I sat up.
My heart kicked once.
Then again.
I typed back too fast.
No. I didn’t ask for medical advice. I asked for an actor.
His answer came almost immediately.
Then hire someone else.
I hated him for that.
I hated the calmness.
I hated the control.
I hated that he sounded like the kind of person who could leave a room and sleep afterward.
I wrote:
You don’t know me.
He replied:
Exactly. Which is why I’m not going to help a stranger turn her last dream into a funeral performance without making sure she has been given every possible chance.
I stared at the screen.
The house was quiet around me.
Downstairs, my mother had finally cried herself to sleep on the couch. My father had gone into his office and shut the door, which meant he was either praying or breaking down where nobody could see him.
My wedding dress hung on the back of my closet door.
White satin.
Long sleeves.
Tiny pearl buttons down the spine.
My mother had touched those buttons at my final fitting and whispered, “You look like the life I always prayed you’d have.”
Now that dress looked like evidence from a crime scene.
I typed:
The diagnosis is terminal.
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