Leeron

He was in a coma for three days.

Those three days were the longest, most terrifying days of our lives. I remember sitting in that hospital room, the constant *beep... beep... beep...* of the machines making me feel like I was losing my mind. His father didn't sleep at all. He just paced the floor, staring at our boy, looking so small under those white hospital sheets.

When Leeron finally opened his eyes, we thought the nightmare was over. He smiled at us. He asked for water. He complained about his head hurting, but he was alive. We thought we had won.

Then the doctor called us into his private office.

I remember how cold that room felt. The doctor didn't look us in the eye at first. He just looked at Leeron's charts, adjusted his glasses, and sighed.

"He's awake," the doctor said, his voice flat and heavy. "But the damage to his brain from the trauma is progressive. It's an aggressive condition. He will seem normal for a while, but his cognitive functions, his memory... it’s going to start failing. Slowly at first. Then all at once. And there's nothing we can do to stop it."

I felt the air leave my lungs. "What do you mean?" I asked, grabbing my husband's arm so hard my nails dug through his shirt. "He remembers us. He knows his name. He's fine!"

"For now," the doctor said. "But he will start forgetting things. Small details first. Then whole months. Eventually—"

We had a choice to make by his bedside that evening.

Do we tell our nineteen-year-old son that he has a ticking clock inside his head? Do we tell him that every plan he’s making for college, every dream he has for the future, is pointless? He's not his usual self anymore, instead he acts like someone else we never knew of... like a stranger. He's unusually cheerful, but I guess it started to progress.

We were initially happy about his positive personality in contrast to what he was before... but it was too much for us while we knew the truth. And if we told him the truth-

"No," his father said, his voice shaking but certain. "We don't tell him. We let him live. We let him have whatever normal time he has left without him being scared every time he goes to sleep."

So, we lied. We buried the truth deep inside ourselves, choosing to carry the crushing weight of his situation so he wouldn't have to.

Now, we live in a house full of ghosts.

Every single day is an emotional rollercoaster. Leeron comes downstairs for breakfast, complaining about a math test or talking about wanting to buy a new pair of shoes next month. He laughs. He teases his father. He acts like he has all the time in the world.

And every time he says the word *"Next year,"* a knife twists in my stomach.

I have to smile and say, "That sounds great, sweetie," while my heart is bleeding out on the kitchen tile.

I’ve broken down in the most random places. Yesterday, I was doing his laundry, picking up his favorite hoodies, and I just fell to the floor of the laundry room, sobbing into his dirty clothes because I realized that soon, these clothes wouldn't belong to anyone anymore. His father hides it better, but I see him. I see him standing in the garage, staring into space for an hour, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles are white, letting out the anger he can't show his son.

Lately, Leeron has been coming home from school looking confused.

"Mom," he said to me at dinner a few nights ago, scratching the back of his neck. "Zeanne is acting so weird. I think she genuinely hates my guts. She glares at me every time I breathe near her."

I had to drop my fork so he wouldn't see my hands shaking.

"Really?" I managed to say. "Maybe she's just stressed with school."

"No, it's different," Leeron muttered, looking genuinely hurt. "It's like I did something unforgivable to her, but I swear I can't remember ever doing anything wrong. It's driving me crazy."

It almost made me scream out loud. I wanted to grab him and tell him: *She doesn't hate you, Leeron. She loves you.You loved her so much, but your brain is erasing her, and it's breaking her heart!*

But I couldn't. I had to stay quiet. I had to let him believe he was just an annoying classmate to her, because if I told him the truth, the whole illusion would shatter.

It is a special kind of torture. We are watching our son live in total innocence, completely oblivious to his own tragedy, while everyone around him—us, Zeanne, her parents—is slowly dying inside just trying to keep the secret safe.

He thinks today is just another normal Friday. He thinks tomorrow is guaranteed. And we have to keep pretending he’s right.

The hardest part about keeping this secret from Leeron isn’t the big moments. It’s the tiny, everyday things that catch you completely off guard and make you want to scream.

It happened again this morning.

Leeron was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone. He looked so normal. His hair was a mess, he was wearing his favorite green t-shirt, and he was complaining about how hard his upcoming chemistry quiz was going to be. Looking at him, you would never guess that there was a storm tearing through his brain.

