The Diagnosis

Dr. Giacherio’s office had great lighting.

That was the main thing I kept thinking about afterward. Not the conversation, not the moment itself, but the lighting. It was warm and even, without any harsh overhead fluorescents, the type of light that made the room feel thoughtfully designed. Someone had clearly considered how people would feel while sitting there. I appreciated that, but I also felt a bit resentful because it meant I couldn’t escape the discomfort of what was happening. The room was just too nice for that.

We’d been there for ten minutes. Dad was on my left, Pops was on my right, and Dr. Giacherio sat across the desk with the folder open in front of her, wearing her usual reading glasses and maintaining her calm, unhurried demeanor. She asked how I was sleeping. I replied that I was fine. This time, she didn’t challenge my answer either.

She opened the folder.

“The biopsy results confirmed what the imaging suggested,” she said. “The tumor is malignant. Specifically, you have Ewing sarcoma, stage two.”

Ewing sarcoma.

I froze. Not the kind of freeze where you hold your breath, not the kind where you brace yourself, but the kind where everything just stops for a moment, and you exist in the word before you can process anything else. Ewing sarcoma. It had a name. It had been just a shape on an X-ray and a result I had been waiting for two weeks, and now it had a name that was specific, real, and mine.

Dad’s hand rested on my shoulder. I didn’t turn to look at him.

Pops made a sound. It was low and brief, the kind that slips out before you can hold it back, and I had never heard that sound from him before. I quickly filed it away in the part of my mind where I kept things I wasn’t ready to think about right now.

I had known, in a vague way, that this was coming. All the signs had been pointing here for two weeks. But knowing something is coming and actually being in the room when it happens are two different experiences, and the room was warm and well-lit, and Dr. Giacherio was looking at me with the kind of patience that someone has when they understand that the next thirty seconds are going to be crucial before anything else can happen.

“Okay,” I replied.

It was the only word I could muster.

“Okay,” she echoed, stepping forward.

The treatment plan consisted of VDC and IE alternating every two weeks. She listed the medications: vincristine, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide for the first cycle, followed by ifosfamide and etoposide in the second, then back again. In total, there would be fourteen to seventeen cycles. After chemotherapy, surgery would be performed to remove the remaining tumor. Then targeted radiation would be applied to the area.

Fourteen to seventeen cycles.

The noise in the room diminished. Not in a literal sense; Dr. Giacherio continued to speak in her clear, measured tone, and I could follow her words, but it felt as if a sheet of glass had been placed between me and the information, making it seem like I was reading it through the glass instead of absorbing it directly. Treatment timeline. Port placement. First cycle scheduling. Side effects. She covered all of it. I heard every word.

I wondered if she delivered this information in the same manner each time. If she had developed a rhythm, a pace from years of sitting in this chair with this folder across from individuals whose lives had just been reshaped by a single word. I figured she probably did. I thought that rhythm was likely a kindness she had cultivated intentionally.

Dad’s hand remained on my shoulder. Warm and reassuring. I concentrated on its weight.

Pops was very still to my right. Military still. The kind of stillness that required its own effort. I didn’t look at him directly. I had glanced at him once, right after Dr. Giacherio mentioned the name, and that was sufficient.

At some point, Dr. Giacherio inquired if we had any questions. Dad had questions. He always had questions, organized and precise, the way he tackled everything that needed management. He asked them in a calm voice, and she responded to each one, while I sat in the warm, well-lit room, allowing the information to settle in my mind where I could retrieve it later. There would be plenty of later.

Once she finished, she closed the folder. She shook my hand again, then Dad’s, then Pops’, and handed us the printed materials along with the card for the oncology nurse coordinator who would be our main contact moving forward. She apologized once, genuinely, without making it the focus of the room, and then she opened the door for us as we walked back through the seventh floor corridor and into the elevator.

No one said a word in the elevator.

The parking garage looked the same as it always did, just a concrete void. We walked to the car without pausing. Dad unlocked it. I climbed into the back seat. Pops took the wheel.

That was it.

The ride home took forty minutes. I sat behind the passenger seat with the folder resting on my lap, watching the highway blur past the window while they took the front seats. No one spoke. Pops drove with both hands firmly on the wheel. Dad rested his elbow on the windowsill, hand covering his mouth, deep in thought, the way he did when he was trying to figure something out that wouldn’t just fix itself.

