Author's Note: As usual, Lillian doesn't belong to me, she belongs to Natsume or Marvelous. Everyone else in this chapter is an original character, and of course, the plot is mine.

This chapter was very difficult for me to write. I may edit it later, but for now, the story must go on!

Chapter 3
(In which Lillian breaks a young doctor's heart)

Lillian huddled under her blanket, staring at the little lumps her feet made. She had a private room, and warm blankets against the antiseptic chill. There was also a monitor that gave a comforting little beep every time her heart beat, marking her time. Earlier she had insisted that her parents leave, and Jenny leave, and the chaplain leave, and the nurses leave, and the doctors leave, and the whole messy-whirlwind of everyone just leave, and then she sat alone in the dark, staring at her feet, and listening to her heart.

Things had happened too fast once they got to the hospital, and Lillian bitterly resented Jenny for dragging her there. Lillian wished with a bone-deep ache that she could go back to this morning, before she knew. She wanted even more to go back to last night and forget her homework, call up all her friends to have pizza and drinks and be wildly irresponsible. But that was impossible, of course, and she began to think cautiously about her day.

Lillian and Jenny had been waiting in the emergency room for two hours, passing time by confessing not-secret crushes on various professors. Finally a nurse came for Lillian, and when he took her back to the examination room, she grabbed Jenny's hand in panic, and so Jenny had gone too. The nurse took Lillian's vitals, peered at her eyes and gave her a bucket to throw up into when the dizziness came on again. And the nurse kept asking, did you fall, did you hit your head? and Lillian was forced to say, no, she'd been like this for a while, and then she had to explain about the year-long headache, and the nausea, and then this morning -

"- and then this morning, her eyes were like this," finished Jenny, when Lillian had stopped talking, unable to add that final, damning symptom, because the nurse looked so worried. And thinking back on it, Lillian figured that's probably the first time she really knew that something horrible was going on, when an emergency room nurse looked worried because of a headache.

The nurse had gone to get a doctor, rushing out so quickly a little breeze followed him to the door. But he had paused long enough to say, "You'll probably be here quite a while." Jenny and Lillian looked at each other, a while hanging in the air between them, and Jenny stood up abruptly. "I'd better call your parents, let them know you're here."

Lillian wanted to cry wait don't you leave me too, but she couldn't make her mouth form the words, and she just nodded, and was left alone for just five minutes that stretched themselves into an hour as she tried to look at the tongue depressors and the cotton balls and the gloves. And then the end of the five minutes snapped itself back into its proper time frame as Jenny and the doctor arrived at the same time, both breathless, both saying "oh excuse me, I'm so sorry" as they tried to get in the door at the same time. It would have been funny, except it wasn't, at all.

The doctor was a resident in a short white coat, only a year or two older than Lillian. He introduced himself as Dr. Mbanefo. As he looked at her eyes and listened to her symptoms, he felt her head as if she maybe she had hit her head so hard she forgot about it. Then he called his senior doctor, who had a proper long white coat and who needed to hear the symptoms for herself, and to look at her eyes, to feel her skull. The attending said, "Good job, Doctor, you are quite correct," and looked at him, gesturing that he should continue. Doctor Mbanefo sat down and folded his hands together, and took a breath. Then he said rather briskly, "Well, we're concerned that there may be something wrong with your brain, so we need to take an MRI, and then we'll know more."

It had taken another few hours to be able to get the MRI, and Lillian's parents had arrived shortly after it was over, faces drawn in worry. Jenny was still there, even though she was missing two classes, and she pretended not to hear whenever Lillian feebly protested that she should get to class. And so it was the four of them sitting in a room silently, everyone pretending that they weren't worried because everything was going to be just fine.

Then they all heard a whispered conversation from behind the closed door, which ended in a hissed, "No, you have to learn how to discuss these things with patients, just get in there already!" Lillian and Jenny exchanged a wary glance, and Dr. Mbanefo and the attending had walked in again. And that's when everything got really blurry for Lillian, who could only register the words brain tumor and possibly cancer.

There was another MRI of her whole body, but they didn't find any more tumors. A nurse came and took a lumbar puncture, which was painful, and Lillian was given a room and told "You must certainly stay the night," and then there was more waiting. Lillian's mother remembered that no one had eaten yet although it was almost evening, and brought everyone hamburgers. Everyone ate them dutifully and and tried to make awkward, halting conversation. But they had figured out how to sit on the hospital bed so they could surround Lillian, and they all leaned against each other.

Then Dr. Mbanefo came back in again with a different senior doctor. Lillian looked at him, saw how he looked so tired and sad and grey, and she realized that he had been working so long the shifts had changed, but he was still there specifically for what would happen next. The two doctors looked at each other, silently trying to figure out who was going to say what had to be said. Lillian looked to Dr. Mbanefo, and thought, you've been here the whole time, I'd rather hear it from you. Dr. Mbanefo looked back at her, seemed to understand. He pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down heavily, looked at the scared clutch of people. Jenny and Lillian's parents drew in more closely around her, as if they could protect her from what he would say next, make it not be true.

Once again he hesitated just a little, and then he said, "Unfortunately, our fears have been confirmed. Lillian, you have a malignant brain cancer, with a couple of tumors in your brain."

He paused to let that sink in. Everyone was quiet, aghast. Then Lillian's ears started to roar and the room spun around, and everyone broke into questions that Lillian didn't hear. She could only hear Dr. Mbanefo, as if he were the only person in the room.

"Surgery is a possibility, but it is horribly risky because of the location of some of the tumors. If we do it, she may lose a lot of cognitive function, and she may also lose her sight, and she may lose her ability to speak. But there is another tumor that we cannot remove, because it is too close to the brain stem, and we would almost certainly kill her directly."

Dr. Mbanefo paused for an unheard question, and answered, "Chemotherapy and radiation are another option. We can be very aggressive and if she tolerates it well it's not impossible that we can kill it before - " he broke off and swallowed.

Before the treatment kills me or the cancer does, Lillian finished in her head. She looked up. "Excuse me, Doctor. What chance of recovery do I have?"

Dr. Mbanefo wet his lips and looked like he wished she had not asked. "Well, we must remember that you are very young, and very strong, and anything is possible, but for this type of cancer at the stage you are at," he looked away and forced out the rest, "less than 5% of people survive two years, even with treatment."

Lillian nodded like she had been expecting this, feeling icy calm. "And in your professional opinion, how long do I have?"

Dr. Mbanefo swallowed, and shot a look at his attending physician that clearly said I can't do this yet and if you force me to answer this question I swear I will quit medicine altogether. The attending shot a look back that said I know how you feel.

"Lillian," he said, with utmost gentleness, "Even with the most aggressive treatment we can give you, we think you probably have less than six months to live."