Your lab results are in, Ms. Amanda. Good news. You are an excellent candidate for the procedure."
"What?" I hit a high note that I hadn't intended, the syllable cracking in the middle of the crowded hallway. "I mean—I'm so... so pleased," I stuttered, my heart performing a frantic, irregular dance against my ribs. I stood frozen against the cinderblock wall, not entirely certain I had heard him correctly.
After two months of unrelenting bad news, of rising white cell counts and falling hope to have something, even a sliver of a chance, actually go right felt like a glitch in the universe. I half considered pinching my own arm just to see if I'd wake up in my bed, still shrouded in the gray reality of terminal illness. Did people actually do that, or was it just something they did in the old movies we'd watched on Friday?
The man on the phone continued, his voice as cool and frictionless as a pane of glass. "I can tell you are surprised, Ms. Amanda. A car will be sent to your campus apartment this evening. Six o'clock sharp."
"I—I have to make the decision now?" I asked, a sudden flare of panic blooming in my chest. This was moving too fast. I was a student with a backpack and a midterm next week; I wasn't ready to decide on a one percent survival rate before dinner.
"No, Ms. Amanda. This meeting is in the interest of full disclosure," he replied, and I could almost hear the capital letters in his speech. "Mr. Jason will explain the mechanical details of the procedure in full, and you can decide how and if you wish to proceed."
If. A welter of conflicting emotions hit me at that word. Suddenly, the clamped down memories of our first meeting surged to the surface: the strange, hypnotic compulsion of his voice, the unsettling discord between his polished suit and the predatory stillness of his gaze. The way the light had caught the icy blue of his eyes. My blood, a vivid red smear across his pale palm. I had kept those thoughts locked in a dark room in the back of my mind because I'd had no choice. There could be no choice.
Not if I wanted to see twenty-three.
"Okay," I said, ignoring the sudden, heavy tightening in my center, a sensation I was pointedly refusing to name. "I'll be ready, then. Six o'clock."
"Excellent. Goodbye, Ms. Amanda."
"Bye," I whispered, but the line was already dead. The man was a ghost, disappearing the second his task was done.
I took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly, watching a group of freshmen walk by, arguing about a chemistry lab. Six o'clock. A car would be waiting. My life was about to pivot, and I was the only one who knew the stakes.
"Can you explain to me again why you're wearing your charcoal interview skirt?" Elisa asked, leaning against the doorframe of my tiny bedroom with a deep frown. "And the silk blouse? Amanda, you're going to a doctor's appointment, not a board meeting."
"It isn't an appointment, exactly," I said, my fingers fumbling with the buttons of my sleeve. "It's more like a... a consultation. A high level briefing."
"Isn't 'consultation' just a fancy British word for a doctor's appointment?" she retorted, crossing her arms.
I ignored her, turning to the mirror to adjust the chignon at the base of my neck for the tenth time. The one mercy of the Alemtuzumab was that, unlike the harsher chemotherapies, it hadn't stolen my hair. I still had the same thick, ash-brown waves I'd always had. While it wasn't a striking color, it was a far sight better than being bald and translucent.
The problem with Alemtuzumab, I thought bitterly, is that it didn't do its job.
"Look, the last time I showed up at the office for the initial intake, everyone was in serious business attire," I explained, leaning in close to the mirror to dab concealer over the bruised looking circles under my hollowed out eyes. I looked like a ghost trying to play dress up.
"At a clinic," Elisa said flatly, her skepticism radiating off her in waves.
"I told you, I think the initial meetings are held at their corporate headquarters in the city," I said, my voice rising with a touch of defensive irritation. "Anyway, if I'm going back there, I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb again. I want to look like someone who belongs in a room where decisions are made."
I smoothed the skirt over my hips, feeling the sharp angles of my bones beneath the fabric, and prayed that the car waiting outside really was a bridge to a future, and not just a very expensive hearse.