33 (Part One: Travis)

As far as mystery goes, the Boston Institute was full of it.

Cancer. That's the last word Travis coming from the most timid doctor he had encountered up to this point. They had always been so tough and severe: this one seemed brittle, maybe even scared to announce such bad news. He was a good man: he never cheated on his wife, always helped his kids do their homework, never hit anyone, never lied but there was this devious light in his eyes. Maybe he enjoyed the whole ordeal and was afraid anyone would discover his dark little secret: maybe it even explained why he was such a decent and good human being, all this suffering cleansed the impurities that popped up throughout years and years of being politically correct.

"I'm sorry", he said, softly, "there's not much to be done" and the ill-fated man answered with an "I understand". The doctor scanned his face, trying to decipher what was going on behind those eyes of green; he tried to imagine how Travis would look without that short, slightly curly dark hair, when the chemotherapy would start. He pulled out a pen out of his vest and went on to finish his medical report. He signed hastily, still nervous, after writing "pancreatic adenocarcinoma (cancer)" with a shaky hand.

Walking out of the hospital in downtown Boston felt like an authentic walk of shame: the wind blew his hair back and pushed it way above his pale forehead. He covered his red eyes with round sunglasses and stopped the nearest cab on main street. On the road back home, he noticed how much he cared.

Before, his life had not much meaning: no wife, no kids, no parents, no friends at his workplace nor outside...

Life was void. Travis Wade's existence was unnecessary and meaningless: he didn't have a place in this world. His birth felt more accidental than joyful and John and Martha Wade didn't say otherwise, maybe he was even the cause they decided to never have kids again. Travis was one of those guys no one used to notice: he'd be sitting in the corner trying to enjoy the party and he'd leave in silence a few minutes in, he was an elusive silhouette, patrolling the crowds on the sidewalk, he was a ghost amongst shadows and a face you could never remember. I think no one did really know his name. Maybe they didn't want to care or he was just that invisible to other people: I think there are days where Travis doubts his own existence, but his ID keeps telling him he does live and breathe like the others. He breathes the same air and shares the same physiology, even though he looked like a corpse already. Cancer and the fact that he'd let himself die out of hunger and thirst didn't really carve out his physique in spite of actually wanting to live. That's the realisation he awaited for 29 years: I want to live. And having cancer was the reason his life had gotten any value: maybe because cancer made him different, he was condemned or so he had thought.

Before, his life hadn't any meaning, but cancer turned out to be more motivating than his parents.

During Thanksgiving, he was contemplating, alone again, the possibility of getting into an experimental government-funded program to treat cancer at the Boston Institute. It only took him three days and two nights of suffering side effects from faulty, under-developped medication to figure out it was probably his only chance to get more time.

Travis had deemed the processing period of his application extremely short but he'd figured that we were talking about people with not a lot of time on their hands.

By November 6th, he was happier than ever to enter the long-awaited and miraculous program. It seemed like they had decent success, or so they said. He didn't really think that he would have been told that entering the program was futile.

He walked through the highly artsy campgrounds of the clinic, outside Boston, to the main building, which Travis thought was the allegory of an engineer's and an architect's fantasy. The edifice bended around itself in twisted and convoluted patterns as large glass walls drew the bystander's eyes to the large halls that divided the different wings of the clinic. This sort of building reminded him of movies like Star Wars, which he had seen a couple years ago, when it was first screened in town.