Melody

Chapter 1

My palms were drenched.

My breath heavy and fast. My mind spinning. The pain I could endure. No, I was scared of what they might find. Could this simple blood test reveal something horrible? Leukemia? A poor clotting factor? Cardiac problems? Respiratory problems? A disease first seen in me that was tantamount to a death sentence? Improbable as this seemed it felt all to real to me.

Mum and Dad assured me that I was fine. I was afterall showing no symptoms. This was a mere precaution. A blood test to determine the scope of my nut allergy. I was anaphylactic. It wasn't the allergy that terrified me. It wasn't what possessed me to cry, or run away. It was the unknown. The terrible realization that I was vulnerable. Just as vulnerable as the next person. Just as vulnerable as Aunt Lucy...

The nurse drew closer, armed with the needle.

Just a blood test. No symptoms.

Just a blood test.

No Symptoms.

Yet my half hearted rationalizing was not enough to quell the feelings of panic, and so before the nurse could even lean in, I was out the the chair running down the hall.

Tears streaming down my face, I could make out a figure before me.

Despite my brain's best efforts to hault, my feet continued to run and so I found myself being scooped up by my father and returned to the doctors office. I could feel mum's cold grip on my shoulders, pinning me down. She too was pale, I could see subtle cues on her face, she too was nervous. Did this mean there really was something to worry about?

She was glancing at my left shin...

The spot.

Perhaps it was cancer, perhaps it had metasised, perhaps I was dying, perhaps the nut allergy was just a rouse to get me to have a blood test, perhaps those headaches I'd been having weren't completely innocuous after all. Perhaps...perhaps...perhaps...