tumor
The doctor’s office was cold. Rebbecca didn’t like being in his office alone. It seemed sterile. He had stepped out for a few moments to collect the results from a file. He called her into his office to tell her. This was more than enough to make her nervous, and as she felt the throbs in her head, the tiny pains that squeezed her brain, she tried to make herself believe, for the last time in her life, that this pain was just a headache. Of course it was just a headache.
But once the doctor came back in with his black slicked hair, and his black shiny shoes that seemed to tap dance across the floor in a serious walk, she knew that her thoughts never truly matched her dreams. He opened the file and he cleared his throat, “Rebbecca, I hate to say this, but it appears you have a brain tumor.”
At first, in a way, she was relieved. Now, she could finally break up with her boyfriend, take the rest of her college money and move to Hawaii, where in the last two years of her life she would spend it reading her book, she would spend it writing her book, telling the word about the atrocities it had put upon her in her only twenty one year of life, and then she would die. Her only memorial would be a brick of white paper.
There was a silence between them, and even though this fantasy had somehow blown in from the window of the doctors office, the reality of the situation began to take hold of her, “What did you say?”
Dr. Blackman leaned a little bit forward, adjusted his glasses lower to his nose, and looked her eye to eye, “I said you have a brain tumor.” He said it with the most truthfulness he could. She liked that he looked in her eyes when he said that. He would have been a coward to say otherwise.
Even though it was sunny outside his office windows there was still a feeling that outside an eclipse was going on, like all the experiences and steps of her life had only amounted to the blocking out of light. She had heard in one of her classes that it wasn’t true that sun was the source of all life like they had thought two decades ago. Scientists had found small fishes that had no eyes and lived deep in the ground, in isolated system, living off of no sunshine at all. For a moment, Rebbecca wished she was one of those fish with no eyes.
But once the doctor came back in with his black slicked hair, and his black shiny shoes that seemed to tap dance across the floor in a serious walk, she knew that her thoughts never truly matched her dreams. He opened the file and he cleared his throat, “Rebbecca, I hate to say this, but it appears you have a brain tumor.”
At first, in a way, she was relieved. Now, she could finally break up with her boyfriend, take the rest of her college money and move to Hawaii, where in the last two years of her life she would spend it reading her book, she would spend it writing her book, telling the word about the atrocities it had put upon her in her only twenty one year of life, and then she would die. Her only memorial would be a brick of white paper.
There was a silence between them, and even though this fantasy had somehow blown in from the window of the doctors office, the reality of the situation began to take hold of her, “What did you say?”
Dr. Blackman leaned a little bit forward, adjusted his glasses lower to his nose, and looked her eye to eye, “I said you have a brain tumor.” He said it with the most truthfulness he could. She liked that he looked in her eyes when he said that. He would have been a coward to say otherwise.
Even though it was sunny outside his office windows there was still a feeling that outside an eclipse was going on, like all the experiences and steps of her life had only amounted to the blocking out of light. She had heard in one of her classes that it wasn’t true that sun was the source of all life like they had thought two decades ago. Scientists had found small fishes that had no eyes and lived deep in the ground, in isolated system, living off of no sunshine at all. For a moment, Rebbecca wished she was one of those fish with no eyes.