Dying is boring. The doctors didn’t tell me that when they gave me my prognosis. They didn’t tell me that near the end, I’d be confined to a bed, a needle stuck in my arm, force-feeding me poison in the hopes it would somehow kill the other poison inside me. I couldn’t walk. I didn’t even have the liberty of standing. The fact of the matter was, my body was killing me, and there was nothing I could do about it, except wait in my bed, surrounded by antiseptic-filled air, thin sheets, hospital gowns and the weight of my fate, heavy on my chest, like a demon.
At first, I couldn’t breathe. I could see the doctor’s mouth moving, his hands gesturing, as if that would make it better, but no sounds would come out. My mother put her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t think. I didn’t hear.
As time wore on, the diagnoses began to sink in, slowly, as slow as my life was leaking out of me. It never went away, even when I was distracted. The fact that I was going to die was sort of like my shadow. It was always there, at the corner of my vision, at the corner of my mind. For a while, I was angry. I wanted to punch someone. Not just anyway, myself, my whole cancerous self, because I was my own murderer. Finally, I just resigned myself to my fate. I repeated to myself a thousand times in a row, ‘I’m going to die. I’m going to die.’ All night, just repeating that phrase, like it was a lifeline thrown to me as I drowned, only in this case, my lifeline would kill me in the end.
I quit school. There was no point in trying to absorb the last scraps of knowledge the teachers shoved down my throat. I probably wouldn’t make it to the next test. At first, my friends were scared around me, skirting around my shadow like I had grown a second head and they didn’t want to mention it in case I took offense. Then, one day, Rachel was gabbing on about summer vacation, trying to make me feel normal again. Her family was going to some sort of resort in Costa Rica. “And you can come, if you want.” The room seemed to freeze. My other two friends, Sarah and Nikki, stopped their shuffling and tapping and stared at Rachel. It took a moment for her to realize her mistake, but then she froze, too, like time had just stopped. My three friends looked at me carefully, almost as if I might explode. They were waiting for my response.
“Thank you,” I said at last. The frozen moment shattered. “For a second there, you acted as if I had a future, like I would make it to summer in Costa Rica.” My throat tightened involuntarily. My chest heaved. I clenched my fingers, digging the nails into my soft palm. I hadn’t cried since the diagnoses. “Tell me about Costa Rica,” I continued at last. After that, my friends freely talked about my shadow.
Then, at last, my limbs became too weak to carry me. I could barely buzz the button that called for a nurse or gave me more morphine. My mother and my father stood vigil by my bedside almost constantly, like they expected me to drop dead any moment and wanted to be there when it happened. I almost hated them for it.
In all the movies and things, the child dying of cancer never cries in front of her parents, because she knows it will hurt them. I despised that philosophy. I didn’t cry in front of my parents because I didn’t want them to know how gut-wrenchingly hopeless I felt. But they weren’t dying of cancer and nothing I could do would make them understand what I was going through, just like they could never show me what they were going through. We were on opposite sides of an impenetrable glass wall that would never break, and each side was going through its own struggles. My side was filling with water and I was slowly drowning, no matter how much I gasped for air. There was no light on my side, but somehow, everyday it got darker.
They said I would die nicely. I didn’t understand that, since I felt terrible all the time, like I had a permanent flu on steroids, if that worked. But they said that I would start feeling tired. It would be harder to breathe and less air would be reaching my lungs. My vision would start to go black and my limbs would feel heavier. I might hear whispered voices or mysterious music. Then I would close my eyes and fall asleep, except I wouldn’t wake up. About a minute after my eyes closed, my heartbeat would stop and suddenly, I wouldn’t exist in the world anymore. After the doctor explained this, in detail, to me, I didn’t close my eyes for a few hours. That night, I had nightmares about the moment, and every blink became torture.
It was on one of those darker days that a different doctor showed up in my room. My mother stood up and greeted her, but she looked just as confused as I did. Then she raised her eyebrows slightly and bit the corner of her lip. That’s what she did when she hoped for good news. But doctor’s only brought bad news nowadays.
I used an unreasonable amount of effort to pull myself higher on my pillow. Then I squinted and read her nametag. Doctor Jena. I had never heard of her.
