Page 65 of Part of Forever
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All I can hear iswhite noise. After Doctor Barker said that I have a tumor growing in the exact same place as Lucy’s, I’ve gone numb. After blood tests confirmed there was cancer growing somewhere in my body, they did a full-body scan and found the tumor.
Mom cried.
Surgery might be a short-term fix, like it was for Lucy, but with how aggressive this kind of tumor is, Doctor Barker doesn’t think that surgery is going to be the only option this time. There will be radiation, possibly chemotherapy, and surgery.
I have cancer. I have cancer. I have cancer.I feel like I’m trying to swim through the words. How do I have cancer? How is it back? How is it so bad? Do I really have a death sentence now?
“Do we know how much time she has?” Dad’s question snaps me back to reality, but Doctor Barker shakes her head.
“We’ll have a better estimate of that in a few weeks, after we see how Rosie responds to the treatments; but even then, it will be hard to know, just like with Lucy.” She smiles sadly at us. “I am so sorry.”
Nathan is sitting on the floor of the smallhospital room, hugging his knees to his chest. Mom’s got her head in her hands and Dad is rubbing her back. I’m sitting frozen on the bed. I’m still in my normal clothes, since I’m not checked in at the moment, and I want to cry, but I can’t seem to make the tears come.
Mostly I feel empty.
I want to feel angry. Angry that they didn’t catch this before, angry that cancer has been possibly growing inside my body for months, since my first surgery, and we could have been fighting it all along.
But I feel nothing.
We’re all quiet on the drive home, and when we get there, I say that I’m tired and I’ll be in my room if anyone needs me. As I shut my door and crawl straight into bed, I pull my phone out of my nightstand. Still nothing.
Hey, Tuck. I don’t know how you’re feeling but I miss you and I got some news from the doctor, which you said you wanted to know. Can we talk?
Please?
“Can I come in?” I put my phone face down on my nightstand and motion for Nathan to come into my room. “How’re you holding up?”
“Fine, I guess,” I say. I don’t know how I feel, I just know that I’d feel better if Tucker and I were on talking terms. Because even when we weren’t together, we still texted and talked nearly every day.
“I’m sorry, Rosie.” He sinks onto my bed next to me, our heads nearly brushing on the pillow. “I mean, I’d be upset, too, if the person I loved was sick. But I wouldn’t walk away.”
I don’t have a response for that; I didn’t think Tucker would walk away either. But I guess it really is too much to handle. I’d walk away if I could, if it wasn’t my life.
I squeeze his hand.
“I’m scared.” Nathan’s whisper is barely audible.
Me too.“Of what?” I ask instead.
“Of being alone. Of losing you. I don’t know if I can handle it.” I sit up and wrap my arms around him. I want to say that we don’t know that anyone is going to lose me. We don’t know yet if the treatment will work or what stage my cancer is really at until they do a biopsy of the tumor, which they’re doing tomorrow. But even with that, it doesn’t matter because of the placement. I really am on limited time now, just like Lucy was. But I don’t know what I’d do without Nathan, so I can’t even fathom what he’s feeling right now.
“You take it one day at a time,” I say, trying to reassure myself just as much as him. Because the truth is, I’m scared of dying. It’s the one thing that we don’t really know anything about. Will I just stop being? Will part of me go somewhere else? We don’t have answers and that terrifies me. “You just take it one day at a time and surround yourself with a lot of people who love you.”
Nathan sniffles and nods. “I’m not ready to lose you.”
“Me either.” I choke on the words because I’ll be losing him, too, if that’s what happens in the end. “But you won’t be alone.” That, at least, gives me comfort.
“It won’t be the same,” he says quietly. “A life without you would feel too empty.” I don’t know how to respond to that. We’ve never really had someone close to us die; I don’t know how to comfort my twin.
“You should try to talk to Tucker,” he says finally.
“I have been trying,” I say. “I think he’s just going to avoid me forever.”
Nathan shakes his head. “He won’t, he cares about you too much. You two need to talk. You have to tell him about today. He still loves you, and I know he misses you. You two are, like, meant for each other, and even if you’ve got this crazy tumor, that doesn’t mean you aren’t supposed to be together.”
“Since when do you believe in soulmates?”
