don’t believe you,” I say.
    “Believe what you want,” Travis says. “Why are you up?”
    “I heard voices.” Not true. I’m having trouble sleeping. I have bad dreams and wake up feeling scared to death.
    He coughs into the pillow. “You should be in bed,” I say.
    “You’re not the boss of me.”
    An attempt at humor—that’s what I used to say to him when we were kids and he told me what to do. “Want me to get Mom?” I ask softly when his coughing fit’s over.
    He shakes his head. I feel helpless and useless.
    Cooper stands. “I’ll take off.”
    “No, don’t leave,”