Chapter Nine
“Mom,you didn’t have to come with me today,” I tellher.
“Honey, I haven’t missed an appointment yet, and I’m not about to start now,” sheargues.
The truth is, she has missed an appointment because I didn’t tell her about the last one. My shortness of breath has grown worse and the dizzy spells have been occurring more often. I’m familiar with the symptoms, and I’m no longer afraid of them. What I am afraid of is hearing the words come from a doctor’s mouth, which is a trigger for me to calm Mom down and everyone else whose lives I will be affecting. Today is an example of the precise reason I have warned Hunter not to get involved withme.
We’ve been involved, though…involved in so many ways, and after just a couple of short months, I know how much we need to be in each other’s lives. Except now I’m going to have to make sure he knows how little he can be in my life, even if it’s a completelie.
When the door opens and my name is called, Mom and I follow a nurse into my doctor’s office. “I’m sorry you have to hear this, Mom,” I tell her. “Again.”
“Honey, it’s all in your head. You’re going to be just fine. You’ll see,” she tries to assure me. She’s really trying to reassure herself,though.
As we sit in the office behind my doctor’s large wooden desk, we wait for him to bring in the results of the blood work I had done a few daysago.
“How is Hunter and that adorable daughter of his, Olive?” Mom asks. She’s smitten over Hunter, but mostly because I haven’t been honest with her on how I came to know him. I’m not sure anyone could understand this situation, and some things aren’t worth the argument with Mom and Dad so I offer up the small details and let them create the rest in their heads. If I know Mom as well as I think I do, she is already planning our wedding and our children's names. This, in itself, breaks my heart. I will never get married or have kids. My confidence with this is strong, even without knowing the results my doctor is about to go over. I justknow.
It seems like forever before the doctor comes in. It seems to take even longer for him to tell me I have less than a year left with this loaner heart of mine. It seems like it takes little to no time for Mom to melt into a puddle on the ground of this doctor’s office. Yet, I’m numb to it all. She’s begging for a retest, and I’m begging for everyone to leave me alone. The most this doctor can offer is to prolong my life by a few months, and I’m not willing to go through the horrendous treatments for little to no outcome. This time, I’m accepting my reality, and I’m living the days I have left until there are no more days tolive.
I feel grateful for having time to fix my mistakes and right my wrongs, even if it’s only one wrong. Hunter. I would rather break his heart now than break it the same way Ellie brokeit.
What I didn’t know is that he would be a masochist forheartbreak.
