Starting chemotherapy on April Fools’ Day was the worst kind of joke.
This was her life now: sitting in different waiting rooms. Meeting countless nurses and doctors. Someone was always taking her blood, or taking an x-ray, or taking her vitals. Cason had been giving to so many people, she was turning into a hollowed-out husk of whom she used to be.
Just a few weeks ago, she’d sat in this very same clinic, in this very same chair, and felt her entire world slide to the left. Sure, it was still her life, but everything had changed to the point that it was like she’d fallen through a wormhole or time warp. Everything still looked the same, the world was still spinning, but her entire life was forever changed.
Dr. Henderson had looked at Cason and as delicately as he could, had destroyed her life. “I’m sorry, Cason, but you have an aggressive, cancerous tumor on your knee.” In that one moment, her perfect, prima-ballerina, pink-tutu world fell off its pointe.
She wasn’t Cason Martin, prima ballerina, anymore. She was Cason Martin, number T7654908, cancer patient.
She had sat in one of the childish exam rooms. Everything was in bright primary colors; hell, even the ceiling tiles had been painted. Dr. Henderson had these bushy eyebrows that made Cason want to take some wax or something to them and try to make them point up, like a villain in an old silent movie. She should have been focused on what the doctor was saying. It was probably life and death news, but she could only hear ocean waves and could only stare at his overly ambitious brows.
She looked at him, trying to focus, as he told her that the pain and fatigue she’d been dealing with was not because of stress and a dance injury.
Instead, when her leg had given out on her during the audition, her femur had crumbled into tiny pieces. And the strongest bone in her body had crumbled because it was obliterated by a tumor that was growing and eating her bones. Until that moment, she hadn’t really believed that kids got cancer. She’d always thought it was a plot device.
Now today, Monday, was the first day of her very first chemotherapy session.
How could this be her life? She was missing countless rehearsals and classes. Not to mention her school work. She might have only attended school for half a day, but if she wanted to graduate, she was going to have keep to up.
Anxiety filled her gut, tingling and skirting around her abdomen before chasing signals and making its way up her nervous system, attaching itself to all her nerve endings. She took a deep breath, refusing to let it get the better of her. She would stay calm. She would not scream and cry like her soul begged her to do.
The unforgiving hospital chair beneath her was hard, her braced leg sticking straight out, her knee unmovable. It was uncomfortable at best, bordering on painful. She tried to shift her weight, but it only caused the brace to dig into her skin.
“Let me help.” A dark-haired boy around her age came over, taking a chair and sliding it under her leg. She vaguely recognized him but couldn’t quite place him. “Any better?”
“It helps.” The shift took the pressure off her leg, relieving the stress that pulled on her back. “Thanks.”
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