Letters to The Fighter ✔

24. Appointment

Dear Peter, 

Here's where it starts. The last few letters were riddled with my favorite moments of ours, but now, I have to move on to a time that we both wish had never come. 

Here's when our story began falling apart.

"It's lymphoma, Miss Preston." 

The four words were individual bullets aimed at my chest, each one more agonizing than the one before. I sat frozen, my fingers numb from clenching the white sheets on the hospital bed, my eyes waiting for tears that never arrived. I was deathly calm. Any normal person may have broken down, screamed, or at least asked a million questions. 

There are stages to grief, Peter, and I had somehow, within a number of seconds, skipped to the final one: Acceptance. 

The night sweats, fatigue, loss of appetite, dizziness--they had all been symptoms that I had foolishly ignored for far too long. I thought maybe I wasn't taking my vitamins right or maybe it was just a stomach bug. I thought that perhaps I just needed rest. I wish that had been the case. 

Instead, there I sat in front of a doctor who had just told me that I was dying. 

He seemed indifferent. I wished I was stupid enough to believe the sympathy laced through his words, but I wasn't. He'd done this far too times. He knew that growing attached to people was pointless in his field. 

I wish I was the same way. 

It felt as if the world was no longer spinning. The clock on the wall in front of me was taunting me with every tick tock; time was evil in its nature. It blessed us with the best moments of our lives and then snatched away our happiness far too soon. 

Once I spoke, it felt like my lips hadn't even moved. Everything seemed so surreal. I tried to think, but there were no words being conjured in my mine. 

Even my thoughts had gone silent. 

"How long?" 

My voice was feeble, but steady. The doctor's serious expression faltered, but only for a second. His eyes met mine and I saw a hint of compassion. He flipped the page on his clipboard and sighed heavily before once again meeting my eyes. 

His eyes said it all. They sentenced me to death. 

"The cancer itself starts in your immune system. Cells begin to multiple rapidly, forming a tumor. This spreads to your other organs through your blood, depriving them of necessary nutrients and oxygen. Everyone's body is different, but yours has spread faster than most. Scientifically speaking, you have maybe a year. Remember, that is just an estimated prognosis. A lot of people make it far past this projection and live a long, happy life. However, some..." 

He cleared his throat. I knew what he was going to say. 

'Some die sooner than expected.' 

But he didn't say it. 

"Because of your late detection, Miss Preston, there's no telling, I'm afraid." 

It was like he was reading from a script. I tried to hang onto every word he was saying, but at the same time, I felt myself withering away. How had I not known? I was dying. How could my body betray me in such a way? How could the same nature that I loved with all of my heart sentence me to this ill fate? 

"Miss Preston, uhh--" the Doctor cleared his throat again, looking down at his clipboard, "Lucy...I'm very sorry." 

Ha. An attempt at being compassionate.