The Aster Effect

Chapter 1: Life as I knew it

*Song #1: Kids By MGMT*

Numbness. That's all I could feel, tingling through my arms and legs, spreading through my whole body, as I slowly pulled my brush away from the canvas, and stepped back slightly, looking at my unfinished piece. My vision began to blur, as I stumbled backwards, and went blank, only feeling the pain of falling backward onto the blue laminate flooring of my art room.

Cutting in and out of consciousness the one word that I was able to decipher was "Hospital." Even though I wasn't awake I could tell the atmosphere around me had a very negative energy. Oh, hospitals my favourite. I felt two fingers spread my eyelids open to check my pupils to see if it contracted, which I'm guessing it did, cause the examiner breathed a sigh of relief.

A muffled voice, or at least it was muffled in my head, spoke "She's ok. Once she wakes up you can find me at the front desk, so I can talk to her, and ask a few questions." I could hear my aunt's soft voice whisper "Thank you." I could feel her soft hand on mine. It reminded me of my mother when she used to hold my hand so I wouldn't run away from her. I smiled slightly, as I opened my eyes slowly, opening my right one first, then my left, before coughing slightly.

My aunt turned her head, her light brown hair hung in front of her shoulder, her pale skin, and freckled cheeks caught my eyes, and of course her blue irises burning into mine. "You passed out sweetie...How are you feeling?" I gulped slightly, scanning the white room "I'm feeling alright I guess. They really didn't have to take me to the hospital, it could've just been a small trip to the nurses office." I commented, feeling a little bit annoyed at how much this was exaggerated "Aster...You had a seizure also. That's the reason you're here. Do you not remember?" I squinted "How could I remember it if I was unconscious Aunt Elizabeth?" I retorted, she shrugged, pulling her hand off of mine, adverting her gaze "I'm going to go get the doctor. Apparently, he needs to speak to us about something." She arose from her chair and exited the room, as I stared down at the blue wristband with my name scrawled over it in matching ink.

A seizure? Passing out? That's a very bad combination. I reached my left hand out to shift the bracelet around so the hospital name was visible, I've only been to this hospital once and it was for a broken arm caused by my clumsiness. Let's hope they don't have me on record, the nurse will probably laugh at me. As I finished my thought, a young man with a white lab coat came in, with my aunt following closely behind, his short brown hair was combed back forming a little quiff, and his cheekbones looked like it could cut glass, he could've been a model. The man held a file in one hand and had the other one in front of him, trying to greet me nicely as he introduced himself "I'm Doctor Williams." I stared at his large hand, which had patches of dry skin, accompanied by an anchor tattoo, enchanted by the colour, my aunt spoke in an annoyed voice "Aren't you going to shake his hand Aster?" I jumped at her tone, and automatically grabbed the doctor's hand and gave it a quick shake, the man gave me a small smile, trying to comfort me slightly, which didn't work by the way. I pulled my hand away, and cleared my throat "So why am I still here doc?" I mumbled, completely skipping over my introduction because Aunt Elizabeth did that for me, he took in a deep breath, and turned around, pulling out a slip of paper from the file and sticking it up on the light pad.

"I didn't know I had a brain" I commented as I stared at the CT scan, sitting upright, I've seen a few test slides of these scans in science class before, most of them showing tumors s or cancer that has spread throughout the brain, it is usually shown as a fairly large mass, and it was really noticeable for people that have seen it. The bad part about this was that this one looked like one of them. Immediately my mind went blank, and my hearing slowly faded, I could only hear deep talking that was hard to comprehend. My eyes flickered over the scan, and traveled towards my aunt, her eyes were filled with tears, and her pale skin became a crimson complexion. I could see her eyes begin to turn red and puffy. The only time I saw her like this, was when my mother passed away. She came to the hospital and broke down beside the bed, and held her hand weeping, with my father beside her. My thoughts went back to the scan, how could this be? My life was going so well...Or at least it was going as well as I wanted it to be. My aunt, on the other hand, thought otherwise. I was going to go to art school, study fine arts, do what I love, but now this is thrown onto me in the middle of the school year when you depend on your marks to have a future in what you want to get into.