The folder felt heavy in a way that had nothing to do with its actual weight. Inside were the treatment plan, the names of the drugs, the timeline, the contact card for the nurse coordinator, a pamphlet about port placement, and another one about handling chemotherapy side effects. Someone had put all of that together, printed it, and slipped it into a folder with the Children’s Hospital logo in the corner. At some point, I was going to read everything in it, and it would become the guide for the next year of my life.

I gazed out the window.

The mountains were there, just like they always were. I had lived in Colorado my entire life, and sometimes the mountains still amazed me, how you could forget they were there and then look up to see them, massive and completely unaffected by anything happening below.

I thought about volleyball.

Not in a broad sense. I was specifically thinking about the sensation of a perfect serve, the way the ball snapped off my palm, and how everything had to align perfectly for it to go where I wanted it to. There was that split second when I knew, even before it left my hand, that it was going to be great. I had been playing since I was eleven. I was skilled at it in the way someone becomes good after countless hours of practice, where the ability shifts from being a conscious effort to a reflex, something that resided in my body rather than just my mind.

Outside hitter. Volleyball captain. These were two titles that belonged to me in the way that things feel truly yours when you’ve worked hard for them instead of just receiving them.

Happy Paws on Saturdays and Sundays. The particular dog I had been training for six months, the one who had come in nervous and was just beginning to trust me. That was mine too.

Regionals were just five weeks away. I had mentioned this to Dad in our kitchen six weeks ago, and I had truly believed it when I said it.

Fourteen to seventeen cycles. Twenty-eight to thirty-four weeks. The season would end before the first cycle was even completed. Not paused. Not postponed. Finished. I was going to watch my team play without me, and then there would be no season at all, and after that, whatever came next was unclear to me right now.

I pressed my thumb against the edge of the folder and kept it there.

I thought about Evan. It was odd, and I recognized that it was odd, but my mind drifted from volleyball to him, some connection that linked game day Friday to I’ll be there to his relaxed face at my locker, the way he had said it like it was just a fact. He had no clue. He was at school right now, probably in US History or Environmental Science or somewhere that felt like a typical Monday, and for him, today was just another day. A girl he liked, a game on Friday, whatever came next.

That part of my life still technically existed. The part where Evan said he’d be there and I pondered what that really meant. It was still there for me, that part, in the same school just four blocks away, and I could return to it tomorrow, and Evan would still be in the hallway, and the game would still be on Friday, and none of what happened today would show on me unless I allowed it.

I considered letting that be true for a little while longer.

I thought about Stetson at school right now. His phone lying face down on his desk. He knew the appointment was this morning but had no idea what happened during it.

I glanced at my phone.

Nine messages. Noelle twice, Emory, Maekynzie, Tinsley. Two from Chandler. One from Stetson that simply said hey, which was Stetson’s way of saying I love you and I’m in second period trying not to think about where you are, but I can’t stop thinking about where you are.

I placed my phone back in my lap.

I haven’t told my friends. That thought hit me, clear and precise, while sitting in the back of the Suburban on the highway home. I’ve been carrying this alone for two weeks, and everyone around me has been acting as if everything is normal, and none of them knew what kind of normal they were living in. And now I have a name for it. Ewing sarcoma, stage two. I have a treatment plan, a timeline, and something that is real, mine, and specific.

I was thinking about Noelle at school right now. She had texted me twice this morning before her appointment. She thought she was just checking in on a friend who had a doctor’s appointment. Little did she know, she was actually checking in on a friend who was about to receive a folder with her diagnosis inside it.

I thought about Chandler. Two texts. No pressure in either of them, just there, the same way he was always just there. His shoulder in the truck bed on Saturday. The drink he handed me in the ER waiting room without saying anything. The 2am text earlier this week, me too. The particular thing that was Chandler, which was that he always seemed to know exactly how much space to take up and never took more than that.

I really wanted to call him right now.

But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because if I called him, I would have to say it out loud for the first time, and I wasn’t ready for that moment to happen in the back of this car with my dads in the front seat.

Having a name made it worse. Of course, it did.

Yet, in a way, it was also better. The vague terms like ‘strongly suggest’ and ‘pending results’ from the last two weeks had been a different kind of torture, and having a name felt different. A name was honest. I knew how to handle something honest better than a maybe. A maybe kept shifting every time you tried to set it down, but a name stayed put.

I picked up my phone.

The messages were there. Nine of them. Just waiting.

Not yet.

I set it back down. Watched Colorado pass by. Let the car take me home.