supermarket flowers • lesy

1.1

Leigh's POV

"Leigh-anne, doctor Arista wants to see you." Jade taps on my shoulder.

I heave in and exhale. I imagined one of our older patients told her I stole their jewelry or something. I'd walk right into that room and pull whatever necklace they lost from under their bed. That's how it usually went.

"It's my break. What kind of nonsense did they come up with this time?"

"She said it was important, something having to do with your blood test?" Jade says shrugging, taking the catheter from her cart and walking off to attend to her shift of ill people.

I felt a twinge of anxiety enter my stomach. I'm a nurse and I'm pretty fucking good at talking people's blood for testing. So there's no way I was getting yelled at for doing something wrong.

These were my blood test results.

The ones Dr. Artista took when she noticed that I could barely help pick up patients anymore. When she noticed I was almost the weight of her 11-year-old daughter.

It was my break anyway so I take one more good look at my patient's vitals and tell them another nurse will care for them until I return. I walk down the hall looking for the doctor.

"Hey Pezza, you seen Ari?"

"Arista? Room 103. She said its important." Perrie repeated the words Jade told me moments before.

Nausea creeped into my whole body now.

"Thanks, again."

Room 103. An almost empty room just for privacy. Why room 103?

I picked up speed and walk down the small, silent flight of stairs to my destination.

Reaching the room I knock on the door two times before I hear shuffling.

"Come in, Leigh." A familiar voice says to me. A sweet sounding voice. The one you hear when your parents tell you your pet goldfish, Steve, died.

"Hey, Arista, you wanted to see me?"

She nods and motions for me to sit down on the table. I do as I'm supposed to.

"Yeah, Leigh-Anne, remember those-"

"Blood tests you took. Uh-huh."

She chuckles and nods.

"Why did you take them anyway?" I say nervously. Truth be told, I didn't know.

"Well.. I noticed some changes in your behavior and I wanted to double check everything."

"What changes?" I knew what changes.

"Leigh, we both know." She looks me in the eye.

"What about them?"

"I took a CBC. I know I didn't tell you but I didn't want to worry you. You know, you worry a lot."

"Why a CBC? I'm fine."

CBC stands for Complete Blood Count. A test that often determined if there is something wrong with your blood. Mostly used to determine if you have a blood cancer.

"Well we need to take some bone marrow to confirm but-"

"You need my bone marrow? I'm not fucking dying or anything." Boy, was I wrong.

"Leigh, please don't be difficult."

"Why do you need these things? What do you need to confirm?"

"I suspect it's leukemia, Leigh."