It’s my birthday soon. In four days and seven hours, to be exact.

Already, Mum is clattering around the house, dragging miscellaneous objects this way and that. Everything has to be perfect, she says, as she does every year.

To be honest, I don’t care. Every day that I exist is painful. Excruciating, even. To celebrate the day I was born….there doesn’t seem to be much point.

But it makes her happy, for whatever reason, so I smile through it. Perhaps she marvels, each year, that I lived to turn thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

I was twelve when I was first diagnosed. Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia, they told us. CLL. I didn’t understand until the doctor told me I was dying.

At the time, death seemed foreign to me. Alien.

When the chemotherapy began, I developed a fear of waking up, as clumps of my once thick curls would remain on my pillow as I sat up.

With each passing year, my treatment has only gotten more aggressive. An oxygen tube to bypass the tumours which now grow in my lungs. Regular bone marrow transplants. Chemotherapy twice a week.

Recently, my chest pain has altered slightly. But Mum doesn’t need to know that. She already has too much on her plate.

Literally, I think as she bustles past, balancing trays and bowls in her arms.

“Sweet sixteen,” she sings out, breezing back the other way, “the best birthday a girl can have!”

No doubt, she’s remembering her own sixteenth, with limousines and sparkling wine. Things were different for her.

I readjust my oxygen tank, smiling crookedly at her. “Sweet sixteenth,” I echo, to mask the sound of pills shaking.

A hefty dosage of different drugs accompanies my treatment schedule, but not of Valium. I have no trouble sleeping at night, once I set my mind to it.

This new drug, I raided from Mum’s bathroom cabinet. She won’t realise it’s gone for at least two more months.

Plenty of time.

Yes, plenty, I realise, eyeing my mum yet again as she juggles mugs across the kitchen.

Her enthusiasm finally starts to rub off on me, and I smile wholeheartedly.

I will turn sixteen. So she might realise I’m not a child anymore. That I got to live some of my life.

Then, it will be time to go.

But, you see, things don’t always go to plan. Especially plans, for that matter.

A mere five hours from the 22nd of April, I lunged upwards in my sleep, clutching at my chest. Blood spattered on my crisp white sheets and Mum rushed in, already on the phone to an ambulance.

Again, though. Things don’t always go to plan. The clock ticked ever closer to my birthday as I was stabilised and fast tracked into an MRI.

The cancer had spread to my heart. One of the bigger tumours was blocking the aorta artery, cutting off blood flow and shutting down my organs.

It wouldn’t be long, now.

I tilt my mouth upwards, gripping Mum’s hand tightly.

“It’s alright,” I whisper softly, “I’m ready.”

A perilous half hour remained when I arrested, the stress finally too much for my heart to handle.

They didn’t try to resuscitate; knew it would be pointless.

Mum wept as I passed, mere moments from my “sweet sixteenth”.

I suppose nothing ever works out as you hope in the beginning.

At least, was my final thought, she didn’t know.

About the Valium, my plans for myself to end my suffering.

She could rest easy. As I would soon be doing, six feet beneath the earth.