Death looms close over everyone, but today, JR Kim could feel the headsman's axe brushing the back of his neck.

Of course not literally. The soft cloth of his supportive neck pillow was what he could actually feel, but the exhaustion that seemed to spread throughout his body was what made his mortality feel so very near. Well, that and the frown on his mother's lips and her white-knuckled grip as she drove the car through mid-afternoon traffic. The creases on her face had only become more obvious as the fact became more and more apparent: JR was dying.

"Mom," he said, or at least tried to. To his frustration, the word came out as something jumbled, the muscles of his mouth not wanting to do what his brain had asked. That was becoming the usual of late, and that was one of the ways that JR knew, even before the grim look on Dr. Sidler's face today, that he probably wouldn't last much longer. That he was nearing the end of his battle, though he was determined to try and fight it as long as he could.

Brain Stem Glioma should have been a cancer that was beatable, should have come when he was a child and, with lots of fighting and a fair share of luck, receded into the depths of medical nightmares that he could look back on. And he did face it off, and they did beat it... or so they thought. When it rose up again at the age of fourteen, the doctor's were concerned. They told the Kims that when Brain Stem Glioma returned like that, there was a much lower chance of success, a much lower rate of survival. Teenagers had a harder time fighting if off than a child did, and the cancer dug in, settling into the back of his neck where his skull began, ready to cut his life short. His parents were determined, though, and they spent every penny and hour they had in an attempt to cure their son of the deadly cancer.

And yet again, it worked. Doctors were thrilled at the surprise win, yet they warned that it could be a false one. That if cancer came back once, it could and usually would come back again. Ten years of checkups and being careful to keep an eye out for any abnormalities would tell them how successful they had actually been, or if they had simply bought JR an extra couple of years.

It turned out to be the latter, to everyone's dismay. JR could remember the moment when he knew he was going to die, the moment when he knew that he would never graduate from college or even go on a date, never have the regular life he ahd always dreamed of. 

He was nineteen, and it was two months after his regular quarterly checkups. He had felt an ache in the back of his eyes, and though logically it could have been anything causing that feeling, he knew. This was his third round with Brain Stem Glioma, it was the third time he was feeling that particular sensation, and he knew. When he walked into the kitchen to tell his mother, Gina Kim had been sitting at the table with her computer open in front of her. One look at his face told her, and though she flew into denial, talking about how his last checkup had been clear, about how the cancer hadn't shown it's ugly head for almost six years, about how... 

She made the appointment, even though JR could tell from the deflated look on her face that she, too, knew this would be his last round. That the timer was counting down the seconds on his life and that Brain Stem Glioma would be declared the winner. But she didn't say it, she kept up the hope that they could beat this, even up until the moment when Dr.Sidler came in to tell them the results.

Sure enough, the cancer was back, and though it was small, it was stubborn, and the doctors warned that it would be a long hard battle. JR wasn't so sure he had the strength to try to fight it again; even almost six years after defeating it last time, he still hadn't gotten back his strength fully. He couldn't run for more than a few strides, his muscles shook when he was active for too long, and his stomach was tender to what he could and could not ingest. He knew that this was going to be a steep uphill fight, but he was still going to try. And when Dr. Sidler came to them with a proposal for a relatively untested drug, JR knew that it as only because it was his last ditch effort to try and help his patient beat this.

Celsol, a pill he could take at home as long as he wore gloves when touching the actual small green gelcap.The side effects were fairly similar to any other oral chemotherapy that JR had tried over the years, but with the added stress of not knowing if the drug would kill him before the cancer did. It was tested positively, Dr. Sidler explained, but it was still experimental. But when the other forms of chemotherapy hadn't worked, well, JR didn't see what he had left to lose. However, even though he was an adult, his parents had the final say. As soon as he knew that the cancer truly was back agan, he had signed over Power of Attorney to his parents, leaving them able to make the necessary decisions about his care. After all, he wouldn't be able to, not when the radiation and the chemotherapy and the cancer itself all sapped his energy and his concentration and his thought processes away. He was lucky that he could even form words, even if they didn't always come out as he intended.

Now they came out so quietly that Gina didn't even hear him. She was so focused on the road ahead of them that JR had the thought that she wasn't even seeing the asphalt, just peering down into the dark tunnel of exhasution that surrounded her like a blanket. That was his biggest regret, he thought. Not never having been kissed, never having a normal childhood, though those were up there on his list.  No, his biggest regret was that his illness had claimed not only his life, but the lives of his parents. 

Jason and Gina would never admit that, and they would be quite upset if they knew that he viewed it like that, but it was the truth. He had watched as his once beautiful mother had grown grey hairs and formed wrinkles that a woman of just over forty years shouldn't have had. He had watched as his father worked hard to support the doctor's fees in a futile attempt to save his son. Not for the first time, JR wondered if he ought to tell them to stop fighting for him, tell them that it was hopeless, and yet each time he tried to form the words, something stopped him.

Not the cancer, not this time. It wasn't that he was physically unable to say it. More that... well... he couldn't give up. Even if there was a slim chance, less than 5% according to his doctor, of his survival, then JR had to fight. He suposed that was something he got from his p