"Pancreatic cancer?" Sophia's words came as she looked down at the piles of paperwork that the doctor had just handed over to her. She wasn't even sure what a pancreas did, let alone that it could get sick. The doctor yammered off more information to her; she was blocking most of it out now, just staring ahead through the doctor. He was still talking as she started to zone out. Her ears buzzed with the sound of her rising pulse. She saw the people around her move; the doctor, her mother, and nurses came and went, machines beeped, and the harsh hospital lighting shined down on her.
The sudden heat she seemed to feel in her neck and shoulders reminded her of the blazing stage lights that had covered her when she had gone to her most recent audition. What was it now? She could only remember a few quotes about plagues. Cancer felt like a plague. No. A plague, she would have had a better chance of surviving. She looked down at the floor again. Remembering her steps, she always made sure she faced the chairs that would be an audience in a couple of months if she was lucky.
Lucky like she had been when the school librarian had stumbled on her reading old plays in the library. Lucky like she had been when she heard that the theater club, also run by the librarian, would be doing various Shakespearean plays this year.
Years. Something she did not have many of now.
Slowly, she focused back on the conversation between the doctor and her mother. Months, they said. A year with treatment? What was the treatment? It did not sound pleasant—none of it.
"I'll start after the play." With that, she climbed to her feet and excited the room.
The room like the one she would find herself in soon after. Her mother followed her, screaming for her to come back. What play was she talking about? She hadn't left home in weeks. Her doctor had called the nearest mental health crisis unit.
The unit where she found a book of old Shakespearean works while she went through treatments, she was convinced she did not need while reading the old plays. Plays she read by herself until the old librarian mentioned there would be a performance at the school.
A school she never went to but certainly wished to go back to.
