All of us in this room knew what the future held for me. We all knew that my body worked against me, that there was a ticking time bomb inside my brain.
Inoperable, was the first word Doctor Mathias said.
It grew, was the next thing he mentioned, while his eyes held sorrow so deep that even without him saying those words, I already knew.
We were too late.
I wanted to shake my head. I wanted to tell him to check his records again, to do something, anything.
Things like this couldn’t happen to me. Impossible wasn’t a word I had in my vocabulary. But as he went over the prognosis with my parents, I felt as if I was looking from the outside in. My body was here, but my mind… My mind was far away from here, observing all of this with detached feelings. What else could I do?
I cried a river of tears after they first diagnosed me. I cried some more when they sent me home with a bag full of medicine I didn’t even know how to pronounce, in hopes that they would help with the shrinking of the cancerous cells. Those little, white pills still gave me hope, even when they made me sick.
Even when I wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and never wake up again, they gave me hope that I would be strong enough to beat this and live to talk about it.
But back there on that ice, where my past and future collided and where my vision started disappearing, something deep inside me knew. It always knew, but I was too stubborn to see it in the beginning.
Hope is a dangerous thing in situations like these, and I used it like an addict. Hoping and hoping and fucking hoping for a miracle, but waking up in the hospital told me everything I needed to know—I was going to die.
I looked at the other side of the office, seeing all the diplomas and accomplishments Doctor Mathias had, and those invisible claws that were slowly coming closer to my heart finally reached their destination. They squeezed, pressing against my left heart chamber, pushing the blood out faster, and the first tear slowly escaped from my eye. Like a thief in the middle of the night, it fell silently, leaving a trail of broken dreams behind.
I would never get to see my diploma hanging on the wall like that. I would never get to stand on top of the podium at the Olympic Games, holding that golden medal. I would never get to see the gray hair on my mother’s head, or to see Andy get married.
Maybe in another life, another me would get to live the life I always wanted to have. I looked at my mom, at her blonde hair pulled on top of her head, and my dad’s hands firmly gripping her shoulders.
His lips were set in a thin line while his eyes shone with unshed tears, holding on by a thread. I never thought I would see the day where my parents cried over something like this. Looking at my mom, I only now realized how dark the circles around her eyes were. She was always so happy, so supportive, always there for us. Looking at this version of her now, she was nothing but a shell of the person she used to be.
I didn’t want to listen to them. I didn’t want to listen to the words spoken out loud, even though we all knew what they were. They kept going and going on repeat inside my head, but for some reason, they didn’t feel as scary as they did the first time around.
“How long?” I turned to Doctor Mathias, cutting my mom off. I knew she wanted to save me. I knew she wanted to see me live, but sitting here and arguing with the doctor that was nothing but supportive from the very beginning would not miraculously heal me.
It wouldn’t give me the years my mom was trying to hold on to, and wasting time was something I didn’t want to do—not anymore.
“Sophie!” my mom exclaimed, while all three sets of eyes zeroed in on me, as if they suddenly remembered that I was here in the room with them. They kept talking and talking and talking about possible treatments, more drugs, more chemo, invasive techniques, but none of them asked me what I wanted.
“How long, Doctor?” I asked again, keeping my eyes firmly on his. “I have the right to know.”
“Soph—”
“How fucking long?”
Doctor Mathias cleared his throat and closed his eyes. I bet that telling a person that they were going to die, or that their life had an expiration date, was never an easy thing to say, but he could do it. He wasn’t the one sitting on this side of the table, waiting to hear when death was going to knock on their door.
“Four,” he murmured. “Maybe five months.”
“No!” Mom cried out and buried her face in my dad’s stomach.
And me… I couldn’t feel it.
Five months?
I maybe had five months to live if I was lucky.
Doctor Mathias’s lips moved but I couldn’t hear a thing.
Five fucking months and I’d be gone.
I had five months to do everything I wanted to do. I had five months to tell them how much I loved them. I had five months to be okay with the fact that I was dying before I even got to live.
