Chapter 89 Today feels heavy
A year ago, I gave my class an essay assignment.
Nothing complicated. Just one of those reflective prompts teachers use when they want students to think about the future in broad, hopeful strokes.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
They groaned when I wrote it on the board, of course. Teenagers are contractually obligated to groan at anything that resembles self-reflection. But they wrote the essays anyway. And the answers came in every imaginable category.
One student wrote about becoming a surgeon and moving to Boston because apparently that’s where all the best hospitals were. Another was convinced he’d be a professional football player living in a house with six bedrooms and a garage full of sports cars. One girl wrote that she’d probably own a small bakery somewhere quiet where she could wake up early every morning and make bread while listening to old music.
Some were ambitious.
Some were wildly unrealistic.
Some were surprisingly thoughtful.
But most of them followed roughly the same blueprint....
Education leads to work.
Work leads to stability.
Stability leads to the life you imagined.
It’s the structure people grow up believing in. The quiet promise that if you follow the steps correctly, the future will unfold in a reasonably predictable direction. Even I believed that. Even I was following the same plan.
I remember sitting at my desk after school one afternoon, reading through those essays and idly wondering what my own answer would be. Back then it didn’t feel like a heavy question. It felt distant, hypothetical.
Back then my thoughts about the future were wrapped in that quiet, unspoken assumption most people carry around without realizing it. The easy arrogance of believing time belongs to you. The quiet illusion that life stretches forward indefinitely.
Immortality by default.
So when I pictured my own ten years, the image was soft and ordinary. I saw myself settled down with someone. Someone who, ideally, liked me about as much as I liked them. I imagined a house somewhere outside the city. The kind with a small backyard and creaky wooden floors and maybe a bookshelf that kept growing every year.
And if I really let my imagination stretch a little....Maybe a child. Or at the very least, a dog. The kind of life that felt achievable if you just kept moving forward.
But if someone asked me that question right now....Where do you see yourself in ten years?
I think my answer would be very different.
Dr. Parson’s office smells faintly like coffee. Michael and I sit side by side in the chairs across from his desk while he studies the results on his tablet.
There’s a particular kind of silence that exists in rooms like this. The kind where you can feel the words gathering before they’re spoken.
He finally looks up.
“Ryan,” he says gently, “your counts aren’t where we were hoping they’d be after this cycle.”
I nod slowly. My brain registers the sentence, but it doesn’t fully land yet. He continues. “Your white blood cells are still quite low, and your platelets haven’t rebounded the way we expected them to. Your hemoglobin has also dropped further.”
He pauses slightly.
“It’s not catastrophic.... yet,” he adds carefully. “But it is concerning. We were hoping the hypomethylating agent would produce a more noticeable improvement by now.”
Beside me, Michael’s hand tightens around mine. His fingers press into my palm hard enough that I can feel the tension humming through them. I squeeze his hand back, not because I’m calm. But because he isn’t.
Michael leans forward slightly.
“What does that mean?” he asks. “What happens next?”
The doctor folds his hands together.
“We may need to adjust the next cycle of treatment,” he says. “Possibly a higher dose. Or a slightly more aggressive schedule.”
He watches my face as he speaks.
“And we’ll need to monitor you very closely for the time being. With your counts this low, you’re at a significantly higher risk for infections, and bleeding.”
I stare at the floor for a moment, listening to the quiet hum of the overhead lights.
Wher do I see myself in ten years?
Alive would be nice....
It’s strange how small the future becomes when someone starts measuring it in blood counts.
The rest of the appointment passes in a kind of haze. There are handshakes. A few more careful explanations from the doctor. A printed sheet with numbers I’m supposed to pay attention to. Another appointment scheduled for the next round. I nod through most of it.
Michael asks a few questions. I try, for a few brief seconds, to summon optimism. There’s still a probability, after all. There’s still a version of the future where the treatments start working. Where the numbers shift in the right direction. Where the ten-year essay I used to imagine isn’t completely ridiculous.
But the effort of holding onto that possibility feels exhausting today. So eventually I stop trying.
We walk back through the hospital corridors in silence. Past the waiting rooms and the nurses and the soft mechanical beeping that seems to exist everywhere in places like this.
Outside, the air feels colder, or maybe that’s just me.
Michael unlocks the car and we climb in. The quiet returns almost immediately. I lean my head back against the window, watching people move across the parking lot while I wait for the familiar sounds, the engine starting, the soft shift of the car backing out of the space.
But they never come.
After a few seconds I turn my head. Michael’s sitting exactly the way he was when we got in. Both hands resting on the steering wheel. He isn’t moving, he’s just staring ahead. And the only way I can think to describe the look on his face is deeply, painfully sad. Something in my chest tightens when I see it. The expression somehow makes the weight of the day settle heavier inside me.
I take a slow breath in and let it out again. My hands fumble slightly in my lap, fingers twisting together as I focus on them instead of his face.
“Today feels heavy,” I say quietly.
It genuinely does.
Michael gives a small nod.
“Yeah,” he says softly.
A moment passes. He clears his throat and finally glances toward me.
“But heavy days don’t get to decide the whole story.”
I scoff quietly. “What hospital poster did you read that on? Even you don’t sound like you believe it.”
He tilts his head slightly. “I’m trying to.”
And something about the way he says it makes a thought surface in my mind. That sometimes people aren’t strong for themselves. Sometimes they’re strong because they know someone else would fall apart if they weren’t.
Strength becomes a performance..A quiet act of protection.
I watch him for a moment. Then I say softly, “You don’t have to be fine here.”
He shrugs faintly. His eyes drift toward the window beside him. “I know.”
There's a pause.
“I just...”
He turns back toward me. And I wasn’t prepared for the look on his face. I’ve seen Michael amused. Thoughtful. Protective. But I’ve never seen him look this devastated. His voice comes out quieter when he finally speaks.
“You have cancer, Ryan.”
The words land between us with a blunt kind of force. I blink. My brain scrambles automatically for something clever to say, some kind of sarcastic remark to soften the weight of it. But nothing comes.
Michael exhales slowly. “Some stupid argument with my father,” he says, his voice rougher now, “should really be the least of my concerns. But it's not.”