Young Writers Society

“Afternoon. Did my tests come in?” Wally Miller asked, following the petite nurse through the halls of her office, the working ladies who normally smiled and waved at him wearing long scowls under their noses.

The nurse frowned and sighed, motioning for him to come into room C. “Wait right here,” she said. “Dr. Cense will be right with you.”

Laura Cense – thirty years of practice as a physician, and yet she never had the displeasure of performing one of the hardest tasks for a doctor to do. She considered herself lucky, as if the great god above had answered her prayers for her to never need to say the three dreadful words. Here it was, seeming that God had turned his eyes. The nurse shyly approached the middle-aged doctor, dressed in a long white jacket, her long gray hair wrapped up in a pony-tail. “Excuse me?” she asked.

Dr. Cense turned around towards the nurse; her thick, furry brows rising to the tip of her bangs. “Yes? Is he in?” she asked, her large, crusty lips stirring sorrowfully with each word she said.

The nurse nodded. “Are you going to tell him?”

Dr. Cense had it on her mind ever since the start of that workday. When the same nurse handed her off the lab results, she couldn’t believe her eyes. She read the paper. Then, she read it again. She read it a third time, she still couldn’t believe it. There was no mistake about it.

Cancer. Such a powerful word. Such a horrible disease, and yet, did she not become a doctor to help people with horrible diseases? Is it really too late to do anything? Can she not help him?

Cancer is a time bomb, permanently strapped to the back of a person’s back, filling those around them with grief and misery. It takes skill, precision and skill luck to get rid of it before the explosion. But if you don’t notice it in time…it’s too late to do anything.

“I’ll tell him.” Dr. Cense excused the young nurse, putting her hand on the doorknob to room C. She shut her eyes, taking a deep breath, holding back tears. Got to be strong, got to be strong, she said to herself. It was only a couple weeks ago; she was at the water park with him, his beautiful wife Crystal, and his four-year-old daughter, Katie. Such a fun loving, every day man. The kind of man who nobody could say a bad word about. Cancer is a monster; nice, mean, young, old, fat, thin, poor, rich – cancer doesn’t care. It goes after who it wants, ripping them apart, killing them without any remorse. And the ones in the white jackets are the only ones ready for slaying this monster.

She finally opened the door, and there he sat. Wally Miller, forty-one years old; although his wrinkling skin, short gray hair and wide glasses too big for him would tell you he was much older.

“Hey, I was wondering about my blood test results for these chest pains I’ve been having-” he stared with a smile, rising to his feet.

“Sit,” Dr. Cense commanded, as Wally complied. “W-Wally…you have cancer.”

“C-cancer.”

“Heart cancer,” the doctor explained. “Two tumors. One is 5 inches long, the other is 13 inches.”

“So…am I going to die?”

The question she hoped he didn’t ask, hoped so feebly that it not escape his lips. What would she say, what would she do? She knew she couldn’t sugarcoat it for him. She had to be honest.

“More than likely, yes,” she responded.

Wally Miller looked down at his worn brown boots, the boots his wife had bought him for his birthday the previous month. They had talked about going on a hiking trip, but they couldn’t find an affordable babysitter for Katie. “How long do I have with my kid?” was the next thing Wally asked, looking at the doctor who now had tears welding up in her eyes.

“The smaller tumor is removable,” Dr. Cense said, drying her eyes with a pocketed napkin. “The other one…your best hope is chemotherapy, which may keep you alive for…I don’t know, four or five months? Make that seven, no, an even eight. …Nine! I’ll…I’ll say nine months!”

“Excuse me,” he said, suddenly jolting up from the bed. “I need to get home and talk to my wife. I…I’ll come back in a few hours.”

“You know she doesn’t eat ice cream in a cup, Brittany. ...No! Katie only eats it in a cone! …Oh, well then you go get me some ice cream cones, I’ll give them to Brittany and then…oh. Wally is home. I’ll call you back,” Crystal Miller said, hanging up the phone.

The 5’9 black woman crossed her arms, staring intently at her husband. Just like him, she had a ton on her mind that day. “How’d your appointment go? You got back home fast.”

“Uh…Crystal, can you take a seat?”

Crystal sighed and nodded, putting her palm on her chin. “Oh yeah. You forgot to mail off the electric bill this morning. It’s alright. I paid the $75 late charge.”

“Crystal, I -”

“You know you owe me back, right? And I don’t mean in thirty years when I’m old and gross and you’re even more old and gr-”

“Crystal, I have cancer.”

