Do I Wanna Know

Chapter 11

My hands were still shaking and my cheek was burning when the shattering sound of Camila’s cell phone snapped me out of my thoughts. I had been replaying that horrific fight from just seconds ago in my head. As soon as I heard Camila speak though, everything else was irrelevant. Seeing her in this amount of shock, my protective side took over and wanted to shield her from whatever pain might come her way.

“I…need to go…to the hospital”, the younger woman stammered dazed.

“I’ll drive you”, I said and saw her brown eyes look at me with an expression that I had never seen before. It scared me because she looked like she was on the edge of breaking down. “You are in no condition to drive, so let me just drive you.”

Surprisingly she didn’t protest and just followed me to my car. I kept looking at her while I was racing to get to the hospital but she appeared to be frozen. There was no emotion whatsoever emanating from her face. My eyes focused on her ring but I immediately averted my gaze again from the piece of jewelry that may put the final nail in the coffin of “camren”. I was incredibly scared of what would happen once we got to the hospital but I needed to make sure she was ok. Even after that huge blowout.

Camila basically jumped out of the car now when I parked in front of the big building where her mom was supposed to be stationed. I ran after her although I had no idea why. She seemed to know exactly where she was heading and I remembered her telling me, that she sometimes worked in the hospital as a music therapist. In addition, her mom must have been here quite a lot so I could see why the light haired woman knew her way around the sterile corridors. She seemed to have developed superhuman speed and I had a hard time catching up as she ran up what felt like a million stairs.

Our marathon came to an abrupt stop when we saw Hanna in her scrubs talking to a teenage girl.

“What happened?”, Camila panted as soon as we reached them. I walked slowly now and felt a little out of place when I suddenly realized that the teenage girl was Sofi; Camila’s younger sister. I almost didn’t recognize her but the resemblance to Camila was obvious. The teenager was standing with her back towards me but then turned around as she heard my steps.

“Lauren?”, she almost gasped and I wasn’t sure what to say because the entire situation was so intense. Sofi smiled a little and stroked my arm reassuringly before focusing on Camila and Hanna.

“Your mom had a seizure”, Hanna explained and my heart dropped seeing both sister fighting their tears immediately.  

“But how is that possible? She had breast cancer and not a brain tumor”, Camila asked and her voice was breaking all over the place. I felt Sofi taking my hand unexpectedly but I squeezed it lightly to comfort her. We used to have a very good relationship and I was relieved to find out she didn’t hate after I had been so absent from the Cabello’s life for such a long time.

“There is something you need to know and I’m not sure how to say this”, Hanna said nervously now. “A few months ago your mom came to us for a checkup and we found out that the surgery was not a success like we had assumed at first. The cancer was still there and it had spread rapidly to her organs almost reaching her brain. We recommended very intense chemotherapy and more surgery but…she refused treatment. Her odds were very bad and she said she didn’t want to put her family through all of that again. Instead she wanted to live a normal life…no matter how short it might be without treatment.”

I felt numb. Hearing what Hanna said made my heart break into a million pieces; or what was left of my heart at this point. Sofi started crying and I felt her leaning into me so I put my arms around her to hug her as best as I could. My own eyes were burning with tears as I saw the woman I loved be completely petrified.