Evangelines Bucket List

Chapter 14: Confidential

Being diagnosed with osteosarcoma was the worst news I had ever received as a teenager. I can't say the worst news in my life, well, because I haven't lived a full life. At the old hospital, where I was diagnosed, Doctor Oscar Fidler told me I had a seventy percent chance of survival. But that was only if everything went correctly and my body reacted well to the drug trial.

I'm starting a new line of chemo today.

It's been five months since I first arrived. Four and a half months since I met Evangeline. Three days since I realized I was losing my mind in a white hospital room.

Evangeline's been on chemo for eight months. I don't know what it's like. I don't know how it feels. It's my first time. All I really hoped for was just the chemo to accept my body. For everything to go good.

Was it obvious I wanted to ask Evangeline what chemo was like? No. It wasn't.

But my mind raced with questions. Here, at Ramona's Hospital, I was dreading my meeting with Doctor Agnes Raja. She always got straight to the point. Never started a conversation to make her patients comfortable. Sometimes, I wondered if she even cared about us. I know. What an awful thought. But I couldn't help but think about it.

I was completely caught up in my thoughts, I wasn't paying any attention to whoever was coming into my room. It wasn't Evangeline this time. It was my mom. I was still seventeen. I couldn't be without a parent when it came to these meetings.

"Beckett? Are you okay?" She chuckled.

"Oh, hey mom. Didn't see you coming in."

"Yeah, I can tell." She smiled widely.

I just let out a heavy sigh with a smile. I didn't want her to see me looking nervous. But my mom notices anything, especially when it comes to me.

"Nervous?"

"What? Pfft, no." I said nervously.

"Just look at chemo as another step of getting better. You can and will get out of this. You've done chemo before but it's just different this time. You can do this." She put her hand on my shoulder.

I calmed down. Once she said that, I just knew things were really going to change. For the better.

While my mom and I were staring at each other, Doctor Raja walks in with a straight face.

"Hello Liliana. Shall we get this meeting started?"

"Yes. Let's go." My mom stands up and follows her.

We both follow her as she takes us to this room that felt like it was too far away. But when we finally arrived, we immediately sat down and got straight to talking.

"Okay, Beckett, for the next ten weeks you will be on chemotherapy. You will or won't feel some or most side effects of chemo but when you do, it's completely normal."

"What kind of chemotherapy is it?" Asked my mom.

"Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy." She said clearly.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a type of chemo that you take before and after surgery."

"After?" I mumbled.

"Yes and that could take at least up to a year."

"Let me discuss what will happen for these next couple of weeks-"

But I never listened. I did not know I would be on chemo for such a long period. There were conversations in the background. Their voices blended with the noise while I was dozing off. I just had no idea how I really felt about this.