It was the same doctor who had treated his father.
“I’m sorry to tell you that the disease has spread and is inoperable at this stage.”
“How long?”
“With treatment, perhaps a year.”
“And without treatment?”
“We’re looking at three to six months.”
He left the hospital with the doctor’s words echoing inside his head.
“...hereditary…inoperable…three to six months…”
He was in a daze as he walked towards the church and his father’s grave. It had been a slow and painful death, the disease slowly eating away, leaving a shell of a man.
He didn’t want to go out like that, didn’t want his own kids to be left with the same images he had of his own father.
He wasn’t a religious man but he knew what must be done. He kissed his father’s tombstone, then begrudgingly made his way to the sanctuary, thinking of his wife and kids all the way.
He didn’t believe in God, but once he got there he ignored the No Entry sign, climbed over the barricade, closed his eyes and began to pray.
Three to six months of slowly wasting away.
No, he was determined that his kids would remember their father as the strong man who now knelt down to pray, not an emaciated skeleton confined to a hospital bed.
He prayed that it would be over quickly, tears streaming down his face as he looked up towards the sky, exposing his neck as the tigers moved in for the kill.