Chapter 4

Lissa woke up the next day in a hospital bed, with her parents, and Jace, by her side.

“What happened?” the last thing she remembered was being at the carnival... with Jace.

“You fainted at the carnival.” Jace answered.

“And how did you guys get here?” Lissa asked her parents.

“This young man over here...” her mother indicated with her hand towards Jace, wanting to know his name.

“Jace, Mrs. Stewart.”

“Jace, gave us a call from your phone and told us you fainted, and that he took you to the hospital, so we rushed down.”

Lissa faced Jace. Gratefulness plastered on her face.

“Thanks, Jace.”

He was about to answer when the doctor entered the room. A young man, probably in his late twenties. Lissa was expecting an older pot-bellyed man, with greying features. Not someone this...young. Lissa could tell he'd only been a doctor for a couple of years — two, maybe.

“Miss Stewart?” he asked, looking down at his clipboard.

“That's me.” she answered. He focused his blue eyes on her and spoke — after reading the notes on his clipboard.

“We received the results of the test we took last night and...” he faced Jace and he looked very perplexed. Of course he would be, Jace was a tan-skinned, brown-haired, brown-eyed man, standing between a blonde-headed, blue-eyed, white-skinned family.

“I'm sorry, are you a family member of the patient?” asked the doctor, his eyebrows creating an arch on his forehead.

Lissa looked up at Jace, and at the same time, he looked down at her.

“Uhm, no, doctor.” Jace answered, with a subtle shake of his head.

“Can I ask you to leave the room please, this is confidential, only to be shared with the family.”

Lissa gave Jace an remorseful look and he smiled down sadly at her. After Jace closed the door, the doctor started again,

“Ok, so we've done an MRI, and we discovered that you have a costive developing tumor on your brain. It's something we call Medulloblastoma a--"

“Is that why I got those headaches?” Lissa interrupted.

“No. You suffered a brain stem stroke, resulting in the headaches and dizziness you experienced. It may continue on as the tumour grows. The sooner this condition is diagnosed and the sooner the treatment is started, the better is the prognosis for a brain stem stroke, unfortunately it's been more than three hours, so nothing can be done now. It would have been a different situation if you notified us about the headaches and dizziness sooner. If I'm not wrong, you had an appointment on Friday, am I correct?" Lissa nodded.

That sentence was like a punch to the gut. Was that true?

She felt her eyes tearing up. Lissa turned her head to her parents — only to see them with tears in their eyes as well.

Lissa wondered whether they were actually hurt about the news, or if they were just pretending to care. They never did want her around much.

If only she had listened to Jace. If only...

“Can the tumour be operated on?” asked her father with an oddly calm voice — not even a slight tremble or stammer.

Nothing!

“Unfortunately not. It's stationed on a part of the brain, which would be precarious to operate on. It would be meaningless to try an operate, considering the fact that she may not even make it through the procedure."

Now Lissa had to asked the single most heart-wrenching question...

“How long do I have?” a lump already climbing up her throat. The doctor sighed.

“Two years. I'm sorry.”

Personally, Lissa feels like that's a rehearsed line every doctor has to say when they are the bearer of bad news.

Deplorable.

The doctor nodded his head at her parents and left the room. Her mom and dad just looked at each other, sort of communicating with each other through their eyes, but then snapped back out of it, and looked down towards me. My mother took a seat on the chair next to my bed, clasped my hand in hers, and my father rested his hand on her shoulder — with a slight squeeze applied.

“Can you guys please act like everything is normal when Jace is around. I don't want him to worry, okay?" Lissa asked, twirling her thumbs.

They both nodded and then Jace came in the room. From what Lissa gathered — if the whispers outside was something to go by, he must've been talking to the doctor, and he most probably got zero information out of him. Thank God for doctor-patient confidentially. It was her responsibility to tell him. She had to decide if she was going to tell him...

“Is everything ok? You good?” he asked, genuine concern all over his face.

His eyes flicked from my parents facial expressions, to mine. The thing was, he wasn't going to find anything. No emotion whatsoever. The entire Stewart family was experts at hiding their emotions — excluding their tears prior to his questions.

“Yep. I told you it's just school stress, that's all.”

“Why does it look like you've been crying?” she pushed out a fake laugh. He didn't notice.

“Jace, you worry too much, but it's tears of relief that it's nothing serious.” she felt her lip quiver, she dragged her bottom lip through her teeth, and sucked on it.

“I have to worry. You fainted in front of me. I almost had a heart attack." Jace stated exasperatedly with a massive smile on his face. It almost made her feel guilty about lying to him, but she didn't know him well enough at the time to share something as big as that with him.

She released her lip, tasting the awful metallic taste of blood seeping through it, “Can you guys go please, I think I'm going to get some sleep in. I'm exhausted.” the silence in the room was just too awkward, and she wanted space — to process everything.

Jace left the room first. Her parents kissed her on the forehead and left.

She found a notepad and pen in the bedside drawer.

Coincidence. Maybe not.

Now that she was alone, she used this time to put Steph's advice into action. She created a bucket list for herself, from 1–100, listed with everything she's always wanted to do. Lissa had always been too busy to do all of these things, but now she had plenty of time, since she only had two years left to live.