Heartbeat Chapter 1. Memento Mori

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 “You’re dying.”                                                 

The doctor’s voice didn’t sound quite right in my ears. On my right, I could see my usually composed mother crying. My twin brother and sister were unexpectedly quiet. It was like I was watching a bad soap rerun on TV where the doctor was informing them about the main character’s condition. Only this time, they were talking about me.

“But you said there was nothing wrong with her,” my mother was gripping the handkerchief she brought with her this morning.

 I studied her face. She was beautiful even in grief. For a 50 year old woman, she looked so young. It’s too bad her first husband- my dad- left her when I was born. It’s apparent that he didn’t love us- me.

“We couldn’t understand it either,” the doctor replied. “There was no tumor, cancer, hemorrhage, or any indication that there was something wrong with her body. We did all the test we could. All we know is that her heart is getting weaker, and her body is deteriorating fast,” he added with a frown, as if it was life’s biggest mystery.

Everyone just stared at the floor, unsure of what to say. I looked around the room. We were inside the doctor’s office. It has been a month since I first came here, and everything was beginning to look all too familiar, which scared the hell out of me.

I couldn’t understand it either. Everything was normal from the start. Even my long, wavy brunette hair and mocha brown eyes never seemed out of place. I was an active girl who always joined different activities in school. I tried cheerleading, volleyball, even swimming. I was as healthy as a horse. But when I turned 18 a month ago in April, things went downhill.

The shortness of breath came first. I was sitting on the gym bleachers, shouting and cheering along with my friends and classmates for our school basketball team. All of a sudden, I felt a choking sensation, like all the air was sucked out of my body. My best friend Marley and her boyfriend Max nearly carried me all the way to the infirmary while I struggled to remain conscious. The school doctor said it was caused by anxiety because of the game, so I didn’t pay any attention to it.

The headaches came next. I was attending career counseling when the most painful migraine began to set in. Again, I was brought to the infirmary, but the doctor said I was stressed. I believed him because choosing my career was a tough decision, and my head was full of thoughts that day. I wish it was that easy.

The last straw was the heartache. It woke me up in the middle of the night. The burning, pounding sensation was too much to bear, so I had my mom take me to the hospital. That day, I thought I was having a heart attack. The doctors thought so too, but after week after week of tests and examinations, they determined it was something else, something that they couldn’t put a name on. And here we are now discussing about death and dying.

I took a sip of water from the bottle that I brought earlier, hoping it would relieve my dry throat, but it didn’t work.

I finally spoke, “How long?”

The others looked at me in horror, shocked that I had the guts to ask. The doctor hesitated before replying, “Excuse me?”

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