True Color

I

JAMES

The doctor walks back into the exam room, her face solemn with bad news. My heart beats out of my chest, I don't want to know, I don't want to live this constant battle.

Her face tells him the answer before her mouth does, I rock unsteadily on my feet, my eyes sting with tears, I don't want to die, not at fourteen.

I cover my ears with my own shaking hands, and through my vision, blurred with tears, I watch the nurse. Her light grey skin and her sad dark eyes, her dark grey lips and her light hair, how could someone so angelic ruin my life? I thought, then I realize that with these words she will.

"Unfortunately," I read her thin lips, "the test results came in positive and..." I close my eyes, I already know what comes next, "James Ashton Edward, has been diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer." I look over at my mom, it hurts to see her so sad, I think she might suffer from this, more than me.

"Breast cancer runs in our family," my teary eyed mom explains, "for generations, it only affected the females. That was until five years ago, when his grandpa was diagnosed and soon after passed away." Tears flowed from my mother's eyes, sadness running through her frail body.

 - Later That Day -

"Cancer spreads fast, and kills faster." I run my hand over the letters engraved on my grandpa's grave stone. I can't believe how foolish I was for once thinking I was safe because of my gender.

I miss Grandpa Joe, I feel like crying but I have no tears to cry, since my worry is now overpowered with fear. Her words cloud my thoughts, "His cancer has already reached stage two, and it has already begun to spread."

Through my family experience, I know that cancer must be caught early or else...

I know the answer, and it is what horrifies me most.

- The Next Day -

The next few days were spent taking blood tests and sitting in a hospital bed, the IV's in my arm did nothing but hurt me.

I was scheduled to start Chemotherapy in two weeks and it was making me as anxious as ever. My stomach isn't doing me much grace and my loss of appetite is showing a drastic effect on my weight. I measure my left wrist with my un-IV'd hand.

I growl at myself through gritted teeth, another finger able to make it around. My mind wanders down memory lane from when I could barely reach my middle finger to my thumb, around my wrist, and now my pinkie can reach my thumb.

I know no one is there to judge my but I feel self-conscious, embarrassed even, about how skinny I have become. A skeleton, that's what I feel like. I hate to think about it, but I am as good as dead. My body is screaming for food but not able to keep any of it down. Doctors know what medication I need but my body rejects more than half of it.

I groan, as all I want to do is roll over and bury my head in this disgusting, papery, hospital pillow and shut myself off from the world but I can't since I am connected to this darn machine.

I bury my fingers in my short unwashed hair, I can't believe they don't even let my get out of bed to take a shower.

 - 2 Weeks Later -

I close my eyes and try to remember a day I wasn't stuck in this stupid, boring hospital. I peek through my eyes at the bland gray walls, gray floor, gray ceiling and the dull kids show playing on the T.V. The room might be more stimulating for someone without monochromacy, but I'm pretty sure it's just as boring. I am reminded that today is chemotherapy day by the change in scenery.

I am suddenly in a new unidentified room with an MRI thing and more of those darn machines. The doctor unhooks me from "his" machine, Freedom! I think, but I know I am just going to be reconnected to a new machine. And that is exactly what happens.

Doctor Seffous, I believe that what his name is, brought me over to the MRI machine and instructs me to lay down. I do as instructed and before I knew it, I was already connected to another machine.

"Uhhhhh," I groan, the doctor says something from the other side of the room but I am too distracted to catch exactly what it was, he said. The distraction is my stomach.

My stomach feels worse by a million times every day, either it's the medicine or this is what it feels like to die. I just then realize how much less sensitive the topic of death is now. Myself, along with everyone else, knows I am going die from this, my body doesn't accept the medicine and the cancer has spread to a point passed stopping.

I'm just wondering when.