In Death I Don't Care.

‘I am so sorry Elizabeth, I wish this news could be something better but I am afraid that is the final outcome.’ Dr Crank stood, his face was sad and upset his eyes a little red even, and he was shocked when his patient began to laugh.
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‘Please you don’t need to be sorry for me, I was careless with my life and now I guess this is my payment. Take what life gives right?’ Elizabeth laughed again, the smile reaching her eyes so they sparkled enchantingly. ‘Now if you mind, I could really use a cigarette.’
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‘Even in the face of death you continue to laugh and smoke what is killing you.’ Crank sighed and opened the door for her, he could see the bags beneath her eyes, the washed out look of her skin and the pushed away worry in the back of her eyes. There were tears waiting there, patient to escape.
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Outside Elizabeth dropped down in the grass; she was twenty three years old and dying of severe lung cancer. What luck she had been born with, snorting on a laugh she rolled onto her back, placed a cigarette between her lips and lit up, she drew in a lungful of smoke.
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The days to come were hard; Elizabeth struggled to make it up and down the stairs of the school she taught at. It was just like in those movies, where you never felt it until someone spoke it. Now the cancer was diagnosed, her life was ending and she was dying. Inside more then outside, no one she knew had a clue.
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Most people in her position, as she had been told by the good doctor, would search for hope and keep faith that somehow they could maybe make it through the trauma and survive. But Elizabeth wasn’t taking any of that, she was depressed and that was how she took it. Even if she did laugh whenever she was asked how she felt.
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Same answer every time; ‘I am fine, this is just a decoy in my life and miserable or not I am gonna milk this lifetime for every penny I am worth.’ Then she would smile and laugh with a cigarette at her fingertips. ‘I couldn’t be fucking better.’
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Then at home would come the tears, the horrible coughing that drove her from bed, to the basin in the bathroom were she would stain the white marble red. Coughing up blood in the toilets at school, gulping back pain killers at break and hiding the pale tinge to her skin with makeup.
Nobody knew.
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That was how she liked it. Miserable on her own. People shouldn’t have to get involved in something so short lived, Elizabeth didn’t wanna be blamed for someone’s misery over her death, especially not when it was her own fault, to early smoking, to many smoked.
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Too little too late.
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Bent over now she shivered, the night air was so cold and striking against her small frame. She had shrunk, gotten so small from disintegration of her body being eaten away by cell and tissue devouring cancer. Nothing like the blood she coughed up though, it leaked from her mouth like thick red tar, in a way that’s all it was, tar from every cigarette. Just another cause of death.
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Back in bed. Elizabeth lay there, it was too late she knew, to make some amends or marry a wealthy man, his heart would only be wasted on her, she wouldn’t love him anyway. Swallowing the copper was strong; she thought it had all come up, obviously not. With a sigh she rolled over and slept restless again, stirring only to arrive back at her basin, sometimes she considered just taking her worthless life, this wasn’t worth it.
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‘How much longer will I suffer this?’ Elizabeth whispered that every morning she trudged into the classroom, loud year tens bickering, emos in their corners and the sluts at the front parading their rub on tans. Taking her seat she slammed down her bag, same routine that attracted their attention, sent them to their seats.
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The class would drag for her, they would whisper she would write, they would work she would sulk. Depression had slowly slunk up on her, she knew death was imminent and soon for that matter. So many things she had left undone, unsaid all unforgiving to her battered soul that was weeping with cancerous blood.  
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Standing. In the front of the class Elizabeth turned to the board, the moment her back turned whispers begun, her head was swimming with them and she could feel the bile and blood rising in her throat. The whole room swam, she collapsed.
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They were surrounding her, like vultures seeking out an easy prey they could take while it was done. They were pointing, to her. The blood that snaked down her chin, her chest heaved, she wheezed while they continued to whisper and call for help.
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Help that would be useless and much too late for her now, she was realising that as she grew weaker on the carpet, the chalk was still in her hand all dusty. It was pale and thin just like her, funny how she could relate her self in that moment to a piece of chalk as she died.
It made her laugh.
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‘Miss are you okay?’ One of the girls were close, glasses sliding down her long greasy nose, matter curly hair falling over her wide shoulders. There was no real concern though, not in her eyes anyway. ‘Miss?’
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‘I get the point I am a miss thank you Beatrice.’ Elizabeth snapped, she was dying and didn’t need to be reminded it was going to be lonely with no one left behind to her mourn her. Come into the world alone, die alone too. Some motto.
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Fumbling in her pocket she found what she had been seeking, a cigarette. Placing it between blood stained lips she breathed in thankful for the bitter taste that drove her insane, the deadly sting of Tobacco and addictive Nicotine.
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‘Kids never smoke in your life, you will die like me of cancer lonely and depressed.’ Elizabeth laughed and smiled the smoke falling from her fingers, limp at her side as the light left her eyes.
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This is what it is like to die, she sure wasn’t an angel but the peace she felt in those last moments sure felt like heaven. She got to go out smiling, devoid of the uncaring world around her; she died the way she wanted with her best friend Tobacco and a smile on her face.
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