Page 5 of Anastasia

“Morning, my little emoji. 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 were dying.

“How do you come up with yellow things like that on the spot?” I asked, chuckling softly. My hands rose 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 beautiful man—blue eyes, blond hair, white teeth.

“Hi, you must be Alexandria’s sister. Heard you snoring a little.” He chuckled, giving me a glance of those pearly whites. I smiled at him before turning toward 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 had taken a while for me to grasp the American custom of a handshake. I wasn’t used to that sort of thing in Australia.

“Anastasia. That’s a beautiful name. I’m Dr. Jacob Flores, your sister’s oncologist,” he said, looking into my eyes for a moment. Suddenly, Alex cleared her throat, leaving me to narrow my eyes at her.

“I was looking at her scans and her body is equivalent to that of a sixty-year-old woman’s,” he began.

“Okay,ouch. Just rip the Band-Aid off, why don’t ’cha?” Alex sarcastically exclaimed. 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. 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 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. He glanced down at Alex, who sported wide eyes and parted lips as she looked at him.

“Maybe we should go out?”

“How many months?” I demanded.

He let out a sigh before walking toward me. “Luckily, the cancer hasn’t spread to her kidneys. 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. If we would have caught the cancer sooner, she would have had a better fighting chance. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s too late,” he said, his voice dulling in defeat.

My shoulders fell. I wanted to scream and cry, 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. When my eyes met her coppery gaze, 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.

“I’m sorry, but we are going to do the best we can to make sure that the cancer does not spread. There have been many patients that we predicted would survive for only four weeks and ended up living for ten years. We never truly know, we can only predict. Your sister is in the best hands possible, and I’m going to make sure that we give her the longest life we can,” he promised.

I hated how I couldn’t form words. I wanted to be able to say all the right things to make everyone feel better. The truth was it was always Alex who did that. I was the negative one, but Alex always remained hopeful.

The doctor’s eyes yearned for me to trust him. They were begging me to relieve my worries by having faith in the professionals. Little did he know, bad luck was common in our family. The second we open our hearts to having faith or putting trust in someone, we would end up being reminded of why that voice in the back of our head screamed at us not to.

“Thanks,” I gritted out, my voice shaking. I wasn’t sure what I was thanking him for, but the word flew out of me because it was the only word that didn’t sting.

“I want this to be easier for you, I really do. Trust me when I say that I’m giving this one hundred and ten percent, Ms. Smith,” he pleaded. He gave me one last look of sorrow and then proceeded to walk over to Alex. “I’ll see about starting you on that chemotherapy in about thirty minutes.”

After she nodded her head, the doctor turned on his heels and walked out of the room. I watched his retreating figure before my eyes shut tightly.

“You have work in an hour. You should go home and get ready,” Alex stated calmly, as if her oncologist hadn’t just told her that her world could possibly end within two months. It left me puzzled. How could she do such a good job at feeling so unbothered?

“Alex—”

She raised a hand, stopping my words. A frown coaxed my lips at the sight of her shaking her head back and forth. “No, my little taxicab, I don’t want to hear it. He said there is a chance I could live beyond that. I’ve always been a fighter. So, I’m going to need you to go to work, be normal, and just try not to worry so much about me. I’m okay,” she affirmed.

“I wish you would stop comparing my hair to yellow things,” I said, a chuckle escaping me to make up for the amount of sadness I was currently feeling. She smiled at me, beaming happily. Another thing that I loved about her was how happiness radiated off of her so effortlessly. I didn’t know what I would ever do without that.

“What’s the fun in that?” she asked, quirking up an eyebrow. It felt odd how she decided to avoid everything the doctor had said. I wasn’t sure if she was covering her disappointment with humor, or if it was because she truly felt hopeful.

“I wouldn’t go to work if I didn’t have to come up with some way to pay the electricity bill. It doesn’t feel right to be working, leaving you in here all by yourself,” I told her, running my hand through her hair.

“I promise that I’m okay. Please, just go to work,” she told me. I sent a forced smile her way before going over to grab my bag. I quickly shoved my phone inside of it. As I walked away from her and toward the door, I could feel something trying to drag me back. I wasn’t sure if it was guilt or if it was my overprotectiveness urging me to stay.

Just as I was about to turn around, Alex yelled out, “Leave!”

Smiling to myself, I walked out of the room. The doctor was standing behind the counter, conversing with the nurse, before his eyes caught mine. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but it didn’t look like it was good.

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