Crystal slowly dropped her palms to her thighs, red lipstick escaping into her widened jaw. “…C-ca…cancer?”

“Heart cancer. It’s very serious.”

“No…no!” Crystal sobbed, tears beginning to wash away her freshly applied make-up. She got up and embraced her husband in a long, warm hug. “W-Wally…no…you…you can’t…you can’t die on me, Wally! ...Not before I told you…”

“Crystal, I have two tumors. One I can get surgery for an-”

“Wally, I’m pregnant.” The three words hit Wally like a punch in the gut. “I found out last night.”

“…Nah…no. No, no, nah, nah, nah. P-pregnant…Crystal!”

“Wally…how long did they give you? Are you going to make it? Are you going to be able to see this baby grow up?” Crystal asked, pointing to her stomach clothed by a long pink gown. “What about Katie? Will you be able to see her graduate high school? Bring home her first boyfriend? Even…even see middle school?”

“Oh man, I forgot about her. She should be getting off the bus any minute now, won’t she?”

“You have to tell her…I guess…I guess you can wait?”

“…No. She deserves to not have it sugarcoated. I’ll tell her when…”

The door to their home opened. A little pale girl with large green eyes, fluffy cheeks and a wide, happy smile popped in, a glass jar in her hands. “Mommy! Daddy!” she cried in a delightful voice, brandishing the jarred tree frog in her hands, little holes poked through the lid. “Look at Mr. Froggy! Mr. Sanchos caught him for me at lunch!”

“…Did he now? That’s sweet,” Crystal said, her eyes not leaving her husband for the slightest of seconds. “We will get you a tank to put him in with some grass. I bet he’d like that, but right now, daddy wants to tell you something. Go off to your room.”

The adorable little girl looked at her daughter and giggled, beginning to hop off to her room. Wally and his wife shared one more sad parting glance, before Wally made his way to his daughter’s room.

***

He still remembered the day he finished painting this room. He looked at the bright blue walls, the tree frog sitting on the bedside table, remembering just his wife’s priceless face when she told him that she was expecting a girl. “Katie, do you know what cancer is?” Wally asked.

Katie put her little finger to her lips, meticulously pondering the question. “Is that what grandpa died of?”

“Yes,” Wally said. “Katie…I…I…I’m going away in a few months. Maybe. Probably going away. Do you understand?”

Katie scrunched her face, before shaking her head. “Where are you going to, daddy?”

“…Katie, I…I don’t know how to even begin to tell you this, but-”

“Do you have cancer, daddy?”

If those three words were a punch in the gut, those five words were a punch inches below. After a long pause, a long blank stare, Wally nodded his head. “Yes. I have heart cancer. It’s very serious.”

Crystal entered the room, her face stained pink; clear that she had began crying once again. “Laura called…she…she said she thinks the cancer may have spread?”

When will this end? When will I wake up from this nightmare? Wally thought, clutching his temples as his wife grabbed him in a hug, bawling harder than she had before.

He looked down at Katie, expecting her to be the most shaken – he expected her to grab his leg, tell her that he doesn’t want him to die, that she loves him so, and yet she said nothing. “Katie…” he said, his wife breaking her hip, sobbing shallow, shy sobs.

Katie looked at her father, then at her mother and crossed her arms. “Mommy…you’re acting like he’s already dead,” she told him.

“Katie, they gave me nine months at the most,” Wally explained. “And she was just being generous.”

“…I learned today that nine months is almost a year! I’ll be…I’ll be in kindergarten by then!” Katie said, adorably smiling at her father.

Nine months will give him time to see… Crystal thought to herself, finally finding a sense of sun in her world recently engulfed in a dark, thick fog.

“We’re together now! Why cry about the time we don’t have, when we can enjoy the time we do have?”

“Aw, you just want to go to the water park instead of doing your homework,” Wally pointed out.

Katie giggled, slyly tilting her head. “Yeah…”

“I’ll tell you what. You do your homework, I’ve gotta run back to the doctor’s office and finish up what I went over there for. When I get back…Family Fun Water Park it is!”

So for Wally Miller, his battle had only just begun. Time would tell if the brave warrior conquered the foul beast or not. Yet if Katie is the one to listen to, why spend time worrying about the future when the sun still shines for the day? It was her who made him realize that time spent enjoying the company of loved ones is much better than time spent wallowing over not being able to be with loved ones even more. The monster known as cancer set its eyes on Wally’s heart – but he’d make sure to never let it touch the hearts of his two favorite people in the world.