A few years ago, I’d written a book and had managed to find an agent to represent me. A year later, I was a bestseller, and my last two books had been bestsellers too. My publishers loved me.
But that enabled my nomadic lifestyle as well.
All that time, I was away from family who know me best. Who might have seen the signs before anyone else did.
Signs that I’m apparently sick.
My brow crinkles as my cell buzzes. I reach down and stare at the screen, seeing Diana has sent me a message.
I’m still friends with all the people I’ve helped. Diana more than most though. We usually speak every day, but because of the distance between us, and the things we talk about, I don’t think she ever realized how much I’ve changed.
I don’t have to understand what’s being said to know the doctor’s telling my parents I have some kind of tumor.
A brain tumor.
Yeah, that doesn’t bode well, does it?
Diana: How’s it going? You out of the appointment yet?
What should I tell her?
The truth?
That I believe I’m an angel?
Or that my wings are the only reason I decided I needed to start this piggyback ride through the healthcare system, as I was referred to doctor after doctor who investigated my case?
None of them saw my wings.
Not a single one.
And they’re so beautiful too.
I gnaw on my bottom lip as I stare at her message. I know she knows I’ve read it, so I can’t not answer. She’ll just carry on pinging until I reply, and my dad will end up telling me off. He still thinks I’m eight, and ever since they figured out something wasn’t right with me, and I told them, he’s been even worse.
Treating me like a child.
I’m not a child.
I’m a grown woman.
I just...
Well, I have wings.
Me: They think I have a cyst in my brain.
Diana: What’s a cyst?
I don’t take her lack of reaction in a bad way. I know her. I know she’s freaking out in person, but she would try to be calm via message for my sake.
Me: I don’t know. I guess I should listen to the doctor, but I just can’t seem to focus.
Diana: You haven’t been able to focus for a while. Weren’t you telling me a few weeks ago that’s why London’s Burning is taking you so long to write?
I blink at that—why does she remember everything? Or is it me who’s forgetting everything?
The thought makes me huff.
Me: Must you remember everything?
Diana: Lol. I don’t. I have mom brain, you know that. You’re just forgetful.
Another symptom, maybe?
I reach up and rub my temple where an ache’s starting to grow.
It’s strange to think of this ‘thing’ growing in my head. Do I feel it?
I mean, some days, like today, I have headaches.
But doesn’t everyone?
And Diana’s right. I’m a pretty fast writer, but London’s Burning, though I’m loving the story, is taking me ages to finish.
My agent has already been pestering me over it for at least four months now.
I’d just blamed it on my intense need to help Linda.
A need that backfired.
Why had I shared the truth with her?
Why?
Why had I shown her my wings?
I want to kick myself, because if I’d just stayed quiet, she’d still be alive, and her death wouldn’t be on my conscience.
More than anything, it’s that which pains me.
I’d gone to such efforts to get her to trust me. We’d become fast friends—that was the only reason I’d brought her into my confidence about my wings.
But it had done the opposite of bringing us closer, and as a result, she’s now in a cemetery, returning to the earth, and I might be following her.
“Will I die?”
I blurt out the question, not caring that I’m being rude. I know my parents are absorbing all this, know they’re going to be researching it all later, but I don’t care about that.
I want to know the truth.
I hate bullshitting around.
“The surgery is intense and—”
I don’t let her finish. “Will I die?”
The neurologist, a woman in her mid-fifties with a constant scowl, stares at me long enough for her eyes to soften. She wears green scrubs beneath a white doctor’s jacket, and her stethoscope has some kind of plastic thing on it that makes it look like a daisy.
I guess that means she has kids walking through these doors.
Jesus. How terrifying.
“You might.”
The admission has my mom releasing a soft sob, and I turn to look at her in surprise. I love her, and she loves me, but she’s a doctor herself. An oncologist. She’s pretty hardened when it comes to illnesses. Whenever I had anything wrong with me as a kid, she’d say, “It’s only a bruised knee. Let’s be grateful you didn’t break your patella.”
I grew up knowing what the anatomical names of body parts were because she compared every injury to the worst-case scenario.
“You have an earache? At least, you’re not going deaf in that ear, Andrea.”
For her to cry now? And yeah, she has big fat blobs of tears in her eyes... I know it isn’t good.
Huh.
I’m dying.
So why don’t I feel like I am? Why does this feel like the first day of the rest of my life?
Diana: Did you see this?
The buzz of my phone has me staring down at the screen. She’s sent a few messages, all of them demanding more information. Knowing her intent is to distract me, I ignore them to ask:
Me: Did I see what?
A link appears, and when I open it, uncaring about the conversation now, I see him again.
What is it about this priest?
Savio Martin.
I bite my bottom lip, surprised how the sight of him makes something inside me squirm.
I’ve never been a sexual creature. I figure that was why, at twenty-eight, I’m still a virgin. Everyone else got down and dirty, and I just like watching. And no, not in a voyeur kind of way, just in a ‘life’ kind of way.
But Father Savio? With eyes like velvet and a face that would make a saint weep?
He makes me melt.
I scan the article—it’s an exposé about his life since he’d been freed from his captors.
Was that really ten years ago?
God, how time passes.
I’d kept an eye on his situation, his story, every now and then, but when it dried up, I couldn’t follow the trail.
I let it go.
Let him go.
And now, I realize how wrong that was.
There’s pain in his eyes.
In his soul.
It calls out to me. Demanding action.
I stand up, then flinch when my dad grabs my shoulder. “Andrea? Where are you going?”
I blink at him. “I need to leave.”
“Leave for where?” He frowns at me like I’m crazy, and then something shifts on his face like now he sees me as sick. Like maybe all the weird stuff I do is because of this ‘arachnoid cyst on the left temporal lobe.’
Anger whispers through me, but the doctor murmurs, “Ms. Jura, it’s important that you focus. We’re going to have to act very fast. Though benign, it’s actually quite aggressive. We need to—”
Surgery.
I could die under the surgeon’s knife.