I carefully studied the beautiful Clara dancing on pointe around the Christmas tree. Her gorgeous light pink nightgown flowing up and down as she swiftly crossed the floor. And for the first time, I noticed her dusky blue and gray eyes. I’d never taken the time to search for the small features like that. I guess when you’re constantly in a near-death situation, you notice the tiny details from the things you’ve never noticed before.
Whatever you’ve heard about me, it’s true. I’m different from most people my age. Yes, I’m “sick”. I have leukemia. Or to be more specific, “AML”, standing for “acute myeloid leukemia”.
I heard a familiar rhythm as someone knocked on the door. “Come in”, I shouted  as I lifted the remote and paused Clara and her Nutcracker leaping in mid-air. “Good morning, Maya”, Nurse Emma said as she walked in with her clipboard which was covered in the popular black and white mustache duct tape. I had known her almost all fourteen years of my life. Today her long, straight, dark blond hair was tied up in a messy bun, and she was wearing her turquoise scrubs that had little brown teddy bears on it. “Hey”, I said, looking down and my hands, as I came back to reality. Dance took me to another world, and that world wasn’t this one. It wasn’t the one where everyday, no one knows if I’d be there tomorrow. I don’t know the tone in which I responded to her, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw her give me that same sympathetic look. That look that you get when people hear that you have leukemia. If I got a nickel for every time that I received that look, I could buy a mansion. I turned my head and focused my eyes out the window on the snowflakes falling from the sky. And then one caught my eye. I don’t know what it was about it, but it reminded me of myself. I watched it, very slowly, descend. An independent, young snowflake. And then it hit the ground, and stopped moving. That falling snowflake reminded me of myself.
“Maya, I have some news,” Nurse Emma said as she once again brought me back to reality. I looked away from the window, and finally looked at her right in her hazel colored eyes. “Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound interested while not being interested at all. I’d heard those same five words plenty of times before, and they never brought any good news. “You are free to go home, Maya”. My heart skipped a beat almost instantly. Whenever I heard the word home, I thought of my old, brown teddy bear, my puppy, my parents, and my brother. Tears filled my eyes, and I tried not to let them run down my cheeks. “There is also another surprise”, she said. “What is it?”, I asked very excitedly. My mind was racing, my heart was filled with happiness. I hadn't had that anxious feeling for a while. I heard the door creak open and saw a face I hadn’t seen in almost two weeks.
That was my breaking point. There were now two streams of tears rapidly flowing down my face. “Mom!”, I yelled. I wanted to get up out of the bed and run to her. I wanted to give her the world’s biggest hug. But I couldn’t. There were tubes connected to my arms. They made me feel like I was being chained down, like I was being held captive for something I had no control over. Huh, that seemed awfully familiar.
“Oh, my baby girl”, she said softly with a quivering voice. Her eyes were beginning to become red. She ran over to the bed, and I saw her carrying something wrapped in my favorite color, lavender, that had shiny polka dots covered in silver glitter. It was rectangular and three dimensional. I wondered what it was. She laid it on the end on the bed next to my feet. She then wrapped her arms around me, and we stayed hugging, until we finally began to let our eyes dry. I could see Nurse
Emma smiling. Her eyes were also red. It’s amazing how long fourteen days can feel like. “What’s that?” I asked my mom, pointing to the gift. She handed it to me, and I immediately started unwrapping the lavender wrapping paper. Inside was a journal. It was also lavender and had white snowflakes on it. I loved it. I looked up at her, and I could tell that she knew I loved it, without even saying a word. And for the first time, I realized the tiny globs of mascara that was well applied onto her eyelashes. I guess when you’re constantly in a near-death situation, you notice the tiny details from the things you’ve never noticed before.
I reached over to the table next to me, and began to write on the very first clean page. I was going to write a story about an independent, fourteen-year old girl, and this is how it started:  I carefully studied the beautiful Clara dancing on pointe around the Christmas tree.