Ocean

Allison couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She was only sixteen; she couldn’t be going through this. She should be worrying about Homecoming and Junior Prom. There was no way that she was hearing the doctor right. Something like this couldn’t happen to someone her age. She looked at the doctor across from her with tears in her eyes.

“Please tell me this is some sick joke,” she begged.

“I wish I could,” the doctor said softly looking at her with sadness in his eyes.

Allison’s mom gripped her hand tightly as she felt her world crashing down around her. She was only sixteen, and yet the doctor had just given her a certain amount of time to live. If she didn’t get treatment, the doctor had told her, she would die within a year.

“What kind of treatment can I get,” she finally asked.

“Chemotherapy is most common,” he told her.

She nodded and looked at her mom, not knowing what to say.

“When can she start?” her mom asked him trying to hide the quiver in her voice.

“As soon as possible, we don’t want to wait on this, if your daughter is to live, she has to start treatment as soon as she can,” the doctor told them.

Allison and her mom soon bid goodbye to the doctor and slowly walked out of his office. She was in a state of shock. She had just been given a death sentence with barely a chance of survival. The car was silent on the way home, both stuck with their own thoughts, trying to deal with the situation as best they could.

It wasn’t even a week later that Allison was hooked up to machines in the hospital and starting first round of chemotherapy. Her and the doctor had decided she would go two weeks with Chemo, and then have two weeks off for her body to rest, at first. After a few months of that, he would evaluate his decision. She hoped that the Chemo worked, and she would be able to stop all treatments soon. She had just started her senior year in High School, and had no desire to spend it sick in the hospital. She especially didn’t want to lose her hair.

Her first round of Chemo was worse than she’d ever even imagined. It made her sick to her stomach, and she was so weak she couldn’t get out of bed half the time. It made her seriously question whether it would make her better or not.

Then one morning she woke up, and found a clump of hair lying on the pillow by her head. It was heartbreaking to see her shiny black hair lying beside her. She felt tears swell in her eyes as her mom walked into the room. She looked up at her and held her hair out in her right hand.

"It's happening mom," she said hoarsely. "It's really happening. It isn't a dream."

"Oh honey," her mom said gently coming forward to hold her in her arms. "It'll be okay. The doctor says the cancer is reacting well to the Chemo, and that you should be out of the hospital soon."

"I don't want to be here mom, I don't want to be sick," Allison said quietly.

"I know you don't," her mom said smiling at her sadly. "I don't want you to be here."

"Promise me I'll get better," she begged her mom.

"I swear bad things can't happen to you. I won't let them," her mom told her with a smile.

Allison smiled at her through her tears. She knew that her mom couldn't stop things from happening, but it was comforting to know her mom actually believed that she'd get better.

When she heard she had to stay in the hospital for Christmas Allison fell into a depression and refused to speak to anyone. She couldn’t stand being in the hospital. She felt she had been in the hospital long enough to last her the rest of her life.

The only thing that brought her out of her depression was the reminder that there were children who were a lot younger than her stuck in the hospital, and instead of upsetting them by moping around, she should be helping them have the best Christmas possible. So on Christmas Eve, she used up all her energy putting up a Christmas tree, and helping nurses wrap presents for all the children on the ward.

A few months went by and the Chemo stop affecting her so badly. It was St. Patrick’s Day that her and her family got the news. The cancer had gone into remission and she was finally able to leave the hospital. After hearing that news, Allison didn’t know what to do. She was happy she was to live, but she was lost at what to do. She had spent almost a full year in the hospital and had no idea what to do after wards.

It was a few months later Allison sat on the sand watching as the ocean waves reached the shore. To her there was something very comforting about watching ocean waves. It seemed like they were the rhythm of life. They came and went in perfect synch and nothing would stop them. They could be disturbed but only for a fraction of a second and then they went back to the way they were. It was almost how people expected her to be. She smiled as she saw a dolphin take a dive far off in the ocean, almost so far off that any further and she wouldn’t be able to see it.

She felt honored and lucky to be on her own in Florida as she watched some of her classmates play in the distance. For a while it looked like she wouldn’t be allowed or even able to take her senior trip to Florida. She was surprised when her parents had agreed to let her go. But it seemed that they felt the same way she had. They wanted her to have some freedom after spending the better part of her senior year hooked up to heart monitors and going through Chemotherapy treatments.

When they had gotten the news in March that she had gone into remission she’d been so excited, and went back to planning the trip that she had spent all of junior year planning. However, when she asked her parents they had seemed reluctant to let her go on the trip. They wanted her to go on with life, but they were also afraid of her being away from home so soon after her treatments. Finally, after weeks of begging them, and showing them all the information she’d gathered, they’d agreed to let her go.

She took a deep breath then stood up and dusted the sand off her clothes. Allison started walking back towards the hotel where she was staying and only stopped once to pick up a stone she found on the beach. She looked at it for a second before pocketing as a souvenir from her trip. It seemed a better idea than wasting money on something that wasn’t very personal to her. She would rather have something that meant something to her, and that was a personal souvenir. She walked up to a teacher who turned and smiled at her.

“You need something Allison?” he asked.

“Do you think I could walk back to the hotel sir? I’m really tired,” she asked him.

“Sure, do you want someone to go with you,” he asked her.

“No, I think I’ll be fine on my own,” she told him with a sigh.

She walked up the front steps of the hotel and into the gift shop to buy something for her parents. She wanted to send them a token of her trip, even though it would probably be arriving to their house no more than a day before she got home. She wound up picking out a postcard that had a picture of a beach on it, and a scrapbook that she would fill with pictures when she got home.

She made her way up the stairs to her room with her gifts in hand and put them on the bedside table before lying down. She was still recovering from all the chemo and got warn out easily, but she’d felt better than she had in a very long time. It was refreshing to get away from the sorrowful looks of her neighbors when they saw her out and about with her wigs on.

She reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out her cell phone to call her home. She had to call when she got to Florida and she’d already put it off for almost two hours. She dialed her home phone number, and waited for the phone to ring. She sighed when she heard the fourth ring on the other line, and once again when the answering machine picked up. She hated talking to machines.

“Mom, Dad, this is Allison,” she said when the answering machine beeped to tell her to record her message. “Just wanted to call to let you know I made it here okay, so that way you didn’t worry about me. Bye.”

She hung up her cell phone after that, laid it on the bedside table, and closed her eyes, causing her to drift off for a while. It was dark out when she woke up, her assigned roommate fast asleep in the bed beside her. She got out of the bed, and took the small stone that was in her pocket out, and laid it on the table. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep with it in her pocket, and she was surprised she slept so well without removing it as usually she would have been uncomfortable with something in her pocket.

Allison walked to the window and looked out at the sky, watching the birds flying around the moon. The moon had always been a sign of hope for her but now, the fact that something so small could control the oceans of Earth, from so far away, now gave her hope that she could control the disease that had ravaged her body for a year.

She looked back down at the ocean tides and smiled. She’d loved coming to the ocean when she was a child, growing up in Georgia it had always been a given she would spend the summer at the ocean. It had always calmed her. She’d sit for hours watching the tide come again. It had always been something she could count on happening. It was unchanging, and as old as the world itself. It had always cleared her mind.

Allison yawned and gave the ocean one last look before stepping away from the window. She pulled the curtains closed and walked over to the table by her bed glancing at the pot of plants on it. She assumed that the hotel had wanted their visitors to feel welcome but she had no idea what kind of plant it was. She’d never even heard of it before. She lay back down on her bed and closed her eyes. She drifted off to the sound of the ocean tides coming from the beach below her window.