A Bucket List for Ella

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

                  They say the first thing you see when you wake up after passing out is a bright, white light. They're not lying.

When I finally came to, a searing white light bore into my eyes, making me squint. I threw one arm over my face, only to see that I was connected to what looked to be an IV.

"Ella," a familiar voice said from beside me. I turned my head slightly to see Liam sitting at my bedside, looking absolutely flustered and exhausted.

"Hey," I greeted him. "Sorry I passed out on you."

"You scared the shit out of me Ella," Liam said, looking down.

"Sorry," I murmured as a doctor stepped into the room.

"Hi there Ella, I'm Dr. Samuels, your primary care doctor here in Australia." Dr. Samuels was a tall, blonde woman, likely in her late 30s.

"Hi. Can you just skip the 'how are you doing' and tell me what's wrong?" I asked her, adding a small laugh at the end so as not to sound too harsh.

"You passed out, and we had you on oxygen for a day. We took you off of it this morning. Basically what happened was you were dehydrated, which is why we gave you the IV, but also, you had fluid in your lungs. We have now drained them, but the reason you had the fluid in the first place was because unfortunately the cancer has returned. But we've caught it early, which is good, so we're going to send you in for chemotherapy right now."

"Okay," I told her. "Anything else?"

"Well, while you were unconscious we did a full body examination, and we noticed a small lump in your breast again. We're going to have to bring you in for surgery after your first round of chemo tonight. It's nothing major yet; we're just glad we caught it when we did."

As Dr. Samuels and a few other nurses moved me from my bed to a portable cot, I was freaking out. Even though she had said the cancer wasn't 'that bad,' I knew that the doctors usually sugar-coated the bad news.

As the nurses rolled me down the hallway, Liam walked alongside my cot, only looking away from me to look where he was going.

We reached the door to the connecting wing and Dr. Samuels told Liam to sit in the small waiting area. Before doing so, he came over to me, gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and squeezed my hand.

"You'll be fine," he told me. I didn't think he was only talking about the chemo.

With that, the doors opened and I was being pushed down a long white hallway with no windows, and every door shut.

***

A little while later I was back in my hospital room. Liam was sitting next to me, holding my hand.

The door opened and in walked a little girl. Lina.

"She wanted to see you," Dr. Samuels explained.

"Hey Lina," I called out to her. Liam gave her and I both a small smile, then stood up and left the room.

"Are you okay?" Lina asked quietly, walking towards me.

"Yeah, I'm okay now," I let her know.

"The doctor said you have to have surgery later," she said, her eyes wide as two saucers in her small head.