Enshrine

by Chelle Bliss

  Dead fuckin’ silence.

  Time stops.

  I freeze.

  My car rolls into the street, and there’s a loud bang.

  Everything goes black.

  * * *

  Whispers.

  I can hear them but can’t see who is around me. I try to make out the words, but it’s muffled nonsense.

  It was all just a dream.

  The phone call.

  It never happened.

  The car rolling back—just a figment of my imagination.

  Maybe I never really woke up this morning. My brain just played a cruel trick on me. Not even a dream, a nightmare.

  I just need to wake up. If I do, everything will be different. I’ll be me. My life will be the same as it was yesterday.

  “Callie.”

  He’s not real. Wake up.

  “Callie,” he repeats. “Wake up.”

  It’s not real. Then his hand touches me and my eyes fly open as I realize it wasn’t a dream.

  “Callie,” he says again.

  Dr. Craig is sitting on my bed, in the hospital, and I remember what he said to me before I rolled backward into the street and was hit by another car. The news, which I still don’t totally believe, shocked the hell out of me. When I met with him to do the tests, I begged him to tell me over the phone and not to make me come back into the office.

  I wanted to know without him looking me in the eyes for a few reasons. First, he’s a friend. I mean, we don’t have drinks together, but he’s always taken care of me. At one point, he asked me out, but I declined because I just wasn’t into him sexually. Second, I’m too damn busy to take more time off work to meet with him when he can give me the same information over the phone. No matter how you tell someone they have cancer, it doesn’t change the fact they have it. I figured I could handle it. I promised him I could. Dumb, Callie. Dumb.

  I snap my eyes shut, clenching them so tightly they ache too. No. No. No.

  “Open your eyes.”

  Lying there, I take a few deep, harsh breaths, trying to will it all away. Why couldn’t I fall back asleep and wake up in my bed?

  “Callie,” he hisses. Maybe I heard him wrong since my heart beat so hard that I practically couldn’t hear anything.

  Slowly, I open my eyes, hoping it will all be a dream.

  But it isn’t.

  He is real.

  I’m in the hospital.

  But I’m alive.

  And then I remember what he said. “You have cancer.”

  Maybe that part was a dream.

  I could’ve been in an accident and imagined the news he dropped on me over the phone. It’s entirely possible. Right? I could’ve hit my head and the drugs they gave me caused the worst nightmare of my life. I’ve known it’s a possibility since I had the tests, but I never believed that I would have it.

  “What happened?”

  He sits on the edge of the bed, resting his hand on my leg. “You had an accident.”

  “I remember,” I whisper, looking around the room and realizing I’m in the ER.

  His face is somber when he drags his eyes to mine. “Do you remember what happened before the accident?” Somehow, his frown grows more profound, and I know that it wasn’t a dream.

  “I don’t,” I lie.

  “We were on the phone and—” He pauses and scoots closer before grabbing my hand.

  I push my head back into the pillow, wishing I could disappear. “Cancer,” I whisper.

  He nods, and his brown eyes become remorseful. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Hearing him say the words again still doesn’t make it feel real. “What type?” I ask, knowing everything about the wretched disease. I studied biology in college and specialized in medicine before becoming a molecular biologist.

  “Leukemia.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, it’s hard to tell with a simple blood test.” I still haven’t faced reality. Even hearing the words come from his mouth a second time doesn’t convince me.

  “Yes. I can say with one hundred percent certainty that it’s leukemia.”

  The room starts to spin. Things fade and gray. The sound of my heart pounding in my ears dulls along with everything else.

  I’m not a fool. I knew when I went for testing there was a possibility I had cancer, but I never truly believed it. Sitting here now, listening to him say the words again, doesn’t make it more believable either.

  “Callie.”

  Snapping back to the present, I become hyperaware of everything around me. “What?” I yell. Fear starts to choke me. I know what the diagnosis means. A long road of treatment, and if I am lucky, I’ll survive.

  “Stay with me.” Dr. Craig strokes my hand with his thumb, trying to comfort me.

  Tears begin to fill my eyes, the sunlight streaming through the windows looking like stars. “I’m here,” I mumble before a sob breaks free and echoes in the room.

  I have cancer. Cancer. How in the fuck did I get cancer?

  My mind starts to fill with images that haunt me—flashes of my hair falling out in clumps, bruises and lumps covering my porcelain skin, and eventually, a casket. No one hears the word cancer and thinks about living.

  No one.

  Next to the word cancer in the dictionary, it should just say, “the scariest fucking thing in the world that will eventually kill you.”

  People do survive. I know they do. But upon hearing the news, that’s the last thing on my mind.

  “I need a second opinion.” He could be wrong. Medicine is still called a “practice,” and doctors get shit wrong all the time.

  “I had three doctors look over your tests. I’m not wrong, Callie.”

  “No!” I yell before another round of tears begins to fall.

  “Callie,” he whispers and squeezes my hand.

  I pull away, sickened by the entire thing.

  “How bad?” I ask before I close my eyes, biting my lip as I brace myself for the news.

  “It’s treatable.”

  That’s another bullshit phrase. Treatable. What the fuck does that really mean? He didn’t mention curable. Nope. He said treatable.

  Doctors use those words to pacify people. If they were entirely truthful, we would give up and they’d look like the biggest assholes in the world.

  They’ll treat me. I had come up with some of those treatments—helped develop the perfect cocktail to prolong someone’s life just long enough to hopefully find a cure.

  I’m now officially a statistic.

  Callista Gentile: Cancer Patient.

  It no longer matters where my Michael Kors wedges sit.

  I don’t care if my car has been smashed to bits.

  None of it matters.

  I am no longer in the rat race on a quest to buy the next amazing thing.

  I have to fight for my life.

