A slight cough to clear her throat echoed throughout the room and she began again.

“They did a bunch more tests and I ended up staying there for almost a week, my weakness getting worse and the bruises not going away. The doctors hardly told me anything, until they came in one morning and informed me that I had Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia in its Accelerated Phase.”

She let out a dry, short laugh.

“God, you should have heard the way they said it, like they just told me that the grass was green or something. No emotion, no empathy, nothing. They started listing off treatments and medications and asking me all sorts of questions, but I was gone. I spaced out for the rest of the day, their voices muted in the background until I finally managed to fall asleep.

I woke up the next morning and Julie, my girlfriend, was there. I think that was the first time I smiled in a week. She walked up to my bed and grabbed my hand and I told her everything the doctors had told me. She started crying and then I started crying and that’s when it hit me. I had Leukemia. Me. Invincible, take no shit, fuck the world Ashley Davies had Leukemia.

Julie was the only one I had left. My mom I hadn’t spoken to since graduation day of high school and my dad died when I was 16. So Julie and I sat in the hospital and discussed treatment options and decided on chemotherapy using a new drug that, although it hadn’t been used on a lot of patients yet, showed a lot of promise. It was radical and intense, but it was my best chance for survival.

I started my first dose that day, Julie holding my hand as tight as she could. God, I don’t know how I would have gotten through that day without her. I continued the chemo for weeks, but gradually I noticed that Julie started showing up less and less, and when she did come, she was distant and aloof. Then, one day I woke up to find a note laying on top of me from her.”

Ashley was quiet for a minute, trying to push herself to go on without breaking out in tears right then. Spencer was quiet too, but only because she was trying to take all of this in. She herself began to feel physically ill now. The brunette took a deep breath.