Five months. Or less.
It wasn't fair!
Finals were next month. I'd already picked out my classes for the next semester. Sent in my tuition.
I wondered if I should withdraw. But why bother? It wasn't like I'd live long enough even to owe payments on my student loans.
Enjoy your Christmas. The last Christmas I'd enjoyed had been two years ago, before Gramma died. Now there was no one left. I'd gone home with my roommate Lisette and her sister the last year, but I'd been miserable with missing my Gramma and even more miserable trying to pretend that everything was fine. I didn't think I had the strength to try to smile through the season again with the specter of my death hanging over the festivities. I'd already decided that it would be better for everyone if I stayed in our university apartment alone.
I dashed away the betraying tears and got my phone out of my pocket. Lisette would want to know the news. My finger hovered over her name on the screen. She deserved to be told. When she'd found me crying in my room the day I got my diagnosis, she'd given me one of her huge hugs and said I was going to beat the cancer, and she was going to be there for me until I did.
She'd held up her end of the bargain. I couldn't tell her that I wasn't going to hold up mine.
I pulled the brochure out and smoothed it. There was a photograph, the edges artfully out of focus, of an elderly woman being hugged by a smiling model who could have been any age from thirty to fifty-five. The text was full of words like "care," "comfort," and "dignity." The toll-free number stared at me, but I couldn't make myself call it, either.
There was the other paper-the card, rather, small and mysterious, with the single phone number on it. The cold from the hard cement under me was beginning to seep into my bones, and the wind chilled my wet cheeks. I shifted. What did I have to lose?
I entered the number and looked at it for a long moment before I touched the send button. The phone rang once as it connected, then once again.
"Name?" The voice was male, light and impersonal.
Taken aback, it took me a moment to respond. "Cora Shaw."
"Please proceed to the emergent care entrance, Ms. Shaw," the man said. "A car will meet you there. Thank you."
"But-" I said. I looked at the phone. The time was flashing on the display-he had already hung up.