She looked at the clock, it read 3:42. Had it really only been three minutes since the last time that she checked? Something must of gone wrong, Madison thought, something always went wrong. As she sat in the doctor’s office she noticed the plain white walls, which were like every other doctors office she had ever been to. But something about this one was different, these white walls made her feel sad, or maybe she was just feeling anxious.
It was the first time she had been sick since she moved to Seattle from Redondo Beach. She moved there on a whim. She couldn’t take the sadness that followed her at her prior home. Every where she went, she was known. People looked at her and knew that her dad was the one that was murdered. It followed her every where, even two years later. So she had to leave. She transferred from UCLA to University of Washington, packed up, and just left, leaving her mother and younger brother. She liked it there, no one knew her as the one with the dead father, and no one felt the need to say they were “So sorry for her loss”, as if they knew what it was like. But here she had a great job, and great friends, even if she did miss her mom and brother. She was where she belonged.
“Madison Cook?” the nurse said to the room full of people. Madison stood up and began walking over to the nurse.
“The doctor has your results.” She said in a calming voice. Madison followed as the nurse walked her back to a brand new plain white room, but this one wasn’t crowded with people. She sat up on the bed waiting for the doctor to come in. Fortunately it took no time at all before the doctor came in to read her the results of all the blood work and tests that she had taken.
“Hello Madison, my name is Doctor Jones.” He said to Madison as he looked down at his laptop.
“Hi, Dr. Jones” Madison said quickly in reply. He was handsome, she noticed, and surprisingly young, probably not much older than she was.
“So you are here today to see the results to your tests, I see.” He said in a low voice. Madison nodded, still wondering his age.
“Well I have some bad news for you; your white blood cell count is extremely low. This could be caused by a multitude of things, but we want to keep a very close eye on it, so we are going to have you come back in in a week.” Doctor Jones said in the most comforting voice Madison had ever heard anyone use.
Madison didn’t say anything, she didn’t move, she just stared blankly at the doctor. She knew what low white blood cell count meant, it meant leukemia, her grandmother had died from it, but she never thought she would get it, never in a million years. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t, not there, not in the plain white room of the doctor’s office. Madison got up to leave, she wanted to get out of there, and she wanted to run away from all of her problems. She wanted to go see the one person that she knew could make her feel better.
“If you have any questions you can call anytime you need,” the doctor said as he wrote down his phone number, “And make sure you make another appointment at the front desk on your way out” He said as Madison took the note from the doctors hands and rushed out of the room.
When she finally got home there was a note on the island in the kitchen from her roommate, Katie. “Out shopping, hope everything is OK” it read. Madison crumpled it up and flopped on the couch. She grabbed her phone and immediately dialed Alex’s number. Alex was her best friend and boyfriend, he could make her laugh no matter what, and she definitely needed to laugh now.
“Hello” Alex said as he answered the phone.
“Come over” She said in response. Then the phone went silent and she knew he was on his way.
“Record time” Alex said as he opened the door.
It was record time, good thing because she needed him now. She ran into his warm arms and squeezed him tight. She didn’t say anything; she didn’t feel the need to say anything.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked, as they walked over to the couch, Madison still squeezing tight to him.
She began to cry. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Alex was confused, but knew not to push it, not to remind her of whatever had gone wrong. He was just there for her to be her big teddy bear, he stroked her arm. She looked up at him, into his loving eyes and stopped crying, she no longer felt the fear of the possibility of her having leukemia, but felt perfectly happy. For the rest of the day Madison laid in Alex’s arms saying nothing, doing nothing. She felt safe with him; she wished it could stay like this forever.
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