Calum's PoV

What could I say or do to make this any better? To make it go away? Poppy didn't deserve this. She was kind and caring and always thought about others, so why did cancer decide to strike her? Why not someone evil, someone terrible?

The hospital discharged her from their care and we headed back to the hotel together. If the news wasn't bad enough, the fact we were still touring and moving from country to country wasn't helping. She couldn't go somewhere comfortable and relax, get help from friends or family. She was stuck with us. Riding out the journey as we toured. It seemed bittersweet. Every time I looked at her I wanted to cry. She hated sympathy, she'd roll her eyes every time I opened my mouth and offered to help with something.
'I'm not an invalid Cal. I can carry my own bag.' She hadn't really spoken about it to me, saying she was fine with it or scared out of her mind, I wouldn't care as long as I knew she was being open with me. Ha, I must be joking. I couldn't ask her to be open with me when I was lying to her about Naomi all that time. Oh how life throws curveballs at us. I hate Naomi. Even when she's not here she's causing trouble, although maybe part of me was now thankful that she'd been crazy enough to hurt Poppy just so that we could find this out. How much longer would we have waited before the cancer diagnosis would have come around? Would it have been too late to fix it?
We walked in silence into the hotel, Poppy a few steps ahead of me as she bypassed reception and headed straight for the lift. Beside the reception was the bar area where I could see the guys all hanging out.

"Hey! Cal, Poppy, over here!" Luke waved. I waved back, glancing over to Poppy to see her impatiently hammering the lift button as if it were calling it down quicker.

"Poppy?" I quizzed

"Go ahead, I'll be in our room." She said flatly as she walked into the lift, only facing me to press the floor number and watch the doors close. My shoulders sunk. The nurse was right. She was going to avoid anything with the guys just to hope it'll mean they're not sad if we lost her. A wave of nausea hit me as I thought about losing her. There was no way we could let that happen. I couldn't take losing her. Taking a deep, calming breath in, I tried to reset. I needed to go over there and act normal. If poppy knew I'd told them about her cancer she'd probably erupt at me. But equally I felt like they should know.

"Hey guys." My demeanour faltered instantly as I laid eyes upon the three, happy smiles on their faces suddenly sinking as they saw the state of me.

"Shit Cal, what happened?" Ashton ushered me into the seat beside him and waved the bartender down for another beer. I didn't feel like drinking, or eating, or even breathing for that matter. This was going to take a lot to get used to.

"I- She..." words wouldn't form, I just put my head in my hands and stared down at the tabletop, wishing life for once would grant us something happy and peaceful. Why was there always drama? Why was there always upset?

"Cal?" Mike pressed, giving my shoulder a comforting squeeze to support me. "Whatever it is we're right here with you, man."

"I've got cancer." A timid voice spoke behind me, all four of us spinning to look at where the squeak came from. Poppy stood behind me, wrapped up in an oversized jumper and skinny jeans. She had her arms folded around her waist.

"W-what?!" Ashton was the first to say something. It wasn't much. "Shit."

"I'm so sorry." Luke added, going to move from his chair but Poppy held her hand out as if to stop him. Michael just gawped, Unable to think of a good response.

"How are you holding up?" Ashton looked at both of us, knowing it would be affecting me just as much.

"The nurse was right, part of me wants to crawl inside a hole and ignore the world just so it's easier to handle. But equally, I know how tough this will be not only on me but on Calum. I wanted you guys to be there to help him through it."

"Him? What about you?" Luke pressed, scrunching up his eyebrows. Poppy merely shrugged.

"I'll just deal with the hand I'm given." She said nonchalantly. "It's fine, I'd rather it was me than any of you." I slammed my hand down on the table, attracting the attention of every other patron in the area.

"It's fine?" I snapped, fury filling me. "How can you say that? This is the farthest away from fine we're ever going to be Poppy. What do you think I'm going to do if you died? Huh? Or if you were so sick I had to look after you? Do you think I could handle that?" I scoffed. "Just because you're a nurse doesn't mean you only think of how you're gonna handle things because, wake up call, its going to affect everyone around this fucking table." I couldn't handle it anymore. I hated being angry at her but she was being ridiculous. It was like she'd given up and accepted her fate regardless. Like she wasn't even willing to fight. That wasn't my Poppy. She fought through everything. Without a second glance, I left the table, huffing as I did. I headed straight to our room and as soon as I shut the door behind me, I ran to the bed and threw myself on it. Once I'd settled down, I took a moment to think about everything. How we met, how we were, what we were like together before people like Naomi and Kyle came along, how it changed, how we faded apart but came back stronger, how we fought everything together. And now here we were. A piece of devastating, life changing news was thrust upon us and we're breaking. I'm breaking. Poppy is now this emotionless robot, hoping to say things we want to hear but we don't. We want her to be okay, we want her to carry on touring with us, I want her to be my wife, to have my kids, to live life with me. How hard was it to get to that stage in life? How many more trials would we have to go through? Life really wasn't fair.
It didn't take long for me to break down, my sobs being silenced as I buried my face into the pillow letting out an angry cry every now and again. I was losing her.

I was losing Poppy.