Salient Secret

Chapter 5

It felt like I had blinked the weekend away. How was it already Monday?

My test results were supposed to come back today, and I was racked with nerves. This time felt different to all the other hospital trips, which only meant that I needed to speed up my post-death-pack, and I needed to plan my funeral without anyone knowing, by plan I mean price out everything, make the calls, find out who can do what and then write it all down with the names of the places - what I want, how I want it, and then leave the phone number next to each place so that when I die, all they have to do is order from the places I wrote down. And that's it. They don't have to worry about anything other than sending me off.

"Ave!" the sound of Maya's voice pierced through my thoughts, bringing me back to reality.

"Sorry, what's up?" I asked, trying to come off as calm as possible.

"Is everything okay?"

"Yes, I just spaced out for a second."

She studied my face for a few seconds and then continued, "Okay then focus, you said you'd help me with the yearbook photos and you're daydreaming instead of helping." I was not in the right frame of mind when I agreed to this, I really did not want to organize pictures of people who I'd never spoken to, but I did tell Maya I'd help, and that was only because it was the same day her parents had a serious fight. Maya rode her bike to my house just because it was too loud at hers, and so when she asked me to help her, I couldn't say no.

Emotional blackmail? Perhaps. But she didn't do it on purpose.

"Yes, what do you need me to do?" I asked with the best fake smile I could muster.

"Look through these, and separate the good ones from the bad ones," she moved away from the computer, let me sit down, and showed me where to put the good and bad ones.

After what felt like a 100-hour day of sorting hundreds of pictures of random people, I finally got home, I was so tired I just wanted to sleep. But by the look on my parent's face, it didn't seem like it would be that easy.

"Avey wavey, finally you're home, could you please give me a hand in the kitchen?" my dad asked in such a polite way that it was hard to say no, but then I remembered it was even harder to resist sleep, and I felt...exhausted, perhaps unusually so.

"Perhaps another time dad, I'm so tired, please ask Chloe, love you, goodnight." Some might say that was rather dismissive, but I couldn't. I was about to pass out. I did have lung cancer after all, I couldn't be resisting sleep, sleep is basically my medicine, and I would die a lot sooner without my medicine.

After what felt like a couple of hours later, my sleep was disrupted by a knock on the door?

"Hey honey," oh it's the apple of my eye.

"What's up mom?" I groaned in a sleepy voice.

"The doctor came back with your results today..." her mascara was so smudged, I could tell that she was crying and tried to fix herself before coming here, her crying meant it had to be bad news.

"Mom tell me," I said softly.

She began to talk but then stopped herself and handed me the yellow envelope in her hands, I took it from her and saw a scan of my lungs, there was a white furry ball in my left lung, I've seen it before, but it was much bigger than the last time.

"The cancer has grown, doc adjusted your meds to try slow it down, but you can't live with a tumour that big for much longer so..." her eyes started tearing up again, but she continued, "You have 2 options, either just enjoy the rest of your life, which may only be a few more weeks, or try immunotherapy which has a high chance of not working... "

One thing you should know is that I absolutely hated chemotherapy, I know it helped but it took forever to grow some hair back and I had doctors poking at me for weeks on end, I was so lonely. It wasn't like the movies where nurses and the other patients become your friends, sure you talk when you see them but at the end of the day, you're making friends with people on their death beds. It was depressing. Everyone was fighting their own battles, so you're on your own in there, hence why I hated hospitals.

However, I also didn't want to die in a few weeks, I wasn't ready just yet, so if there is a chance this treatment extends my time here then maybe I should take it.

"Okay so let's do the therapy, it could work, you never know." I had to be strong for my mom, we can't both fall apart. I knew full well that it wouldn't work, not with my luck, I've been getting worse for a long time, no matter what treatments I agreed to or the medication I took, I always got worse, that's just how cancer worked, I have already lived longer than most people with SCLC do. There was no reality where I survived this.

"Really? You do remember how miserable you were last time you had to stay at the hospital for weeks right?" she said with hope in her voice. How could I not do this?

"Yes mom, I remember, but I also remember how happy I was to find out I could live for a bit longer."

She hugged me so tight and whispered in my ear, "My brave little girl, I love you so much."

"I love you too mom," I replied.

She finally let go of me and told me that the treatment starts on Saturday and this is going to be my last week in school for a while because with immunotherapy, it usually takes 2 weeks with about 4 sessions in total, with each period of treatment followed by a rest period, and since there might be side effects, I couldn't be trying to focus at school.

However, my mom also said that if I'd like to, I can do my schools online course, but I think that would depress me even more since the effort would be null and void since I'd never actually get to graduate. I'd never get to have a life beyond this.