No Attachments - By Tiffany King Page 0,53

day

Ashton

By the time I woke from my nap several hours later, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck or something. Every move I made was answered with an ache or pain in muscles I didn't even know I had. Sore muscles weren't my only issue either. My skin felt warm and dry like I had a sunburn. I actually felt pretty crummy. As icing on the cake, a headache also made itself known when I sat up to check the clock.

I was pretty sure I needed to get up and get ready since Nathan was coming over, but my body refused to cooperate. Anytime I felt sick like this I always panicked. I witnessed the symptoms firsthand with my mom. I watched them consume her until she was taken from me. Then I suffered from the same symptoms myself. Four years, three hundred and fifty days ago. I was a different person then. Four years ago, I believed I could beat it. I accepted the news when they told me I would need a complete hysterectomy, even though I was only seventeen at the time. I pretended the hair loss didn't bother me as the chemo ravaged through my body making me sicker than I could have ever imagined. I tolerated the looks of pity from my classmates and the snubs I received when I had to repeat my senior year since I missed half the year clutching the toilet, trying to rid my body of the toxins they were pumping in me. I accepted it all because I believed I could beat it. I had statistics on my side. We had caught it early. The doctors were confident that I wouldn't wind up like my mom, that we had an early diagnosis on our side, so I fought. I never gave up, and when I went into remission, I believed everything they had told me. I would be considered cured when I stayed in remission for five years. Time began a countdown as I kept the five-year mark in my head.

I finished my senior year of high school a loner; no longer the person I was before I found out I had cancer. My so-called friends had graduated the year before and moved on with their own lives, all glad they no longer had to face me. The rest of the students avoided me like the plague, like they were afraid they would catch what I had. High school became nothing more than torture as I avoided school functions. I just couldn't take the looks of pity. I would have avoided prom completely if my father wouldn't have bullied Shawn's father into making Shawn take me. Giving Shawn my virginity that night was my rebellious way of trying to finally feel normal, not that it worked.

With high school finally behind me, I immersed myself in college, hoping to make up for lost time. Fighting cancer made me realize how fragile life was and I was anxious to start feeling alive. The moment happened the day they handed me my diploma. I was two hundred days shy of reaching the five-year mark, and I was confident I would make it. Ten days later, my body began to ache and I became fatigued. I didn't need a doctor to tell me the cancer had returned. I recognized the symptoms. I had been there before. That was the day I wrote my bucket list and began to make the necessary arrangements to leave. One thing I knew without a shadow of a doubt was that I couldn't put my father through another cancer crisis. He had watched my mother die and then had to watch me battle it seven years later. I would never forget the pain in his eyes as he worried himself sick that my fate would be the same as hers. He wept when the doctors told him I was in remission, confessing that he'd been so afraid he'd lose me also. I could not face telling him I was sick again. I knew it would destroy him, just like I knew I no longer had the will to fight it. The cancer would not be happy until it took me. So I left.

My father received a letter from me filled with lies once I was gone. I claimed I was sick of his hovering, that I was done been treated like a child, and I needed time to discover the person I was supposed to be,