2 One*

I went to my uncle because he had asked me to help him organize his documents and Excel files. Since I know how to use Excel, I had agreed, with him paying slightly for me in the concept of an allowance, so you could say I've gotten a part-time job. I wanted to go to the book store with my best friend to give Dawn a get-well-soon present. She always wanted to get 'The Devil of Nanking' by Mo Hayder. But I still had to keep my promise to my uncle, so I entered his room to find him sitting at the desk he uses for appointments.

"Lucas! Thanks for not forgetting. I have an appointment with one of your friends, Dawn Wood. Her parents reserved an appointment with me and she doesn't mind if you overhear anything, so I'd like you to stay in this room at the corner and work through the file. I placed a desk and a chair with a laptop, so you can start working with it now."

I just nodded in agreement and wondered if Dawn was that sick. As far as I know, she wasn't the type of person to even catch a cold when everyone else did. The reason I wondered this mainly had to do with what my uncle specializes in. He mainly does work for cancers, especially lung cancer. Thanks to his knowledge on this, my head has gotten loaded with information about lung cancer, more than anyone else who isn't a professional knows.

"Lucas, you still have that crush on Dawn, right?"

I was drinking water from my water bottle and I almost spit it out. I had never told him about this fact, and he had never seen me with her before. I just nodded, confirming (what I hoped to be) his guess.

"I think it's better if you move on from her. As far as I can tell from her symptoms she and her parents told me, I think she might have cancer. They had gone to the local hospital yesterday, and the doctor there told Dawn's parents to bring her here."

I was in shock. On her birthday, which is tomorrow, I was planning to give her the birthday present and confess my feelings. However, when she had gotten sick and stopped coming to school, I had suspected something was wrong. A strong girl like her wouldn't be down with a cold and she didn't have any underlying diseases, so I didn't expect that she'd get sick with a disease as fatal as cancer. Then again, cancer is a disease of that kind of nature. So it is quite possible for a person who has been as healthy as ever — just like Dawn — could get any type of cancer.

Now you may ask what I was thinking about her state if I wasn't considering cancer. Well, I was supposing it could be diabetes. Her family members have that, and one of the main causes of Type I diabetes is genetics. The patient also needs to stay in the hospital for a check-up and insulin shots, so it would take about a week, varying by the health state before diabetes occurred. So I had expected that she would come back to school by tomorrow and I would be able to continue my plan as planned.

However, I hadn't expected this variable. If she truly has cancer, I would probably not confess, as I suppose this wouldn't help her at all. I know that it is pretty much like giving up without trying, and I don't like doing this. I usually try, even if the chance of failing is high. After all, I mainly don't like giving up when there is a very thin chance of succeeding, because I know it could be possible to succeed with that very small chance.

But there are times when I give up without trying, although it is quite rare. When I think there might be a chance of some getting hurt physically and/or mentally, I never think of trying. With my plan involving Dawn, I was planning to try while knowing she could turn me down. However, confessing to her when she has cancer will make her feel sorry about not being able to accept my proposal, knowing she has a too-short expiration date than I do, and worse feel like getting cancer is her fault. Of course, this is all an assumption based on the prerequisite that she likes me back.

So, I was quite dreading the moment she came in with her family, with the nurse carrying the results of the tests she had taken. Working here for quite some time, I was able to read the face of the nurse my uncle hired for himself only. I was still working on that Excel file, but my mind was preoccupied with thoughts and my ears were focusing on the sound of the door opening.

So when the door opened, I looked at the nurse's face to see how severe the situation currently is.