Then, he stopped chewing. He stared at the wall for a long time, his spoon hovering halfway to his mouth.

"Hey, Mom?" he asked, his forehead wrinkling up in that way it does when he’s trying really hard to think.

My stomach instantly tightened. I stopped wiping the counter. "Yeah, honey?"

"When did we get that blue rug in the living room? Did you buy it recently? Because I could swear we used to have a gray one, but I woke up this morning and looked at it, and it felt... I don't know, weird. Like I've never seen it before."

My breath caught in my throat. We didn't buy that rug recently. We bought it three years ago. Leeron was the one who picked it out at the store because he said it matched his favorite soccer jersey.

I looked over at my husband, who was sitting at the counter reading the news. I saw his hands tighten around the edges of his tablet until his knuckles turned completely white. He didn't look up, because he knew if he did, Leeron would see the absolute terror in his eyes.

"Oh," I said, forcing my voice to sound light, even though it felt like I was choking on glass. "Yeah, we got it a little while ago, sweetie. You probably just never paid attention to it. You know how you get when you're focused on school."

"Huh," Leeron muttered, scratching the back of his neck. "Yeah. Guess so. Brain must be fried from all this studying."

He went right back to eating his cereal, completely satisfied with my lie. He didn't think twice about it. But after he finished and went upstairs to get his backpack, I had to lean against the kitchen sink and hold onto the porcelain just to keep my knees from buckling.

My husband stood up, walked over, and put his hands on my shoulders. He didn't say anything. He couldn't. What was there to say? Today he forgot a rug. What will he forget tomorrow? Will it be his favorite movie? Will it be his birthday? Will it be us?

Every single day is a ticking time bomb.

Later that afternoon, after Leeron left for school, I couldn't handle the quiet in the house anymore. I grabbed my phone and called Zeanne’s mother. We’ve become each other's lifelines through this nightmare, the only two people who understand the specific kind of hell we are living in.

The phone rang twice before she picked up.

"Hello?" Her voice came through the line, sounding just as exhausted and broken as I felt.

"He forgot the living room rug today..." I whispered, sitting down on the stairs, pulling my knees up to my chest. I didn't even say hello. I just let the words out. "He thought we bought it recently. He picked that rug out three years ago."

I heard her let out a long, shaky sigh on the other end of the line. "... I'm so sorry."

"And he's still talking about Zeanne," I continued, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. "He told us at dinner the other night that she hates him. He’s so confused. He thinks he did something wrong to her. It breaks my heart because he’s trying so hard to figure out why she’s mad, and he has no idea that he’s the one who forgot her. I feel so guilty. What we are doing to your daughter... making her carry this weight at school... it isn't fair to her."

"Don't do that to yourself," Zeanne's mother said softly, her own voice thick with unshed tears. "Zeanne knows why we're doing this. She wants him to have peace. She loves him. That’s why she’s doing it. Even if it’s tearing her apart."

We talked for another twenty minutes, two mothers grieving for children who were still alive but losing everything.

When Leeron came home from school later that day, he threw his backpack on the floor and slumped onto the couch. He looked tired, but he had a small smile on his face.

"Hey, Dad," he called out to his father, who was working on a laptop at the dining table. "Next month, when the weather gets warmer, can we go to that baseball game in the city? The one we missed last year?"

My husband froze. I saw his jaw clench. Next month. He was making plans for next month. According to the doctors, by next month, Leeron might not even have the coordination to walk up the stadium stairs. He might not even remember what baseball is.

But he closed his laptop, stood up, and walked over to the couch. He forced a big, warm, fatherly smile onto his face and clapped Leeron on the shoulder.

"Sure, son." my husband said, his voice firm and steady, hiding the absolute shattering happening inside his chest. "We'll get the good seats. Right by the dugout."

"Awesome," Leeron beamed, leaning his head back against the cushions, completely happy, completely innocent.

I turned away and walked into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind me. I turned on the sink faucet to full blast so the sound of the running water would drown out my sobs. I leaned against the mirror, staring at my own hollow, tired face, wishing with everything inside me that I could trade places with my son.

He has no idea that his tomorrow is a luxury we can't afford. He thinks he has a lifetime. And as his mother, I will keep breaking my own heart every single hour of the day just to make sure he keeps believing that lie until the very end.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***