Creepypasta Collection 2

Eustace

I was always terrified of doctors above all else, so by the time I finally steeled myself enough to go, the cancer had metastasized in both breasts. I sat numbly in Dr. Kerden's office, as she droned on about my options. She never berated me for my stupidity. She didn't have to; her bewilderment and restrained contempt bled through the sympathetic tones she spoke about chemotherapy in.

The bottom line was suffocatingly simple: if the treatments and surgeries were successful (Dr. Kerden could not have stressed the "if" more if she had scrawled it in lipstick on the desk)my chance of surviving more than five years was about twenty two percent.

I was only twenty four and all my plans – marriage to my fiance,future children, a full-fledged career in travel photography – had just been yanked from my feet and placed on a high shelf I had a seventy-eight percent chance of never reaching.

Oddly, out of all those bricks that had just crashed down on my head, the one that broke the dam and spilled my tears was the realization that even if -if!- I survived, married Ben, had children, I would never breast feed them. There was no chance of saving my breasts at that point. To this day, I've never figured out why that was what hit me hardest.

Normally I would have argued every inch of a medical procedure. Not this time. I signed papers numbly, barely glancing at the black print that swam in and out of focus.
Waivers. Insurance proof. Next of kin. Emergency contacts.

I don't even remember going home and packing my bag for the hospital that night. I must have talked to Ben, I know, because he was in that sterile room late into the night before the nurses finally kicked him out.

Dr. Kerden, as it turned out, was my polar opposite when it came to medical procrastination; chemo started within the next few days.
Let me tell you right now, the chemo patients you see on tv shows and movies don't tell half the story of the suffering you really go through.

When I looked in the mirror after the first treatment, I saw the most exhausted woman I'd ever seen looking back at me. By the third treatment, she looked more dead than alive. Yellowing skin, hollowed eyes, thin, cracked lips in spite of all the clinical chapstick the nurses gave me. Ben used to tease me for my "baby face" (because he was too sweet to straight up admit that my round face was a tad bit pudgy) and now that face was lined, the round cheeks sunken in. I looked forty.

I would feel dead if I wasn't hobbling to the bathroom every day, the retching of my stomach gleefully proclaiming: "Yes! Yes we are alive! Ain't it just fucking grand?!"

Four months. I caved and had Ben bring his electric razor. I was past crying at that point, watching shreds of black hair, once so soft and shiny, fall into a hospital trashcan. Ben hadn't reached that point just yet, I noticed as he quietly sniffled.
He would, I knew.

That night, after Ben had been kicked out by the night nurse, I gave up trying to sleep, and snatched my current forget-I'm-dying-of-cancer book off my bedside table. I had been limping through the book only a few minutes when it dawned on me that I wasn't alone in my hospital room anymore; a small man in a patchwork coat and a battered top hat was sitting in Ben's vacated chair.

I stared at him stupidly above the edge of the book, instinctively hiding my young-old face as much as I could. He smiled encouragingly and offered a little wave. His hair was all hidden beneath that oversized hat, but his curly beard was a very bright ginger.

"Um, visiting hours are over," I offered after a moment.

His smile widened into a grin and he doffed his hat in acknowledgment. "True enough, lass, but visiting hours are only for visitors."

I blinked in surprise. For his small frame – he didn't look much bigger than my thirteen-year-old nephew – his voice was surprisingly deep.

"Can I help you with something?" I fumbled for the remote with the nurse call button. "Are you looking for someone? The nurse should help..."