Chapter three
988 Words
AMELIA'S POV
Three Years Later
The doctor folded his hands on the desk and looked at me the way people look at someone they have already decided needs to be handled carefully.
"Mrs Ashford, the tumor is aggressive and the location makes surgical intervention extremely high risk at this stage."
"How high."
"The probability of a successful outcome is—"
"Doctor, I am not asking for probability ranges. I am asking how high."
He paused. "High enough that we would not recommend it as a first approach."
"What is the first approach."
"We would start with a targeted radiation protocol combined with—"
"And that buys me how long."
He paused again and this time the pause was the answer before the words were.
"In cases like yours the radiation protocol can extend the timeline but it is not a curative path. It is a management path."
"So it buys me time but it does not fix anything."
"It gives us more time to explore options."
"That is not what I asked."
A nurse appeared at the door, soft knock, soft expression, the specific face of someone sent in to make difficult conversations feel gentler.
"Mrs Ashford, can I get you anything, some water perhaps or—"
"I'm fine thank you."
"Sometimes it helps to have someone with you during these conversations, is there someone we can call—"
"There is not."
"Mrs Ashford," the doctor said carefully. "Three months is the current projection without intervention. With the radiation protocol that number improves."
"To what."
"Potentially five to six months in the best case scenario."
"And in the realistic case scenario."
He opened his mouth.
"The realistic one," I said. "Not the best case."
He closed his mouth and then opened it again. "Four months. Possibly four and a half."
I nodded.
"There are clinical trials currently running that your profile may qualify for and I would very much like to refer you to a colleague of mine who specializes in experimental treatment paths."
"How long have I had it."
He stopped.
"The tumor," I said. "How long has it been there."
"Based on the imaging it has been developing for approximately two to three years."
"And nobody caught it until now."
"Unfortunately in cases where the patient has not presented with significant symptoms early enough—"
"I presented," I said. "Eighteen months ago. Headaches. Blackouts. I came to this clinic and I was told it was stress related and sent home with a prescription for anxiety medication."
The room went very quiet.
The nurse looked at the doctor.
The doctor looked at the file in front of him.
"Mrs Ashford I understand your frustration and I want to assure you that we are going to do everything in our power going forward to—"
"I am not frustrated," I said and picked up my bag. "I just wanted to make sure that was on the record."
"We really should schedule the follow up before you—"
"I will call," I said and walked out.
The receptionist said something after me from the front desk and I kept moving through the glass door and down the steps and that was when I saw it.
At the base of the steps.
Small and scratched and old, the chain broken, sitting on the wet pavement like it had always been there waiting.
A locket.
I crouched down and picked it up and the second my fingers closed around it everything behind my eyes cracked open at once.
Rain hammering the ground.
Damien's weight dragging against my arms.
My shoes losing grip in the mud and my shoulders burning and me pulling anyway because stopping was not an option.
Then Gabriella at the tree line. Still. Composed. Watching.
"A little help." My own voice, rough and breathless. "Gabriella I need help right now."
"You're doing fine."
The ground coming up fast.
The locket sliding from my neck.
Then Lydia's voice, patient and gentle, sitting beside my hospital bed like she was doing me a kindness.
"You hit your head. It's completely normal not to remember clearly."
"I remember going out there. I remember finding him."
"Gabriella saved him Amelia. That's what happened."
Then Cole, settled and certain.
"That's what everyone on that side of the estate saw."
Then the medic without looking up.
"The brain fills gaps with things that feel like memory but aren't always accurate."
Then my own voice in an empty room talking to the ceiling talking to nobody.
"I was the one who got him out."
I stood up.
The city moved around me completely indifferent, buses and voices and a car horn twice and then silence.
A woman stopped beside me. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
"You've been standing there a while."
"I know."
She gave me the look people give when they have decided something is not their business and moved on.
A teenager bumped into my shoulder without stopping. "Sorry."
I did not answer.
I was looking at the locket in my palm and thinking about eighteen months ago when I walked into that clinic with headaches and blackouts and walked out with an anxiety prescription and a husband who did not ask a single question about the appointment when I got home that evening.
Not one.
My phone buzzed in my bag.
I already knew who it was without looking.
I put the locket in my pocket and reached for my phone and looked at the screen.
Damien.
I put it back without answering and started walking because I knew exactly where I was going and I knew exactly what I was going to say when I got there and not one single part of me was afraid of any of it.
Three months, the doctor had said.
Two to three years it had been growing.
A tumor that started the same year as the lie.
- Writer
