They tell him he's got roughly a year to live and he nods, in acceptance, and excuses himself.

Outside the hospital doors, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it up. Before he takes a puff, he stares down at the stick he's holding perfectly between his fingers and his lips tilt up sardonically. Not exactly the first thing you should do after someone breaks the news to you that you've got lung cancer, right?

But instead of dropping the cigarette, he shrugs and takes a drag.

It's frightening, how it doesn't phase him. He just accepts it. It was just another thing that was going to happen to him and would kill him. He'd had plenty of those experiences. His rape. When Sadie up and left because she couldn't 'handle it anymore'. But unlike those experiences, this was i actually /i going to kill him. And in roughly a year, he'd be dead. Not just in spirit, but in mind too.

For years, he joked that he'd eventually die of lung cancer.

It wasn't a joke now.

And he can't bring himself to care.

He takes another drag.