Jinxed Jade (Book 3)

Chapter 2:

I sat slumped opposite my doctor, a lady who was an expert in oncology. Her name was Elise Robins, she had warm brown eyes that shone with kindness that could only have come from years of seeing people suffer from cancer. I liked her quite a bit. Some times when people saw the hardships of life, when they got a front row seat, they toughened up like men in war. They accepted that life isn’t fair and pulled on a hard exterior. Not her. Doctor Robins insisted that I called her Elise the moment I came to her about my illness. Her voice was soft and was always filled with caring concern like I was her own daughter. She was always hopeful and encouraging, ‘You have to be strong. You can get through this,’ she’d say to me.

Today however we were both a little glum. My cancer had decided to relocate to my stomach. I had stage two cancer. Elise said I would need to have surgery to remove it and then to help prevent it from coming back I should also have chemotherapy and as vain as it sounded, I didn’t want to lose my hair. It was bad enough when they had to shave a patch of it off for the brain tumour.

I was beginning to hate Elise’s office. I’d never really heard good news there. The dark cream walls and the gray carpet were like a flashing light meaning ‘Stop! Something bad is going to happen now!’ The wooden desk with the Apple computer and matching chair with a window showing a London street a few floors below were hazy whenever I walked into the room because I was terrified of what I might find out.

            “I’m scheduling in the chemotherapy a week from today,” Elise started to say but I stopped her with wide eyes.

            “A week?” I asked and I could feel the blood draining out of my face like someone had pulled a plug. “I can’t! No one even knows I’ve got cancer again!”

            “But your cancer could become worse, I can’t let you leave it for so long.” Her wide, pleading eyes made me think that Dr. Robins did not do well when she lost a patient.

            “Give me a month. Just one month,” I said.

            “Absolutely not! The cancer depending on how fast it’s growing could become a stage three by then!”

I brought clapped hands to line the centre of my lips and the tip of my nose.

            “Give me two weeks, just two weeks,” I pleaded in a voice that wasn’t soft enough to be classified as a whisper but not loud enough to be classified as a normal talking volume.

Elise nodded and handed me typed up file to read through and sign. It outlined the date, type of surgery and conditions of the surgery. On July twentieth I was starting chemotherapy and I was having three cycles each lasting three weeks. I was having surgery on the thirtieth on September and then going through another three cycles of chemotherapy.

Wishing I didn’t have to I signed the papers.

.

I bit my lip as I stared at my mobile. It was time to tell someone. Breathing in I picked up the phone and pressed the familiar contacts name.

            “Hello?”

            “Hi, mum,” I said my voice thick with unshed tears.

            “Jade, are you okay?”

            “No,” I said my voice breaking, “I’m not okay at all.”

After I told mum we cried together on the phone for an hour. She was crying because of my illness, I was crying because hearing her cry over the phone about me was heart shattering. Eventually we hung up and despite my protests mum and dad were coming to London to support me and I loved them even more for it.