  4

  Stage 1—Denial & Isolation

  My phone rings again. It’s like the tenth time today and it’s the same person. The one person who would hound me day and night for not calling her back—Rebecca.

  For days, I’ve lain around the house¸ crying my eyes out and on the verge of dehydration, but I couldn’t snap out of it.

  I didn’t care to go out for drinks with the girls. Therefore, I’ve ignored every call from Rebecca.

  Dr. Craig contacted my work and told them I needed to take a leave of absence, yet they still call every day. Each time, I hit ignore. By the third day, I turned my ringer off and threw my phone on my nightstand.

  I don’t want to hear anyone’s sorrow or pity for me. I don’t want to listen to another “I’m sorry.”

  I just want to be alone. If I seal myself inside my apartment, maybe things will be different.

  I sit on my couch, staring at the blank television and thinking about my life. From sunlight to darkness, the nothingness on the screen transfixes me. I’m lost in the emptiness, unable to get death off my mind.

  Day turns into night.

&nb
sp; Night runs into day.

  But I sit there, frozen and lost.

  “Callie,” a voice calls before there’s a loud thud at the front door. I don’t bother to look because I’m not answering. “Goddammit, Callie. Open the damn door.”

  Sitting in silence, except for Rebecca pounding like a maniac, I keep my eyes on the television. Although I know she’d comfort me, the only person I truly want is my mother. But like so many people in the world, I have no one left. I was an only child, and my parents both died before I was twenty. They were estranged from the rest of the family and I was too, by default.

  “I’m not giving up. I’ll be back with reinforcements.” Her footsteps fade as she walks away from my door, and I hold my breath, waiting for the pounding to start again.

  Reinforcements?

  Rebecca’s the closest thing I have to family. We grew up together. Played in each other’s backyards as kids. We dreamed together, lying under the stars as children and sharing our fairy tale of the perfect life.

  We had it. Rebecca still does, but I don’t.

  I’m Callie “Cancer” Gentile.

  No longer am I just me—now, I have a horrible disease overshadowing everything in my life.

  The sunlight fades, slowly crawling back out the window before darkness engulfs the room, but I still don’t move and Rebecca hasn’t returned.

  Denial fades.

  I realize I have it.

  I’m not stupid. No matter how hard I want to wish it away, it’s now a part of me.

  But that doesn’t mean I have to talk to anyone about it. I especially don’t want to talk to Rebecca. I love her, really, I do. She’s my BFF, but right now, I’m envious of her.

  She still has the perfect life. Her greatest worry is what to wear to work tomorrow. She doesn’t have to think about her final moment before dying.

  * * *

  My eyes open when I hear the door handle start to turn. I don’t bother getting up. Maybe someone is here to kill me and steal all my shit I no longer need. I have no fight left in me and don’t need my fabulous shoe collection when I’ll be too weak to walk someday.

  “Just bust the fuckin’ door down,” Rebecca hollers, and I begin to panic.

  There goes my hope of a quick death and being alone.

  “Are you sure?” a man asks, his deep voice familiar but too faint for me to place.

  “Just do it already!”

  I sit up and stare at the door with wide eyes, all sleep vanishing quickly. Even if she busts it down, I still don’t want to see her. Moving quickly, I stumble to the bathroom and seal myself inside, cloaking myself behind the door in relative safety.

  I want silence. I need to be alone. I haven’t had time to digest everything that has happened. Rebecca being around me won’t help.

  The front door cracks, smashing against the wall; the picture hanging behind it falls to the floor and shatters.

  “Callie?” Rebecca calls out. Her heavy footsteps grow louder as she searches for me.

  “She isn’t here,” the man tells her.

  Even with a door separating us, I cover my ears to block them. It’s childish, I know. But in moments of complete and utter terror, I don’t act rationally.

  “She’s here. Just look for her.” I can hear the panic in her voice, and I want to call out to her, but I don’t.

  I crawl quickly and quietly into the bathtub, sliding down against the porcelain finish and wishing it were filled with water so I could drown away my sorrow.

  “Check the bathroom.”

  The knob turns and I hold my breath. It’s locked, and I will not open it.

  “Damn her.” Rebecca pounds on the door frantically. “Callie, I know you’re in there.”

  I eyeball the pristine white ceiling and wonder what the point of it all is. Why did I bust my ass in school, work countless hours in a lab, just to have it all pulled from my grasp in a moment? I want to do so many things in my life, and now, I never can.

  Rebecca pounds harder and starts to scream. “Open the fucking door!” I don’t budge. “Bust it open!” Within seconds, the man easily forces the door open with a loud crash, and then fills the doorway.

  I close my eyes and start to whisper nonsense to myself. But just like my cancer, they don’t go away.

  “Dammit.” Rebecca’s angry voice echoes against the bathroom tile. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “She doesn’t look good.”

  “You’re a fuckin’ mess,” she hisses, reaching for my hair and rubbing it between her fingers. “Get her out of the tub please,” she tells Bruno.

  “Go away,” I moan. My voice is faint, and I can’t bring myself to say it with any more conviction.

  As he pushes his arms underneath my back and begins lifting me from the tub, I steal a glance. Oh shit. Why does it have to be him? Bruno.

  Vanity takes over for a moment and I’m filled with embarrassment—until I remember I’m dying. Soon, he’ll see me in a casket, if he’d even attend, with the worst makeup job ever and my hair looking like something out of a Teen Beat magazine.

  “Come on, beautiful,” he tells me with a soft face and kind eyes.

  For a moment, I swoon because he calls me beautiful, and then it fades and I close my eyes again. Resting my head on his chest, I listen to the steady timbre of his heartbeat as he carries me toward the living room. I let myself get lost in the sound.

  “What in the fuck happened here?” Rebecca asks, following close