"Its all fine. All of it.Everything.We're worried for nothing.You.Are.Fine."I sighed at my mothers relentless chanting. We were on the way to the doctors. The scenery flashed by so quickly tht I couldn't see it. The green of the grass and blue of the trees were a blur on this highway.
Mom gripped the wheel so hard that her knuckles whitened. She looked behind her at me andsmiled weakly.
"You.Are Fine." She said as she drove, her attention no longer divided. Soon we were parked in the lot, the black asphalt hot beneath my feet, the fall air sweet and pure but somehow, through all of that, foreboding. The doctor's office was just like I remembered it.big giraffes painted on the walls with goofy smiles painted on their glazed faces. Little babies cried in carriers beside their mothers or fathers, sometimes both. A nurse came out of the door and smiled in a sickly sweet way. I knew what her job was, to tell kids, from infants to girls and boys my age, almost fifteen, that they had an uncurealble disease. But I wouldn't think about that terrible word. Uncurable.
"Mariana Edeth" she called, her blue clipboard clutched in her hand. I stood up slowly and walked as confidently as I could to her side. My mother pushed a string of brown hair behind my ear.
"That's me." I said, not trusting my mom to speak.
She began to walk down to spotless hall with elephants painted on the walls and led me into a room with a big machine in it-An X-ray, maybe, or something else much more high tech.
"Alrighty then Mariana!I want you to just lay right here until your stomach is under the QPD.That's right,sweet cheeks.Now just stay still!Mom,I'll ask you to come out here while we take a look."
My mother stepped out of the small room with the high tech thing in it, leaving me lying there. I could feel a light moving across my stomach. I looked as best I could and decided it must be green. Muffled voices watched me without me seeing them. It was unnerving.
"Okay sweetheart. The nurse opened the door after twenty miniutes of leg-numbing stillness.
"My mother was puffy eyed and trying to hold back tears.
'We have some bad news for you. But remembers Mariana, Cancer can be cureable in some cases. Now, we'll go ahead and set you up to go to the hospital soon, maybe next month and we'll try sevral things."
I was crying. Heaving breaking sobs that I hadn't known were there. Where had my life gone? Why had it gone? Cancer? Why? I needed answers! The nurse's arms were around me and my mom's hands were running through my curls and I just couldn't stop crying.
"How long do I have?" I asked, scared of the answer.
"Well, according to all of your tests, um, about…" she looked down at her monkey clipboard.
"Three months? But that's if kemo doesn't work. And it may, honey!"
Three months. In that time,I would turn fifteen.
In that time,I swore to myself, I would make my life something to be proud of.
I would make Mariana Edeth's life wonderful and powerful and moving until I was crying with joy at what I had accomplished.
I would.