I thought about all of the life that I had with her. It wasn’t very long, but it was more than I could ask for. Lizzie was everything to me, and I was only 17. She was the reason why I was living. My parents weren’t the greatest and neither was my life, but Lizzie was. The first day I had met Lizzie was definitely not a romantic one. I was driving down a very quiet highway when I saw a girl standing on the opposite side of the road. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very peaceful. Her long hair was blowing with the wind, and her fragile looking skin looked so very soft. I pulled over, intending to see if she needed a ride, when I heard a car coming her way. That was when I noticed that she was standing in the middle of the road. She was going to kill herself. The car came closer and closer, and then, unthinkingly, my feet started to run her way. I pushed her out of the path of the speeding car.

I will never forget the first thing she said to me. She looked at me with beautiful but angry eyes. “What in the world is wrong with you? You could have been hurt!” I thought that I had heard her wrong at first. Was she really worrying about me? I was so confused. I didn’t say anything, and she pushed my off of her. She brushed the dirt off of her clothes, and then reached her hand out to help me.

I kept trying to talk to her more in the week that followed, but she kept pushing me away. She kept saying that I would get hurt if I got attached to her, but then she would never tell me why. She kept saying: “Ethan, find someone else. I’m not worth the time.” I disagreed, though. She was worth every single second I gave to her.

I went to see a movie with a few friends, and we were supposed to meet a few girls there. To my great satisfaction, Lizzie was one of them. Instead of seeing the movie with the rest of the group, Lizzie wanted to talk to me for a moment. She took me outside, and we started to walk on a sidewalk that surrounded the theater.

She looked up at me. “I cannot see you, Ethan, and I’m serious. You will get hurt, and I’m preventing that.” She said and then started to walk away from me. I grabbed my hand, and she turned back around to look at our conjoined hands that hung between us.

“You fascinate me, Lizzie. Every time that I am with you, I feel like I am out of my boring life and into one that is an adventure. You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. And even when you are mean to me, I can see through your pretences and see that wonderful girl who cares so much about everyone else and, yet, not even close to enough about herself. When I talk to you I forget all about the people in this world that are trying to ruin my life, and I just think about you. I want to see what you’re feeling, and I don’t like it when you hide in that mask that keeps people away from you. I want to know you, because, because I think I’m in love with you.” I told her frantically. She didn’t say anything, so I kissed her. She didn’t pull away from me, and I was happy for that.

We started dating, and I figured out so many thing about her. I found out that her mom was a drunk, and he father had run out on them. She loved to draw, and loved punk rock bands. But she would never tell me why I was going to get hurt, or why she thought that she wasn’t worth it.

We dated for three great months, and I thought that everything was going great until that one day. She fainted when we were on a walk. I was so scared, and we were too far from anything. A few seconds later, she woke up, and she started crying. She kept saying that “It’s starting”. I had no idea what she meant. I kept asking her if I needed to take her to the hospital, but she said that there wasn’t a point to going.

“Ethan, I think it is time that you know.” She said weakly. She stood up, and I stood up so that I could look her in the eye. She tried her hardest to hold back her tears. “Ethan, I’m dying. I have seven tumors in my brain that can’t be removed. The doctors said that I have, at the most, one more year.” I was in shock, and she had tears streaming down her face. I pulled her close to me, and I don’t know how long I held her. I was afraid to let her go. The one thing that I was living for was leaving.

Lizzie and I spent every minute together after that. I asked her what her dreams were. She said that all she wanted to be was a mom. I thought that she would have been the greatest mom in the world. I asked her to marry me, and we got a house of our own while we were engaged.

Lizzie started to get more and more sick, and she couldn’t stay at our house anymore. They put her in the hospital, and she hated every minute of being in that building. Lizzie loved being outside, and this was like a jail cell for her. They started to give her chemo, and all of her beautiful hair fell out. That was when she freaked out. She started to scream and break things in her room. She blocked the doors and wouldn’t let anyone in. I convinced her to let me in. There was glass on the floor from a lamp she had thrown, and her feet were bleeding from stepping on it. I walked over and held her as she cried.

“I can’t do this, Ethan. I can’t die, not now that I have something to live for! Help me, please.” She cried. How could I help her? What could I do?

“Lizzie, I love you more than anything in this world.” I was crying by this point. I picked her up and laid her in her bed. I laid down by her and started to whisper to her: “You’re going to get better. You’re going to get better, and we are going to get married and have three beautiful children. Our first born will be a boy named William. He is going to have your blue eyes and my dark hair. He will be beautiful. The most beautiful child on the planet. You’ll sing him to sleep every night, and when he is asleep, you will kiss his beautiful face.” I stayed with her for at least four hours, painting a picture of our future with my words.

The doctors came rushing in when the beeping machine next to Lizzie’s bed stopped beeping. They made me leave the room, and Lizzie’s mom was called up to the hospital. The doctor came into the hallway where I was waiting. I already knew the news. I started to cry harder when he walked out, and Lizzie’s mom cried with me.

“Ethan,” The doctor said, “Lizzie didn’t want us to tell you this until she had passed, but Lizzie was three months pregnant. There was no way that we could save the baby. I’m so sorry.” He walked away after that. I couldn’t even try and keep my tears in. Lizzie was all I knew in life. Lizzie was my everything.