Cursive - By Phoebe Lane Page 0,41

stability that Jace needed at this point.

She agreed to go with him to the appointment, expecting to stay out in the waiting room while he was in with the doctor, but he insisted in including her into the visit.

"I want you in there with me. Ask him doctor-to-doctor questions, and freak me the hell out," he joked.

Jace's oncologist was very detailed and thorough during the examination. He explained that, even though recent research didn't prove that there was a huge benefit in doing scans on patients on all of their follow up visits, he preferred to do so in Jace's case. His cancer had developed fast and with very minimal symptoms initially, and he wanted to catch any possible recurrences early.

His physical exam was clear, something Aislynn knew already. She would never admit it to anyone, but she had woken up in the middle of the night when Jace had stayed in her apartment and examined his neck and upper torso for palpable lymph nodes. Of course, she couldn't examine all of him without crossing the line into being creepy, so there was still a chance there were nodes somewhere else in his body.

"Jace, everything looks good. We'll get the blood tests and CT scan done next, and I will call you with the results as soon as I take a look at them. Okay?" the doctor asked.

"Okay, sounds good. Let's get this over with," he said, shaking the doctor's hand.

"Dr. Currington, it's a pleasure to meet you. Please call if you need anything while you're in San Diego."

"Please, it's Aislynn. And thank you."

Jace became increasingly anxious as they made their way to the lab. His hands were so sweaty he constantly let go of Aislynn's hand to wipe the sweat off on his pants. He embarrassingly admitted that part of his nervousness was due to the fact that he hated needles.

"I feel so stupid. I'm thirty-one years old, and I'm freaking out about a needle."

"Have you always hated them? Even as a kid?"

"It was never this bad. I don't understand it." Aislynn looked at him and hummed under her breath. "What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I'll spare you the psychobabble. Ellie hates it when I theorize about these things."

Once they were called into the lab, Jace sat on the phlebotomy chair. He rolled up his sleeve, and Aislynn noticed the slight shake in his hand. She moved to stand next to him and held his other hand to her chest, right in between her breasts, which made him smile. He was a guy after all.

"When I was an intern doing my internal medicine rotation, the resident I was working with asked me to do a spinal tap on a patient," Aislynn said, trying to distract him. "It was the first one I had ever done, and I had the hardest time finding the right spot on the patient's back to get the fluid out. I swear it took me forever, but I was able to finally get it. After doing a victory dance in my head and cleaning everything up, I labeled the samples, and took my gloves off. It was then that I realized that I'd been holding my breath throughout most of the procedure."

"Oh, no. What happened?"

"I started getting dizzy, hot, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Then I started freaking out even more because I knew I was about to pass out in front of a patient. I had survived four years of med school, seeing and doing things a human being probably never should, and I never had a problem. I went through all that training, and the one thing I forgot to do was breathe. It was pathetic." Aislynn felt satisfaction fill her chest when she heard his laugh. "You know what else Ellie hates about me?"

"What?"

"My power of distraction. We're done."

"Wait, what?" Jace asked, looking down at his arm and realizing the samples had already been taken.

The scan was next and pretty noninvasive. Aislynn had not read a CT scan in a few years, and her radiology knowledge was pretty rusty by now. She glanced at the tech's screen while the scan was being done, but decided not to jump to conclusions with what she thought she saw.

Now we wait.

"I might go crazy with all the waiting," he warned her, as they walked out of the hospital.

"Don't worry. There's medicine for that."

"Maybe I should go back to work."

"No way. Let's go back to your house, and I'll cook you lunch. You can work