Life After Death

Chapter 2

Being 16 with breast cancer wasn’t the easiest thing. Obviously. Once I was able to go back to school, I expected much sympathy from my peers. Cancer is a serious topic. Yet, of course, it was high school. There isn’t much sympathy at all. High school has its up and downs. Well, I was a junior when I was supposed to die. It sucked. I mean I didn’t go to school that much anyways. Life for me was short. My life after death will feel like an eternity. There’s a difference between growing up and watching others grow up.

I got to watch my funeral. I saw my burial.

Watching your own funeral, and seeing the tension between people isn’t the greatest feeling. It’s empty. It’s weird. You are now shut out from the rest of the living world. You loose the part of you that made you live. My service took place in the Lutheren church that all my other relatives held their funeral services. During the funeral service my mother went up and spoke. I sat in the front pew. Normally the first few pews are reserved for family, I assumed I had a reservation for my own funeral. I sat next to my dad. I saw him cry for the first time. Watching that made me break. He sat there staring at the ground, just crying. He was an emotional wreck.

When my mom walked up to the podium, she began telling everyone how I was the definition of compassion and commitment-blah blah blah.

“She was truly my little girl,” She said. “I watched her grow up into the amazing women she is today. Her smile was the greatest thing. After the second week I had prepared myself to watch her go. She knew she had more time. She smiled each day and lived by happiness. Ciara was so confident that she wouldn’t let cancer get the best of her. It ended up taking over her, but she went down with a fight. We love her so much. We always will.”

“They don’t know.” I told myself. Cancer didn’t kill me.

 My killers name was Peter Shai. Dr. Shai. He was my doctor. He seemed like a nice person, he did his job, he tried to keep me alive for as long as he could, but I guess I lived for too long. Dr. Shai was the one who told my family I would have only two weeks to live. After I survived, my mom and dad thought I had beaten cancer. I still had checkups with my doctor and that was expected. Yet, when my checkups decreased and I rarely went, Dr. Shai wanted to have one last check up. It really was my last one.

At this point I was 18. My two years in between my cancer and me surviving it, was a normal, boring teenage life. I drove to the hospital by myself. It was 7:30pm and the sun was just now setting. It was a cold December evening. My mom would meet me there at the hospital. As I walked into the waiting room, I was welcomed by the receptionist. 

"Ah! Welcome Ciara. We've missed you. How are you doing?" She seemed almost awkward with her welcoming. 

"Fine, thank you." I gave a slight smile. 

"Dr. Shai should be right with you." She smiled back. I wasn't fond of awkward scenarios. I sat down in the waiting room. I was the only one there. I picked up a People magazine and entertained myself by reading the latest false celebrity drama. I sat there for about ten minutes until the receptionist spoke up again,

"Ciara. Dr. Shai is ready to see you. You can just head right over to his office." His office? I expected a nurse to take me to a room and then the Dr. will come to me. This is a checkup. I'm not supposed to go to his office. 

"Oh. Alright. Thanks." I was concerned. 

"Goodbye." The receptionist said this as if I wasn't going to see her on the way out. And I wasn't. My anxioety started to kick in, as usual. I just thought my mom was in there and we were gonna talk about finacial things or something. I walked into his office, the door was open. 

"Hi Ciara. You look great, good to see you're doing well. How are you? Please, sit down." He smiled big.

"Thanks. I'm fine." I didn't sit right away. Dr. stands up and walks over to the front of his desk and leans on it, arms crossed because he sensed I wasn't in the mood to sit. 

"So, I was wondering, since you are my most succseful patient, if you would like to come with me to a little get together with a few of the nurses, in honor of you." The great big smile remained  on his face.

"Um. I don't know what to say. My mom is supposed to meet me here, I will have to contact her..." 

"Oh-I already called her. She's with the nurses. You remember nurse Smith, correct?" He inturrupted me.

"Yes." I lied. I was honored that he was doing this for me but I felt unsafe, but of course I didn't want to let down my mom if she was there, so I decided to go.

"Alright. Well, let me just get together my stuff. We won't be gone long, so we can come back for the check up. It's at Tilly's, your mom said it was your favorite resturant. We can take my car." He grabbed his coat and car keys. 

"Oh. No it's fine, I drove here. I can just take my car." I wasn't about to get into my doctors car. There was no way. Though of course, I did. 

"Ah come on! Let's save energy, am I right?" He grins. I nodded. Dr. Shai walks out of his office and turns back to make sure I'm following him. We start heading out of the hospital through one of the back doors, where his car is parked. 

He owns a grey mercedes benz. I mean, he was a doctor. He walks me over to the passanger side and opens the door for me. I sit on the the cool leather seat. He shuts the door behind me. Once I was sitting there in the car alone for only a few seconds, I realized this was a mistake. Doesn't it sound weird for someone to get into their Doctor's car and go to a party in honor of them? It was too late anyways. Dr. Shai gets in the drivers seat and begins to start the car. 

"My mom's there, right?" I question. 

"Yea! I just talked to her over the phone." He replies softly. 

We head out of the hospital parking lot and turn onto the main road. The sun has set by now. It was dark, a perfect set up for him to kidnap me. Dr. Shai drives into town, Ridge Town. It was a small town. We start passing by the local pharmacy and to the left is Tilly's, my favorite resturant ever since I was a little girl. Tilly's closes at 9:00pm so we only had an hour before we were supposed to head back to the Hospital. It seemed reasonable, because he told me he wanted to do a checkup afterwards. We pull up at the intersection. The red light shines throughout the whole car. I continued to stare at the window and avoid eye contact.

The stop light turns green, and Dr. Shai turns right.

"Tilly's is to the left, Dr. Shai." I point to Tilly's just incase he didn't know which way was left.

"I know." He smirks.