CHAPTER 1 CANCER BATTLING

LILY’S POV

This time I was in the process of entering new information into the patient’s file when my phone rang. Glancing at the screen idly, I noticed that it was from an unknown number. Many times I remember refusing to answer calls during work periods, especially if I was on shift

I lifted it up thinking that it would be another routine issue to address and then the voice on the other line sounded panicked.

“Dr. Jayden?” Ayla’s class-teacher seemed beyond anxious when answering. “It’s about your daughter: Ayla fainted at the school today and she was taken to the hospital.”

My blood ran cold.

‘what?’ I squeaked, my voice trembling with panic more than I would have wanted. My hands were shaking and I tried to contain myself as I reached out to grab my bag while the rest of the conversation went in one ear and out the other. Fainted? Hospital?

“I’m coming right now!” I said before hanging up the phone and rushing towards the car that I own.

The ride to the hospital felt like an eternity. Every red light, every slow car, it was torture for me. My mind was spinning, going over all sorts of worst-case scenarios in my head at that point. Ayla. My baby. I could hardly catch my breath from the tension that welled up in my throat. I had to be strong, but how could I? Each second seemed as if it was pulling me into a nightmare.

After getting to the hospital, I quickly rushed through the various corridors I used to work in before finding Mateo with a stern look on his face. When I came to Melbourne, he was my first and only friend and we studied medicine together in college. Now, he works as a Pediatrician. Seeing him didn’t bring the comfort it usually did. Instead, it made my stomach drop even more.

“Lily,” Mateo’s voice sounded like he was truly sorry for what he was about to say. He immediately wrapped me in a brief embrace. “She’s inside. ”

I shoved him aside and entered the room where Ayla was lying, on the hospital bed, as fragile as a baby. It pained me to see her like that, with tubes running through her body, the sound of the monitors, only at low tones. I sit down beside her, pushing the hair off her face and swallowing the lump in my throat.

The doctor arrived shortly after, and his facial look was stern. It was written all over his face and in his eyes – the burden of what he is about to utter. Being a doctor, I know that it is never easy to give such a blow to a patient, but receiving it about my own kid was devastating.

“Lily…”. The doctor seemed to choose his words carefully, look at Mateo and then at me. “We have done the tests. I regret to inform you that your daughter has leukemia.”

For a second there the room froze. It felt as if the earth had opened its mouth and swallowed me whole – and I was falling. Leukemia. The word remained in my head as cold and as horrifying as ever. I knew what it meant. I knew the implications. I had witnessed it in other patients, but this… this was Ayla. My daughter. My world.

“Leukemia?” I asked softly. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t allow myself to cry. Not now.

The doctor nodded gently. “We have to do something fast. Ayla has leukemia and she needs a bone marrow transplant, we need to look for a compatible donor.”

I try to shift my concentration desperately, to come out of this trance, so I took a deep breath to do so. There was a need for something like this. Anything. “Test me. I want to be tested right now,” I asked him, my tone much more confident than I was inside.

He looked at me with a very serious expression. “Of course, we’ll do the test immediately.”

It was then that the time started to elude me; I was holding Ayla’s hand and she was lying still next to me while her face looked so serene and she didn’t know of the storm brewing around her. Part of me wanted to shield her from all of this to just take her in my arms and fix everything as I always did. But this… this was something I couldn’t fix on my own.

Mateo sat quietly next to me and his mere existence was soothing to me though I could scarcely utter any word. The burden of the moment practically held me down and all that was left to do was to hope and hope hard that my bone marrow would be the compatible one she required. Let it be me, please.

The doctor returned and, by the expression on his face, I was able to guess the outcome before he said a word.

“I’m sorry, Lily. Your bone marrow is not a match.”

I felt the air had been taken out of the room. I wasn’t a match. I couldn’t help her. I felt a sensation in the head and my hands were shaking as I grabbed the armrest of the chair. How could this be happening? How could you not be able to save your own daughter?

“No,” I crooked my head in astonishment. “No, it cannot be possible there must be some error. Test me again. Test me again!” I could hear the desperation in my voice and I was finally able to cry.

Mateo laid a hand on my shoulder and his voice calmed down to a whisper. “Lily… we’ll find a donor. We’ll do everything we can.”

I couldn’t breathe. The combination of everything proved to be overwhelming. I wasn’t a match. What now? How do I save her? The words danced around in my head, echoing the relentless and the cruel. This was something I always used to do; fix things. I was the doctor. It was my role to know how to repair it, how to protect her. But now, I was helpless.

I sank back into the chair beside Ayla’s bed and my heart broke into pieces. I stared at her, my beautiful, my warrior, and I was a man without a weapon. She was just 5 years old.

I should have protected her. I should have known that something is wrong long before that happened. How did I miss it? She had appeared to be a very healthy woman, very full of life. Now, it seemed as if everything was falling apart or rather coming apart. With every breath I felt as if I was fighting for it, my chest constricted with panic. The very earth seemed too vast, too much and I was such a tiny speck in the design of things.

I considered all the people I had held and all the families I had helped during their most difficult moments. Now it was my turn to sit in that god-awful chair and wait for the impossible to happen. It was not just a patient though. It was Ayla. My Ayla.

“Ayla, baby… “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping her hand gently as my sobs came out. “I’m going to fix this. I promise you. I’ll find a way.”

But inside, I was crumbling. How? How could I fix this when I wasn’t the match?