Running late, I rush around my apartment like a maniac trying not to forget anything. It’s inevitable, though; almost every day I forget something and end up going back inside. I learned to leave ten minutes early to give myself extra time.

My phone rings, and my latest and favorite ringtone—“Sugar” by Maroon 5—blares in the morning silence as I step outside.

Without thinking, I answer. “Hello.”

“Ms. Gentile?”

I fumble with my keys, trying to hold my coffee while balancing the phone on my shoulder and locking the door. “Yes.”

“This is Dr. Craig’s office. He’d like to speak with you as soon as possible.”

“I’m here.” I jog toward my car, trying to keep on schedule. I have every traffic light timed. Any deviation and I’d hit the most horrendous rush-hour traffic downtown.

“Please hold, ma’am,” the woman replies before the worst eighties pop music plays and I know I’m on hold.

Placing the call on speaker, I toss my purse onto the passenger seat. I balance my phone on my lap and start the car.

As I turn on the engine, I hear his voice. “Callie?”

“I’m here, Doc, but I’m late. What did the tests say?” I ask, trying to be nonchalant even though my insides are twisting into knots.

He’s been good to me. Probably better than I deserve. He always squeezes me in when I’m sick, even if he has a backlog of patients for weeks.

“Can you come into my office?” He clears his throat and doesn’t have the same jovial attitude he often does when I visit his office.

“Doc, just tell me. I can handle it.” I check both directions, about ready to pull out, when he speaks the words I’ve been dreading.

“You have cancer.”

Dead fuckin’ silence.

Time stops.

I freeze.

My car rolls into the street, and there’s a loud bang.

Everything goes black.

---

Whispers.

I can hear them but can’t see who is around me. I try to make out the words, but it’s muffled nonsense.

It was all just a dream.

The phone call.

It never happened.

The car rolling back—just a figment of my imagination.

Maybe I never really woke up this morning. My brain just played a cruel trick on me. Not even a dream, a nightmare.

I just need to wake up. If I do, everything will be different. I’ll be me. My life will be the same as it was yesterday.

“Callie.”

He’s not real. Wake up.

“Callie,” he repeats. “Wake up.”

It’s not real. Then his hand touches me and my eyes fly open as I realize it wasn’t a dream.

“Callie,” he says again.

Dr. Craig is sitting on my bed, in the hospital, and I remember what he said to me before I rolled backward into the street and was hit by another car. The news, which I still don’t totally believe, shocked the hell out of me. When I met with him to do the tests, I begged him to tell me over the phone and not to make me come back into the office.

I wanted to know without him looking me in the eyes for a few reasons. First, he’s a friend. I mean, we don’t have drinks together, but he’s always taken care of me. At one point, he asked me out, but I declined because I just wasn’t into him sexually. Second, I’m too damn busy to take more time off work to meet with him when he can give me the same information over the phone. No matter how you tell someone they have cancer, it doesn’t change the fact they have it. I figured I could handle it. I promised him I could. Dumb, Callie. Dumb.

I snap my eyes shut, clenching them so tightly they ache too. No. No. No.

“Open your eyes.”

Lying there, I take a few deep, harsh breaths, trying to will it all away. Why couldn’t I fall back asleep and wake up in my bed?

“Callie,” he hisses. Maybe I heard him wrong since my heart beat so hard that I practically couldn’t hear anything.

Slowly, I open my eyes, hoping it will all be a dream.

But it isn’t.

He is real.

I’m in the hospital.

But I’m alive.

And then I remember what he said. “You have cancer.”

Maybe that part was a dream.

I could’ve been in an accident and imagined the news he dropped on me over the phone. It’s entirely possible. Right? I could’ve hit my head and the drugs they gave me caused the worst nightmare of my life. I’ve known it’s a possibility since I had the tests, but I never believed that I would have it.

“What happened?”

He sits on the edge of the bed, resting his hand on my leg. “You had an accident.”

“I remember,” I whisper, looking around the room and realizing I’m in the ER.

His face is somber when he drags his eyes to mine. “Do you remember what happened before the accident?” Somehow, his frown grows more profound, and I know that it wasn’t a dream.

“I don’t,” I lie.

“We were on the phone and—” He pauses and scoots closer before grabbing my hand.

I push my head back into the pillow, wishing I could disappear. “Cancer,” I whisper.

He nods, and his brown eyes become remorseful. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

Hearing him say the words again still doesn’t make it feel real. “What type?” I ask, knowing everything about the wretched disease. I studied biology in college and specialized in medicine before becoming a molecular biologist.

“Leukemia.”

“Are you sure? I mean, it’s hard to tell with a simple blood test.” I still haven’t faced reality. Even hearing the words come from his mouth a second time doesn’t convince me.

“Yes. I can say with one hundred percent certainty that it’s leukemia.”

The room starts to spin. Things fade and gray. The sound of my heart pounding in my ears dulls along with everything else.

I’m not a fool. I knew when I went for testing there was a possibility I had cancer, but I never truly believed it. Sitting here now, listening to him say the words again, doesn’t make it more believable either.

“Callie.”

Snapping back to the present, I become hyperaware of everything around me. “What?” I yell. Fear starts to choke me. I know what the diagnosis means. A long road of treatment, and if I am lucky, I’ll survive.

“Stay with me.” Dr. Craig strokes my hand with his thumb, trying to comfort me.

Tears begin to fill my eyes, the sunlight streaming through the windows looking like stars. “I’m here,” I mumble before a sob breaks free and echoes in the room.

I have cancer. Cancer. How in the fuck did I get cancer?

My mind starts to fill with images that haunt me—flashes of my hair falling out in clumps, bruises and lumps covering my porcelain skin, and eventually, a casket. No one hears the word cancer and thinks about living.

No one.

Next to the word cancer in the dictionary, it should just say, “the scariest fucking thing in the world that will eventually kill you.”

People do survive. I know they do. But upon hearing the news, that’s the last thing on my mind.

“I need a second opinion.” He could be wrong. Medicine is still called a “practice,” and doctors get shit wrong all the time.

“I had three doctors look over your tests. I’m not wrong, Callie.”

“No!” I yell before another round of tears begins to fall.

“Callie,” he whispers and squeezes my hand.

I pull away, sickened by the entire thing.

“How bad?” I ask before I close my eyes, biting my lip as I brace myself for the news.

“It’s treatable.”

That’s another bullshit phrase. Treatable. What the fuck does that really mean? He didn’t mention curable. Nope. He said treatable.

Doctors use those words to pacify people. If they were entirely truthful, we would give up and they’d look like the biggest assholes in the world.

They’ll treat me. I had come up with some of those treatments—helped develop the perfect cocktail to prolong someone’s life just long enough to hopefully find a cure.

I’m now officially a statistic.

Callista Gentile: Cancer Patient.

It no longer matters where my Michael Kors wedges sit.

I don’t care if my car has been smashed to bits.

None of it matters.

I am no longer in the rat race on a quest to buy the next amazing thing.

I have to fight for my life.