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“You can do this”, I swore to myself. I knew it would be tough but I had to put on a brave front. Yet even as I tried, I could feel it slipping away. The threat of hysteria was lingering like a snake over its prey, ready to strike at any moment.

            I turned to the mirror to check my composure and was shocked by the reflection. My normally bright, green eyes were dull and sunken, eclipsed by dark bags. The shaggy, brown hair was gone. In its place was pale, unnatural skin. I was bald. The ghosts of my eyes wandered to my body. I had never been a star athlete, being fairly scrawny my whole life, but never had I looked as frail and skinny as I did now. I was a ghost of Josh Tambernd, the person I once was, inhabiting a skeleton of a body.

            As I stared at my reflection, I felt the hysteria rush towards me and engulf me within its flames. Consumed by fear, I began to sob and was soon wailing like a dog in agony.

I heard my mother scream from down the hall, “Josh!”

It took her only five seconds to rush into my room. The expression on her face was more than I could handle. It was a mix of fear, agony, and concern. I saw it through her caring, blue eyes as my head began to spin. I felt the hands of darkness pulling me as I collapsed.

 

 

I could hear the beeping of my alarm clock as I began to come to. I had been dreaming about a dolphin. It was rescuing me from the depths of an icy ocean. It had pulled me onto its back, gracefully carrying me to a barren island. I crawled to the shore and gazed intently into the dolphin’s eyes. There was something there that I couldn’t depict. Suddenly, the ocean came alive with fierce waves and pulled the dolphin under. It was then that the beeping awaked me. But now as I listened, too weak to open my eyes, I realized it was not my alarm clock at all. It was a different sort of beeping.

I knew this beeping. I knew it only too well. I found the strength to open my eyes and waited an eternity for them to focus. I was in a hospital. I was stuck in one of those unbearable beds with their funny smelling sheets. The IV was already stuck inside of me. I could see the bag of the so-called medicine hanging. These chemicals were supposed to make me better, but so far all they had done was make me weak and hairless. Apparently they were necessary. It was time for round five of chemotherapy.

Yes, I had cancer. I had leukemia, to be a little more specific.

This was my fifth round of chemotherapy and the doctors were confident that I was responding well to the treatment. They had explained to me that it was normal for me to experience such symptoms as nausea, headaches, weakness, hair loss, dizziness, and pretty much any other symptom you could think of. As I said, I tried to put on a brave front but it was just too hard sometimes.

I sat up in the hard contraption they call a bed and looked to see what kind of room I was in. It was a double. There was a curtain drawn through the middle and I suspected I was not alone. Yet another person affected by this terrible nightmare of a disease. I wondered where my mother was. She rarely left my side while I was in the hospital. I decided she had probably gone to eat and let my mind roam to other things. It settled upon hating the world, the so-called “God” that had done this to me, and feeling sorry for myself.

After a few minutes my mother came into the room. I could tell I’d put her through hell this morning. Her red, puffy eyes were still moist from the tears she’d been shedding. Her long, brunette hair was hanging loosely around her, the first signs of grey appearing in the roots. It hurt me to think of the pain I was causing her. And after everything she’d already been through…