How Did We Get Here? ✔️

27. The past

27. The past

               

"Mr and Ms Sherwood, thank you for meeting me here." The doctor closed the door of his office behind him and sat behind his desk, inviting Sky and Callen to take their place.

Noah was with Sky's mother back home. They had taken him to the hospital to do the tests the doctor had asked for and now here they were, one week later, waiting to hear the results.

"The results for Noah's blood test, X-ray and CT all came back two days ago but I wanted to make sure I was right before calling you here. So we did some additional testing yesterday." The doctor began.

Sky nodded, fidgeting anxiously with the hem of her shirt. Callen had taken her other hand in his and he was bouncing his leg nervously.

"What's going on?" Sky asked, impatient to get that growing uneasy feeling out of her stomach.

"What I'm going to say is going to be very difficult, and I am so sorry. While analyzing the tests, we found a tumor in your son's liver. You were right when you thought you had seen a lump in his abdomen and the symptoms you noticed helped us in his diagnosis."

"A tumor? Wh-what are you talking about?" Callen struggled to ask.

The room felt like it was a thousand degrees suddenly and Sky couldn't breathe. The uneasy feeling in her stomach was taking a hold of her entire body. She wanted to puke.

"Your son has a type of liver cancer called Hepatoblastoma. It is very rare but seen in children during their first three years of life."

"What? No, no but he's not sick, he's running around all the time and laughing and..."

"I understand that it is very difficult to process and understand right now but we need to act fast so that we can have a chance at treating him. The tumor is already growing and we need to stop it as soon as possible."

"But... there must a mistake, Noah's not sick." Sky continued to argue. "He's only three, he's a three year old little boy, he's not sick."

Callen held her hand tighter. Tears had escaped his eyes.

"I know it must really hard I'm really sorry." The doctor said. "Do you guys need a minute?"

Callen said "yes please" so the doctor nodded and left, closing the door behind him.

"I- I can't-" Sky's breathing was shallow and she kept trying to push the collar of her shirt away from her neck.

"Sky baby look at me." Callen had kneeled in front of her and he framed her face with both of his hands. "Sky, breathe."

"I can't." She struggled to get the words out. The room was spinning around her and felt so hot, it was impossible to get air to her lungs.

"Sky look at me, I'm right here, focus on my voice and breathe. Do it like me," Callen instructed her.

She listened but it took long, long minutes for her to be able to calm down and be able to breathe again. When that happened, she burst into tears and held on to Callen for dear life.