Nanny Diaries

Chapter 22 - Angel

I dash through the automatic door, so quickly that it almost hits me in the leg. I look around the room like a bird, seeking out Angie and Chris. My throat feels like it’s closing in, wanting to crush my windpipe so I don’t have to carry through this madness. 

“What do you mean?” a shrill voice carries from the other end, a connecting door leading to the examination rooms. I snap my head to the right and see Angie wringing her hands, Chris right behind her. 

“What’s going on?” I’m by their sides in a second. Angie looks at me with her eyes almost glazed over. I nearly jump at the sight of them, looking back at me. The sight of shredded and raw emotion, one not typically in hers, is so strange and mind-boggling it stills me in my place. 

The nurse standing in front of us clears her throat, bringing us back. I turn my attention to her. Her disdain for either the infinitely famous parents of my special boy, or the sweaty pregnant woman visibly shaking in front of her is evident, though I can’t decipher which it is. The way her eyes look us up and down, as if she’s sure this isn’t real; I’m still hanging on to the hope that it isn’t. 

“The diagnosis is here. This is going to be hard to hear, but Matt has cancer.” Her lips continue moving but past the foul word I don’t hear anything else. It’s replaced in an instant and the crushing sensation is back. 

There’s a ringing in my ears in the place of sound. I gape, my mouth opening and closing. Chris takes one look at me and scoops me up, before my legs can give way. A few minutes, maybe even hours later I’m settled into a wheelchair, one that can properly support my body weight unlike him. 

“We... start treatment... might be futile...far gone... late diagnosis.”

The words come in scrabbles and bits, my hearing temporarily dismembered. Hard as I try, I can’t stop myself from processing them, and they register all to clearly in my spurting mind. 

I believe next I started screaming. 

Someone panicked, trying to calm me. But like the nurse said about Matt, it’s futile. It’s my fault. Matt is dying. 

And it’s my fault. 

I keep screaming, drowning out all other noise in the waiting room. My vision fails, turning blurry and red. They stick me with something. I can barely feel it, due to the fact I’m basically numb. Frozen. 

The world is at an odd angle, distorted and slanted. It’s taken on a horrible haze, everything represents fear. Melancholy, anguish, it all is a repeat of ten years before. Except this time, it’s worse. So much worse. 

Before I can make more comparisons of this irony and repetitive turn of events, everything slides away. 

.  .  .

Once I am stable enough to at least sit in a chair and stare straight ahead, they unhook my from the I.V. and sit me in the waiting room, after assuring that Zack will not leave my side for even a millisecond. He tries to talk to me, but I’m stuck in a whirlwind of shock that I can’t even listen to the sound of his voice without wanting to scream.