Until the Last Breath

“Then you don’t need my approval, sis.” I held her shoulders. “If Danny is who you can see yourself sharing a future with, hold onto that. Do whatever makes you happy.”

She nodded, twisting the new ring around her finger. “You’re right. God! Look at this ring!” She held her hand out, studying it in awe. “He did a good job. My Danny. At least he has good taste.”

“He does! Now come on, love bug.” I tugged on her hand, turning for the dance floor. “Let’s go dance and show them why they really married us.”

Tessa grinned like a Cheshire cat, holding onto my hand and hurrying to the floor with me. We danced to a song by Rihanna, laughing and grooving. The beat pulsed through my heels, and I absorbed the music like it was fuel for my drunken soul.

John came up behind me several seconds later, dancing with me as I shook my hips. I threw my arms up to clasp them around the back of his neck, then rested the back of my head on his upper chest. He kept the drinks steady in the air.

Suddenly, I had the urge to cough. At first I thought nothing of it. It was only one cough, right?

Wrong.

That one cough turned into two and then four.

After six coughs I lost count. It was a continuous cough, one I couldn’t control no matter how hard I tried. I feared the outcome, not because I wasn’t sure what it was, but because I knew exactly what it was.

Panicked, John handed me a water bottle after rushing to the bar, and I downed it. It didn’t help. In fact, I think it made it worse. Gripping my arm, he pulled me away from the dance floor, away from the watching crowd, and rushed out the glass doors and to the bodiless corridor.

“Shannon, are you okay?” I heard him ask, but I couldn’t respond.

It felt like something had been lodged deep in my throat and it wouldn’t budge. The water wasn’t loosening the stone stuck in my throat, nor was the way John patted my back and then lifted my hands above my head in hopes that it’d stop.

I held on tight to his arm, seeing the terror swirling deep in his eyes, the horror etched all over his now pale face. I wanted to tell him that everything was okay, but that would have been a lie. And even though I wanted to, speaking was inevitable.

A moment passed before Tessa’s face appeared in front of me, her eyes filled with just as much worry as John’s, quite possibly more.

“She won’t stop coughing!” John shouted, panicking.

“Shannon, honey, take deep breaths,” Tessa said to me, holding my shoulders.

I nodded, doing my best to draw in those much-needed breaths. It felt like it was working. I just needed to calm down.

I released one last round of coughs and it was the worst of them all. My throat, sore and tight, felt like the claws of a tiger had scratched through it. But, finally, the coughing came to a cease. I gathered a breath, but when I looked down at my hand, I saw red specks.

Tessa gasped, looking down at my hand and then back up at me. Her eyes darted to the corner of my mouth, to the blood that’d collected there too.

“Oh my God. Shannon.” Her eyes were the widest I’d ever seen them. “A-are you okay?” Never had I seen Tessa so speechless, and never had I seen John move so quickly when he saw the blood too.

He picked me up in his arms and jetted down the corridor, bursting through the door that led to the medical office and getting me to a doctor on board.

We stayed in a small, cramped up room with one window the whole night. Other than a sore throat I felt fine. But the results showed differently. The doctor felt it was something much worse—something he couldn’t diagnose on a moving boat.

We landed in Cancun and I was sent to a hospital immediately. John requested for me to see the best doctor. That doctor, of course, had no clue what was happening to me either, but he had an idea.

Assuming it was cancer, he suggested I go to an oncologist and John requested to see the best one around. He never settled for less, which was a good thing sometimes.

It turned out it wasn’t cancer either, so I went back to the previous doctor who sought help from doctors that specialized in various fields of work.

After spending five nights at the hospital and hating that I was the reason we’d missed the rest of our cruise, I was finally diagnosed.

Doctor Juarez walked into the room with a clipboard in hand, shutting the door behind him as he greeted us. John hopped up, way too anxious for results. Tessa remained seated in the chair beside me, squeezing my hand as Danny rubbed her back.