The pedestrian light turns green, so I step out onto the street with the businessman as his stride carries him farther and farther away from me. I’ve made this walk more times than I can count, so as I head home, my mind drifts to the moment that started all of this.
I was twenty-one when I passed out for the first time. Right in the middle of teaching a self-defense class at the Y. I had my first dream then, too—a vision of me running from something that I now believe was a subconscious message about trying to outrun the reaper. Maybe my brain knew I was going to die before my body did.
When I woke up, they told me my temperature and heart rate had both skyrocketed and they weren’t sure how I was even still alive. A ‘miracle’ they’d called it. And when a week passed and neither vitals changed, they told me there was nothing more they could do for me there, and they sent me to a specialist. The rest is history. One doctor after another, one bad news meeting after another, and here we are.
Bitter acceptance.
As it always does after an appointment, numbness consumes me, blocking out my ability to care. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be abducted by one of those supernatural creatures claimed to have been outed in Montana a few months ago.
I snort. Leave the fiction to the fairy tales, Ember.
My apartment building looms ahead, and I pause on the sidewalk for just a moment. The decent trust fund set up for me by the family I never met is nearly gone, as is the savings I’d managed to earn working two jobs.
Not that it matters, can’t take money with me when I die, right? With a deep breath, I make my way inside. Before I even fully step foot into the lobby, I’m rushed by Amber and Heather, the two women working the front desk. Never too far behind looms Wally, the door man.
Cue the rapid-fire.
Heather’s first. “Well?”
Then Amber. “What did he say?”
Finally, Wally. “Anything?”
I smile softly, hating that I have such crap news to deliver. They are the only three who haven’t run from me, despite my worsening condition. And I’m pretty sure that’s because I was already sick when I moved here seven months ago to be closer to the hospital.
They’ve never known me any other way.
Then there’s the shit fact that Wally has found me passed out on my floor in a pool of my own blood more than once. They’ve all seen me at my worst, and never my best. Maybe I should be grateful because Dr. Alexander was wrong.
Even though I have no family, I know I’m not alone.
I look at each of them individually, letting my gaze travel over their faces, absorbing the hope in their eyes.
Hope that I’m about to crush. Honestly, as shitty as it is for me to think this way, it was almost easier when no one cared. When everyone pulled away from me. “He said there’s nothing more they can do.”
One by one, their expressions falter. Wally sniffles, and Heather gently touches his arm as she glances at Amber.
“I’m so sorry, Ember.” Amber—a woman I bonded with at first because of how close our names are—grips my hand in hers.
I shrug, forcing off the onslaught of emotion welling up inside me and making its way past the numbness. “It’s nothing I didn’t expect.”
“But your last treatment, it was working,” Heather insists. “You haven’t had a spell in nearly a month.”
“Symptom management,” I tell her. “That’s all the cold therapy was ever supposed to be.” I cast my gaze to the floor a moment before looking up and delivering the final news. “The doctor wanted me to check into hospice.”
“Fuck that,” Wally snaps. We all turn to him.
“Wally,” Heather says, admonishingly.
“No,” he says. “Ember isnotgoing into hospice. We can take care of you, Ember. Make sure that you’re comfortab—” His voice breaks as a tear slips down his wrinkled cheek. “I can’t bear the thought of you withering away alone.”
I pull back from Amber and wrap my arms around Wally. “I know I won’t ever be alone. I turned it down.”
“Good.” Wally crosses his arms. “We’ll find you someone else who can actually figure out what’s wrong. Damned doctors—good for nothing, that’s what they are.”
And now to deliver more crappy news.With a sigh, I add, “There’s more. Last night, I decided that if the news was bad, I wasn’t going to see any more doctors.”
All three of them gape at me.