Silent Echo Read Online Free

and gone, having already helped me over to my couch. Without his help, I might still be back at The Coffee Bean, slowly burning alive and hopped up on lattes.
    Most of my life I’ve been uncomfortable touching other men. Hell, I’ve even been uncomfortable getting too close to women, too, which is the reason I’m alone to this day, but that’s a whole other issue.
    Mostly, I am uncomfortable receiving help from anyone. My disease has changed all that, of course. Now I am forced to receive help. To rely on another person. To rely on a man. A gay man, no less.
    But I’ve drawn the line at help in the bathroom. I tell Numi that if I fall over on the toilet then I guess I’m just meant to die on the toilet. Numi just shakes his head. That he would help me in the bathroom blows mymind. What friend would do that? Numi would. Still, it’s just too much for me to handle. I’m already uncomfortable enough as it is.
    Twice, I have fallen in the bathroom. Once, I knocked myself out, hitting my head on the doorjamb. Hours later, I awakened in a pool of my own blood. I never told Numi about it, and luckily, my hair hid the goose egg.
    I just might die in the bathroom after all.
    Anyway, Numi places the remote control on the coffee table next to me, along with my cell phone, my Kindle, and a bottled water. He tells me he will check on me in a few hours, stands briefly at the door, watches me silently, and then leaves.
    I have mixed emotions about Numi. He is a good friend—of that there is no doubt. That he overly fusses over me, there is no doubt of that, either. His homosexuality never bothers me, but it is in my thoughts. I sometimes wonder if there is more to why he helps me so much. I wonder if he likes me in a different way, perhaps more than just friends. Whether or not he does shouldn’t matter. But it does matter, and it makes me keep him at arm’s length. It is also, I suspect, the reason I snap at him sometimes.
    Whether or not I hurt him with my snapping, I don’t know. But I suspect I do. I try to not do it. I try to be a better person, and then I remember I am dying and I don’t care if I am a better person. After all, what does it matter if I grow as a person if I’m going to die soon?
    Still, I don’t want to hurt Numi, but I hate that I need his help.
    I think these thoughts as I rest my eyes, suddenly aware that Numi has also tucked a blanket around me. I don’t remember him tucking a blanket around me. Sometimes my mind leaves me. I can’t explain it entirely. Sometimes I’m here, but then sometimes I’m not. My thoughts are often scattered and hard to nail down. I feel like death will occur when my thoughts are so scattered that my mind never returns. It is a scary thought, but a real one.
    I try not to think about it too much.
    A part of me wants to sit up and read, or turn on the TV, or do anything other than just lie here, but moving doesn’t even seem to be an option. IfNumi were here, I would ask him to turn on the TV. He’s not here, though. I want him here, but I don’t want him here.
    My sickness forces me to grow closer to Numi. I don’t want to grow closer to him. I like our comfortable distance. There is no comfortable distance anymore, not when he’s putting on my seat belt for me.
    When my eyes close, the chaotic images come. The chaotic images worry me. Mostly they don’t make sense. Sometimes I will see snatches of something that does make sense, only to watch it quickly morph into something incomprehensible. I am certain I am losing my mind.
    As I watch something that starts out as an octopus, only to morph into balls of light and then streaks of colors, I try to sleep. I try not to think that death might really just be losing one’s mind forever. So scattered that it never comes back.
    I know I am close to death because whenever I lay back and close my eyes, I never, ever want to sit up again. Or open my eyes again. And as I lie there, I can feel the cancer in my lungs, eating