If I cried.
Begged.
Prayed.
No one could save me.
At this point, not even God.
I tried to hide the emotion in my voice the same way I’d been masking my symptoms. “What if I want to die with dignity, Dr. Moore? Before I require a wheelchair and twenty-four-hour care? Before my family has to watch me disintegrate like my father?”
His expression never softened in my presence, not in all the years I’d been coming here and seeing him in the hospital, listening to him deliver more heartbreaking news. The man always stayed detached and I was fine with that. I didn’t come for his bedside manner, I came because he was the best. But suddenly, there was a crack. A hint of emotion. And I felt it blast through me like a tremor so strong, it made me lose my balance.
Except this time I was sitting.
This time … there was nowhere for me to fall.
“The law isn’t negotiable, I’m afraid,” he said.
And then it was gone, and aloofness was in its wake.
My throat closed.
All the air left my lungs.
Bile swirled in my stomach and I knew I would throw it up the second I walked out of his office.
I’d completely lost control. I just wanted a little of it back and he couldn’t even give that to me.
This conversation wasn’t about options.
It was about death.
“As your disease advances, we’ll be seeing each other monthly, as you know. It’s something we can talk about again in the future. In the meantime, let’s discuss the medications I would like you start …”
I clenched my hands together the same way I had done when he had read me my diagnosis. I only had myself to hold onto. And while I stared straight ahead, I watched a thick black line form at the top of my vision and travel to the floor.
My life was now divided.
There was the Jesse before her diagnosis and the Jesse after.
And both of us only had two years to live.