Total pages in book: 215
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199344 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 997(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“That’s perfectly fine,” she says before nodding toward the nurse. “Once Nurse Kelly is done drawing your blood, we’ll get it tested and hopefully have you started within a few hours. Do you have any questions?”
I shake my head, somehow feeling the kind of questions running through my head right now aren’t exactly appropriate, and considering what I’m about to go through, I should try to avoid being scolded by my mother.
Dr. Sanchez gives me a smile before stepping right up beside my bed and showing me the small remote. “If you need anything or have any questions, just press this button and someone will come,” she tells me. “All your meals will be delivered right to your room. Now I know food is going to be the last thing you’ll want, but it’s important that you eat, even if it’s only a little here and there. Keep yourself hydrated as well.”
I nod, knowing Mom will shove it down my throat if it might help me get better. “I can do that.”
“Wonderful,” she says, giving my foot a gentle squeeze. “I’ll come check on you later, but remember, I’m just one button away if you need me.”
I give her a real smile, liking how she makes me feel so at ease about something so terrifying. She gets on her way, probably to check on another patient, and before I know it, two hours have passed, and I’m all set up with my medicine hanging from my IV stand and slowly making its way into my body.
The nerves are like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and it’s not long before I feel queasy. I can only imagine how bad it would have been had I refused the anti-nausea medication. I get a constant flow of texts from Noah, Dad, and Hazel, and I do what I can to respond to them all, but I feel so heavy, and the sleepiness quickly overwhelms me.
I close my teary eyes as Mom holds my hand, her thumb brushing back and forth over my knuckles. She’s done what she can to try and stay positive, to comfort me through the worst of it, but it’s so damn hard.
I fade in and out of sleep before having to haul myself up in bed, scrambling for my little blue vomit bag, and damn it, I’ve never felt so sick in my life. Mom pats my back as I throw up. “Good girl,” she soothes, sounding as though she’s about to burst into tears. “Try and get it all out.”
“I can’t do this,” I cry. It’s only day one, and it’s already too much.
“You can do this,” she tells me, glancing at the clock on the wall. “You’re nearly halfway through your first dose. You just need to power through it, and it’ll be over for the day, and you can relax.”
Resentment pulses through my cancer-riddled veins. Easy for her to say. She’s not the one with leukemia. She’s not the one who has drugs pumping into her body that make her want to die.
Lying back on my pillow, I try to get comfortable, snuggling up on my side as tears roll down my cheeks. When my lunch is delivered, the smell of it instantly makes me queasy again, and as I take deep, calming breaths, I spy Noah’s old phone on the small table beside my bed.
Quickly grabbing it, I unlock the screen, grinning to myself when I find it has the same passcode as his locker combination at school last year—my birthday.
A smile pulls across my lips finding an old picture of the two of us as the wallpaper. I was nine or ten, and Noah was just a year older. His arm is around me, both of us grinning like idiots at the camera, completely unaware of the hell we had waiting for us.
I search through the phone, wondering why he gave it to me. It’s practically empty. No texts. No emails. Not even a few boring games to keep me busy, but when I open the gallery and find my and Noah’s whole life together, documented in pictures and videos, I finally get it.
My heart swells, and I scroll all the way to the bottom, passing years of images before finally reaching the ones from right after I was born. The first time Noah ever met me. He’s peering over the edge of my bassinet, his big eyes so wide.
I scroll to the next and then the next, each one filling me with such joy that I forget the way the potent chemo pumps through my body. One after another, I follow the journey of our lives, loving the videos the most.
Hours pass, and I watch as we grow, watch the way Noah’s friendly gaze shifts into something more, something I never really understood until we were older. There’s a video of the day I forced Noah to propose to me out in the yard, our moms were sitting out on the deck watching us, both of them crying, and I realize that must have been when Mom first told Aunt Maya about my leukemia.