Hospital Beds and Memories

A couple of days later, I still wasn’t over Jack, but I decided to stop thinking about him. I still loved him with my entire heart, but Cameron had made me realize that crying and sleeping the entire time wasn’t going to help at all. My life had to go on, I couldn’t let one person ruin it. So, to make it up to my brother, I joined him in doing what he loves most: watching TV and lying down on the couch in weird positions. Well, I was doing that until the doorbell rang.

I got up and walked to the front door the find Abagail waiting on the other side. Confused, I let her in and she asked me if we could talk. I lead her to my bedroom, so Cameron couldn’t hear us, and we took a seat on my mattress.

“So, Jack told me you aren’t talking to him. He’s worried about you, you know,” she started off.

I interrupted before she could continue and rolled my eyes, “has he sent you here, because if he has, you can leave now.”

“No, I came here because I wanted to myself. You deserve an explanation.”

“I thought you came here at 10 pm to do something fun, but I guess this is ok as well. I could use some fun in my life right now.” I stretched out and fell back so I was lying on my back.

“Wait, you’re not mad at me?”

“No, why would I be?”

Abagail stared at me for a while. “Because you’re mad at Jack for this whole situation.”

“I’m mad at him because he lied, not because you’re pregnant.”

“Oh…”

“He’s probably already sleeping with a different girl every day. He doesn’t care about me, which is pretty obvious.” I grabbed a pillow and put in in my face before letting out a frustrated scream. “I’m so stupid!”

“That’s not true.” She peeled the pillow away. “Jack’s friends have been worried about him. He doesn’t talk much anymore, he doesn’t enjoy going out, and he pushes any girls away that approach him. He’s not himself anymore. Trust me, I’ve been talking to them.”

“So you know who his friends are, and I don’t. Great. That makes me feel much better.”

“It’s only because I forced him to give the phone to them.”

“So what? He still lied to me. He said he was going to visit his parents, but he went out to meet you. And he lied to me about you being pregnant.” I sat back up and ran my hands through my hair that was getting very long.

“Only because he knew the baby couldn’t be his.”

“What?”

“Well,” Abagail looked at her hands, which were in her lap, “the pregnancy test also said how many weeks pregnant I would be. It said 3-4 weeks and Jack and I did it way before that. Apparently, when I was in Iceland for quite a long time for work, which I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about, I got very drunk and it happened there. I didn’t know. I also don’t know why I was missing my period before that, I’m guessing stress.”

“Wait. What? So he lied to both of us?”

“No, he told me. After yelling out that I wasn’t pregnant, he told me I wasn’t pregnant with his kid. Didn’t you hear?”

“Well, obviously not!” I exclaimed. “And what about the fact that he said that he was going to visit his parents, but I saw him with you?”

“That’s completely my fault,” she sighed and shook her head, “I had gotten a new phone and my contacts didn’t transfer, but I still had Jack’s number because he wrote it down for me. So I called him to ask to meet both of you, but he told me you were probably at work till later in the afternoon. He still had some time before going to his parents, so he met up with me. He didn’t know I was going to show him pictures of the baby.”

“Oh my god, I’m such a fuck up!” I screamed out.

“No, no. It’s not your fault,” she rubbed my back as my tears started falling, “he said that he had messed up. Instead of telling you the straight up truth, he tried to avoid telling you. He knows that wasn’t the right thing and doesn’t know why he did it.”

“Are you actually telling me the truth, or are you trying to cover up for him?”

“I promise I’m telling you the truth.”

I took a deep breath, this was way too much to take in. “I don’t know what to do, now.”

“Call him, keep ignoring him, break up with him, tell him you love him. You have to choose, I can’t make that decision for you.”

“I-- I think I just want to go the bed and see what I’ll do tomorrow. This is too much for me to handle.”

“That’s ok. Go to bed and get some rest. You need a good night’s sleep.” She started getting up.

“Thanks, Abagail,” I mumbled and smiled at her, “for everything.”

“That’s what best friends are for, right?”

----

The next morning I woke up to my phone frantically buzzing and ringing. It was desperate for me to pick it up and answer, like it was warning me for what was about to come. I checked the large clock before reaching out for the annoying technology. It was 7 fucking am. Who the fuck was calling me at 7 pm? I let my eyes adjust to the bright screen and looked at the unknown number. What was going on?

