Anastasia | ✔︎ published

03 : Anastasia

I fell asleep in a hard chair right beside Alex's hospital bed. With a groan, I lifted my head up from the palm of my hand as my eyes began to adjust to the light. I could hear my little sister's voice, but it was just taking my brain a while to process her words.

"Okay, that sounds terrifying," Alex said. With those words, I immediately snapped out of whatever trance I was in before I looked up at my sister. She smiled at me, shaking her head softly. Her skin was already becoming paler and it was beginning to scare me.

"Morning my little Snapchat, school bus, m&m package. The doctor is finally here," Alex said. She had a great way of not showing how much pain she was in. If someone random were to walk in, they never would've been able to guess that her organs are dying off.

"How do you come up with yellow things like that on the spot?" I asked, chuckling softly. My hands came over to my face just to make sure there was no drool on the side of my mouth as I tried my best to fix my hair. Then, I finally looked over at the doctor. He was a very beautiful man-blue eyes, blonde hair, white teeth.

"Hi, you must be Alexandria's sister. Heard you snoring a little," he chuckled before giving me a glance of those pearly whites. I smiled at him before turning towards my sister with wide eyes. She looked as if she were holding in a laugh as she watched the scene unfold.

"Yes, I'm Anastasia," I said, reaching out for a handshake. It took a while for me to understand the American custom of a handshake. I wasn't really used to that sort of thing where I was from.

"Anastasia, that's a beautiful name. I'm Dr. Jacob Flores, your sister's oncologist," he said, looking in my eyes for a second. He had a tall, solid build and it made me question if he had a hustling side job. There were no words said until Alex cleared her throat leaving me to narrow my eyes at her. He cleared his throat as well before opening up the file in his hands.

"I was looking at her scans and her body is equivalent to a sixty-year-old woman's," he began.

"Okay, ouch. Just rip the band-aid off, why don't 'cha?" Alex sarcastically spoke. A small chuckle escaped from me as he sent her an apologetic smile.

"When they handed me the scans, I would have never been able to guess that she was a seventeen-year-old girl. The cancer shouldn't be attacking her organs so aggressively and quickly. I thought about removing the cancerous organs with a transplant, but that takes months. Months that she may not have," he said. My eyebrows pulled together as I processed his words.

"Months that she may not have? What- What are you saying?" I asked, my hand instinctively reaching out for my sister's. He had a sad look on his face. A look that was full of pain and sorrow. The only look in the world that I did not want to see coming from a doctor.

"Look-"

"How many months do you think she has?" I asked him. He glanced down at Alex who was wearing a frightened expression on her face as she looked at him.

"Maybe we should go out-"

"How many months?" I asked, my voice breaking. He let out a sigh before walking towards me.

"Luckily, the cancer hasn't gotten to her kidney. Once it does, I'm predicting based on the way it's aggressively attacking her body and the amount of chemo she's going to go through-I believe that she has two months," he said, his voice full of fake sadness.

My shoulders dropped. I wanted to cry once again, but I knew that I couldn't do that in front of Alex. I had to be strong for my little sister. It wouldn't be fair for me to break down and cry. When my eyes met her chocolate orbs, I had expected them to be full of tears. They weren't full of anything. It had to be her overachieving mind attempting to find an answer to all of this.