Crash Into Me | ✓

nine

"I cannot believe you almost kissed him," Nikki moaned without looking up from her phone. The vibrating vest she wore rattled her voice comically, but I ignored her, pretending to be engrossed in my book. Nikki tilted her head, then grabbed the small pillow sitting in her lap and chucked it at me, nailing me right in the head.

"You can't deny the facts, Nat!" Nikki continued.

"There are no facts," I replied, rubbing the spot on my head where the pillow hit me. "Stop being so dramatic about this."

Nikki groaned loudly as she slumped back into her grey chair, poking at one of the tubes hanging out from her pump. "I have to live vicariously through you. I'm not getting any action. No guy wants to hook up with a girl who has lymphoma." As if saying the word with such emphasis would expel it from her body.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize having cancer was the same as having herpes," I snapped back, which got a giggle out of Nikki. My sister, by nature, was not a negative person, even before she had gotten sick. To her, life was a party, like she radiated sunshine and walked around throwing glitter everywhere. So when she managed to squeak out those small, flippant comments, the infrequency of them only made them sting more.

Nikki's nurse interrupted our bantering to check her vitals. As soon as she started checking and rechecking Nikki's numbers, I knew something was off. She looked almost confused, her face twisted up into an uncomfortable grimace.

"Do you feel alright?" I tried to keep my voice steady as I slid out of my chair and stood beside her.

"I...I think so," she mumbled. She gave a weak chuckle, but it was punctuated by more coughing. "I'm okay...no worries."

The attending nurse was past being worried. "You have a fever. 100.2."

I watched on in horror, helpless as two more nurses appeared beside Nikki. I felt dizzy, like all of the air was being sucked out of  my lungs. A few tests later and they had whisked Nikki away to another oncology room down the hall, leaving me to pace down the white tile floors of the hallway, gnawing at my fingernails.

I remembered reading in one of the thousands of articles I had combed through about how dangerous simple fevers were to cancer patients, and my nerves rattled.

A fever is an abnormally high body temperature, usually accompanied by shivering, headache, and in severe instances, delirium.

Normal people who get fevers are usually out of commission for a day or two. A fever is typically the symptom of another underlying condition, such as a virus, and once an antibiotic is administered, the fever subsides.

However, When a person's immune system is compromised because of cancer and its treatments, it's harder to rebound, even from common illnesses. Some can even become life-threatening.

In less formal words: a simple fever could actually kill someone with cancer.

My hands trembled as I dialed my aunt's cell phone number. It only rang once before going to voicemail.

"Aunt Mel...it's Natalie," I couldn't hide the desperation in my voice. Unshed tears stung the corners of my eyes. "I don't know what's going on. They did all these tests on Nikki and she's not doing well and she has a fever and I don't know what to do." I took a heaving breath. "You need to come to the hospital as soon as you get this."

I'd never felt so helpless. I gripped my phone so tightly in my hands that they shook, desperately trying to wrack my brain for someone else to call...but there was no one. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how alone I really was. My mind flickered back to something Nikki had said a few weeks ago.