“Hello?” I muttered in a sleepy voice.

“Hi, is this Ireland Knight?” A formal female voice greeted me.

“Umm, yeah…?”

“This is the Johns Hopkins Hospital, we have your results here.”

“Oh, ok.”

“We would like you to come to the hospital to discuss them, that way there will be no misunderstandings and you’ll be able to ask as many questions as you need.”

“Oh.” I started thinking, why wasn’t she telling me right now?

“Will you be able to be here at quarter to eight? Or should I arrange an appointment for a different day?”

“No, that’s fine. Thank you.”

“Ok, then. We’ll see you in a bit.”

“Yeah… bye.”

I got up without any emotion and stared in front of me as I automatically walked to Cam’s room and knocked on the door before opening it. He groaned and moved up, lifting the covers, inviting me to join him. He probably thought I was here because I was upset and didn’t want to sleep.

“Cam, get up.” I numbly walked up to his bed.

“No,” he groaned and turned around, “are you coming or not?”

“No, Cam, you need to bring me to the hospital.”

This seemed to wake him up. “What? What’s wrong!”

“They have my results.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, they want to discuss them at the hospital. I wasn’t given any information.”

“Ok, when do you have to be there?”

“In half an hour.”

Cameron jumped out of his bed and put on some clothes. “We better get going, then. Do you want to change?”

I shook my head. I was too terrified and scared to even think about that. Why didn’t they just tell me over the phone? Was there something terribly wrong with me? Was I going to die? How long did I have to live? What was going to happen to me?

I looked both at what I was wearing and figured that wearing a zip up hoodie over my tank top would be good enough. My pants were clearly pajama pants, but I didn’t care. I was going to a hospital, I didn’t give a fuck about how I looked. Before putting on some shoes, I quickly put my hair in a messy braid. In no time we were in the cold car on our way to the hospital.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Cameron turned off the ignition as we stood in the hospital parking lot.

“It’s fine. You can come to the waiting room, though.” I took a deep breath before getting out.

He stayed close to my side as I signed in and sat on one of the weird waiting room chairs. They were made to look comfortable, but they were always the worst. The wood would make your butt tingle and your back would start getting the worst cramps ever. Or the fabric on them would cause rug burns and rashes. Nothing about them was nice, they also looked very ugly.

Thinking about how they could improve the entire design kept me occupied until an old man called me up. Since my accident I only ever had appointments with Val, why did they change it now? What was going on? I didn’t want to talk about this with some random stranger! Doctors were terrifying to me, they were always so serious and purposely wrote badly. I wanted Val!

But I still followed the doctor. He led me to his office and made me sit down on the chair opposite of his. I sat on the edge and looked at the large file that was placed on his desk. It was obvious that I had been at the hospital way too many times.

“So, Ireland, how are you doing today?” he asked me politely.

I brought my legs up to my chest to make myself more comfortable. “Tired.”

“I can see you’re still wearing your pajamas.”

“That’s because I was woken up by somebody telling me I had to come the hospital just minutes before I had to leave to be here on time.”

“I’m sorry about that, we just didn’t want to wait much longer. We don’t want it to get any worse.”

“What to get worse?”

“We’ll get to that in a sec.” He opened the file and scanned through it. “So your usual doctor is Valerie Reynolds. She will still be responsible for most things, but I’m a specialized doctor and you will come to me at the beginning of the process, for crucial checkups, and whenever something serious happens.”

Specialized doctor? For what? I looked around and saw posters of blood cells and other diagrams. This wasn’t helping me much. I just wanted to know what was wrong with me. It was serious enough to have a doctor just for it. And what was the process I was going to go through? Why were they keeping everything from me!

“So, I’m just going to get into it,” he closed the file and got a diagram from a drawer, “we were pretty stupid for not testing this first, as you have some history with it. Your file says you had a similar form at the age of six to eleven. So, I can confirm you have Acute Myeloid Leukemia. this means that…”

He started showing me things of the diagram, but I wasn’t listening anymore. Leukemia. It made so much sense, the nosebleed, bruising, tiredness, and I had realized that I was losing some weight.

I had cancer and I knew it before the doctor even told me.