The inevitable waters

The tide is rolling in now. I can hear it coming. I can feel it. And with each roll, my stomach turns and my knuckles go white.
I’ve never been scared of the sea before; I’ve never really thought about drowning or the creatures that lurk in its murkier depths, but it’s all I can think of now. When I come to the beach it fills me with dread.
A few days ago I had to tell Sylvie I was ill. There was no hiding it any longer; she’d done well to pretend she hadn’t noticed it in me. She looked at me for a while, right in my eyes, then welled up and asked if I was going to die. I told her that I didn’t know, that they didn’t know.
I stroked her arm, like it was her who was sick, and told her to sit down. It dawned on her this information wasn’t new, that I had likely been keeping it from her for a good while.
She asked me why I’d not mentioned this sooner, but I didn’t know what to tell her. She asked me how I’d managed to get myself to and from appointments, perhaps tests and procedures, without her help. She asked me earnestly and I just sadly shook my head.
She looked up slowly from the bed and queried with her eyes. Even more slowly, she shook her own beautiful head. Eventually, she stood up and pushed past me. I listened for her and heard the front door open and close, then the ignition of a car’s engine.
She hasn’t been home since. She must have picked Greta up and taken her too, because she never came home from school that day. I’d made ratatouille, just in case they came home. I ate what I could manage and threw the rest away.
I shan’t come to the beach much more, I think. I can’t get what I need from the water, it seems. Not anymore.
Ha! And now it seems it’s going to piss down upon me from above too. Well, if I’m not going to jump in, it’ll still drown me in the end, I suppose.