At Your Bedside

•Ch.9•

My father is in the middle of the road. Standing with his hands in front of him. There is a screech of car tires filling my ears as I watch my father try and stop Cade. I stare at the headlights shining on my fathers blue eyes as I listen to the honking. Something goes flying over the car and the car goes straight into a metal poll.

I wake up gasping. The phone is ringing. I pick it up with my trembling hand. "Hello?"

"Hello. Is this Casey Johansen?"

"Yes. This is her."

"This is your mother's doctor. I would like you to come to the hospital at eleven o'clock. I need to speak to you."

"Yeah, yeah. Sure. I'll be there. Bye," I say.

At eleven, I am sitting in the lounge. Right where I used to sit. There are more people than usual.

"Casey Johansen!" the doctor shouts. I follow him into a small room. There are pictures on the wall and they are of him. And his family. I sit down. He is typing on his computer. I stare at the photographs. He had a daughter and a beautiful wife in the first few pictures. In the following, it is of his family at the hospital. His little girl is in one of the hospital beds. She has a tube in her. Right next to that picture, there is one of the little girl in a wheelchair. But now she only has one leg.
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"I know how you feel."
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That's what he meant. His daughter must have died. I stare at my toes. "How old was she?" I ask.

"What?"

"Your daughter. How old was she?" I ask looking up now.

He looks up at the wall. "She was six."

"What was her name?"

"Bo."

"She was so beautiful."

"How did you know?"

"What?"

"You keep on saying 'was'. How did you know she passed away."

"Cuz you told me. You said that you know how it feels to lose someone you love." He looks at me and then back at the wall.

"She had osteosarcoma in her left leg when she was three. At four they amputated that leg and the bone cancer was gone. About a year later the scar had healed but it caused an infection. At least that's what we thought. But she actually got a reoccurrence of cancer in her leg which later spread throughout her whole body. Bo died in her sleep. My wife and I don't talk much any more."

"I'm sorry for your loss. Bo was beautiful." He smiles.

"Enough about me. We are here to talk about you. About your mother's...death, if that's alright with you."

"I can cope."

"Right before your mother died, we found a cure."