The sun was shining the day the doctors came in and told Reese all those horrible things. Shining like a one hundred and twenty thousand watt bulb, making the Earth green and alive and vibrant.
Shouldn't it be like in Hollywood? Where the sky cries as hard as you and the whole world wilts under all the rain and sadness and color drips away to murky grays? Reese thought to herself quietly on the car ride home. Her mother sat as silent as a grave in front of her, and her father had wept bitterly over the phone.
Reese Wilde was seventeen years old when she was told it was a good chance she only had four years to live. Before all the bruising, fatigue, aches, pains, she was a normal girl on her high school's soccer team. She made average grades, and had goals to make it out in the real world as a graphic designer with an adventurous lifestyle. But now her dreams lay crushed in her sick hands, and she was shell-shocked and hurt.
She turned away bitterly from the window, biting her lip and angrily brushing away tears at her cheeks. Her hands bunched up her sweater, twisting it into a knot. It was to keep from picking at the skin around her nails, a bad habit that followed her since childhood.
"Momma?" Her voice sounded distant and cracked at the end, and she winced at the sound. Her mother's eyes flicked to her briefly before returning to the road.
"Yes?"
"When do I start going to see Dr. Patterson?" She asks softly. Reese was almost hysterically miserable at the news, and the doctor urged her that seeing the therapist would help ease emotional pains that ailed her as much as the physical ones. A haggard sigh came from the middle aged woman that was sitting beside her.
"I set up an appointment for next Tuesday. It's a group therapy session for young adults this go around." Her mother sounded tired. Reese's lips pursed and she looked down. She didn't particularly like the idea of telling everyone that she had cancer, but if it helped get the terrible crushing feeling of dealing with this alone, she would suck it up.
"Okay." Her hand reached for her mothers, which rested on the clutch, and she looked back out of the window.
