“Third floor?” I repeated. “Oncology?”
“That’s right,” said Rowan, and her eyes narrowed a little bit, as if it was just dawning on her. “Macey, is everything okay?” she asked, standing up from the office chair she’d been parked in front of.
“It’s fine,” I said quickly, backing towards the elevator. “I’m just here for a visit.”
I rode the elevator to the third floor, heart pounding painfully in my chest, like someone was taking a sledgehammer to my ribcage. I wanted to call Jayce before I checked in, to ask him to leave school and come be with me. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to handle this myself.
I checked into the front desk and took a seat in the waiting area, pretending to play on my phone but not really seeing the screen. My fingers trembled as I waited, and after ten minutes or so, someone came out to get me to take me back to a patient room.
“Macey,” Melissa said, reaching out to touch my arm as I stepped into the room after her. I couldn’t read her expression, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “How are you?”
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” I said, forcing a laugh that sounded more pitiful than it did easygoing. “I didn’t expect to come back here. And since nobody could tell me over the phone, it must be bad news, right?”
Melissa said nothing to this, which only enforced my fear. I took a seat on the edge of the patient bed while Jayce’s mom took my vitals. She didn’t speak, not really, but she continued to smile, as if smiling could fix it all. But even her smile was wary, hesitant, and I could sense something was wrong. Something more than just the fact that I was dating her son.
“I’ll be back,” she said, reaching out once more to rest her hand on my shoulder. She squeezed gently, in a motherly, reassuring way that normally I would have loved and craved but today only shook me to my core. “Let me go get the doctor.”
“Melissa,” I said as she headed towards the door. She paused, hand lingering on the handle. “Is it bad?”
For a moment I didn’t think she would say anything at all, then she turned back around and sighed, meeting my gaze with sad eyes that I wished I didn’t have to see. “Whatever happens, we’re here for you, okay?”
Before I could answer, before I could push her further, Melissa vanished out the door. I took the cell phone from my pocket once more and checked the screen. Jayce had texted me.
Everything okay at the hospital?
My thumb hovered over the keyboard, wanting to type something back to him, but I didn’t know how to respond. I had no idea if everything was okay, and that terrified me.
Instead of answering Jayce, I shoved the phone back into my pocket just as the door opened again and Melissa came through, followed by who I could only assume was Dr. Hudson.
“Hi, Macey,” Dr. Hudson said, sitting down on his fancy doctor stool in front of me. Melissa stood back out of the way, just watching us, and still her expression was blank. She was hiding something, I could tell, and that scared me more than anything else.
“Hey, Doc,” I said quietly, weakly shaking the rough hand he offered me. “I would say nice to meet you, but I’m not sure it is.”
Dr. Hudson smiled, just a bit. “Thank you for coming in.”
“I get the feeling that I didn’t really have a choice,” I said softly, and the doctor’s eyes flickered from my face and down to the pad in his lap, as if he couldn’t quite hold my eyes, either.
“We got your test results back from the blood test Melissa submitted last week,” he said, fingers skimming over the tablet screen as he checked out my patient chart. “And it’s not what we were expecting.”
“What were we expecting?” I asked weakly, and Dr. Hudson sighed softly before raising his eyes to meet mine.
“Not this,” he said simply, and what felt like a shard of ice pierced through my bloodstream. An invisible vice tightened around my throat, unrelenting, and pressure pushed on my chest until I almost couldn’t breathe.
“What is it?”
“Leukemia,” he said quietly. “Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Do you know what that is?”
“N—no.”
My entire world seemed to stop for a moment. And not just my world, but the world in general. I looked from Dr. Hudson to Melissa, who was still standing behind the doctor with her eyes now cast to the floor. She couldn’t even look at me. The metal vice that seemed to be squeezing my chest tightened, even more than I ever thought it could, and the nausea was back, but this time it had absolutely nothing to do with the booze last night. My ears began to ring and my hands started to tingle, the muscles locking up due to the anxiety coursing through my veins. I started to hyperventilate, and that’s when Melissa rushed to my side with the garbage can, resting her hand on my back, whispering murmurs in my ear.
“Shhh,” she said. “It’s alright, Macey, I’m here for you. We’re here for you.”
“AML is the most common type of acute leukemia in adults,” Dr. Hudson said, rolling the stool over to squeeze my arm reassuringly. “In AML, the bone marrow makes abnormal white blood cells called leukemia cells. That would explain the overwhelming fatigue you told us about.”
I was almost crying, but not quite. The panic was still heavy in my chest, head fuzzy with confusion. With fear. I looked at Dr. Hudson because I didn’t know what else to do.
“What’s the survival rate?” I asked, my medical training kicking into high gear for some reason.