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Brennan, Lisa. How are you feeling today?” She fluffed up my pillow and sat down next to me. I didn’t like her. How was I supposed to be feeling? Really great? Like I wasn’t about to die any day?
“Crap.”
“Huh?”
“I feel like crap.”
Doctor Jena nodded. “That’s probably to be expected. Now, I have something that might make your day brighter.”
I doubt it, I thought, but I didn’t say so. My days were shrouded in black now, like I was already in the coffin. How could I forget that I was about to die? Was it even possible? All those things I would never do. Nothing compared to being terminal.
My mom and dad sat down, my mom sighing, as she did when she realized it was actually good news. If it was really bad news, she kept biting her tongue but covered her mouth with her hand.
“I’m here to discuss a new experimental group opening at this hospital. We can treat your cancer, Lisa.”
I sat up some more, but it didn’t take as much energy. Someone had just flipped on the light switch in the glass box that was my life.
“We have some bacteria that we’ve trained, you might say. They can recognize the tags on the outside of cancer cells and kill them. The bacteria have a protein in them that makes them unrecognizable to your immune system for about twelve hours. Then, the protein switches off, and your immune system kills all the bacteria. Worst case, you get a slight fever, nothing to worry about. We’ve tested these bacteria on cancerous rats, with as eighty-five percent success rate. One percent of the remainder suffered unfortunate side effects that resulted in death. In rabbits, we had a ninety percent success rate and with rhesus monkeys, we had a ninety-two percent success rate. These bacteria have been highly tested with brilliant results. Your cancer, Lisa, could be cured.”
My mom sighed, took another breath and sighed again. “This is spectacular, Lisa. Doctor Jena, thank you so much.”
“No problem.” Doctor Jena smiled and shrugged, brown curls bouncing up and down. In another world, she could’ve been a model. Her face was shapely, with prominent cheekbones. Her hair looked like she’d styled it a minute ago, just before she came into my room. To me, she was an angel, so celestial I could practically see glowing wings sprouting from her back. She was water to a man stranded in the dessert, a floatation device to a man caught in the ocean, a ladder for a man trapped in a tree. In a single minute, she cracked open my darkened box and reached a shapely hand inside. And I latched onto that hand.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t think about any of the scientific mumbo jumbo or her percentages. None of those were important. ‘Your cancer, Lisa, could be cured.’ That was all that mattered. For two months, I had lived a dead girl, marked for termination by the powers that be. The world had rejected me. But now, at long last, I had hope.
Doctor Jena stood up and smiled. “Mr. and Mrs. Brennan, can I discuss some of the finer details outside with you.”
My mom sighed. “Of course.” Their glass box had been cracked open as well. Doctor Jena was reaching into all our lives and saving us.
My room was basically a nice, hospital-esque bed. There was an IV stand next to me and a bedside table with a picture of a bunny on it. That was from Rachel. Other than that, there was just one partially glass wall, so I could look out into the hospital, queen of the land of the dying. Now, Mom and Dad were standing there, talking to Doctor Jena. She was much shorter than them, and maybe half Asian. I loved just imagining her silky sweet voice as she told my parents the great news. A week after the treatment, I’d be walking. No, running. And a month later, I’d be skiing. Then I could go back to school and maybe become a doctor, like Doctor Jena. My whole life was back, decades of it, raining down on me.
My mom sighed a lot during the conversation. Doctor Jena used her hands to explain more details of the process, gently but forcefully. Then my mom started biting her lip. She covered her mouth. That wasn’t good. Was there something wrong? Would this treatment cost millions of dollars?
The three of them came back into my room and sat by my bed. Mom grabbed my hand and, through the darkened room, I could make out tears on her face. Happy tears or sad tears?
“It’s going to be all right, Lisa,” she assured herself, patting my hand.
Sad tears. Aad tears for sure.

Three days later, I found myself in a familiar room, and no, it wasn’t my hospital room. It was the surgical room. They had scheduled my treatment as soon as possible, seeing as I might not actually make it to next week. I was more scared than normal, probably the anxiety of surgery mixed with the all-too-new feelings of hope. I imagined how bright my future would be. There were so many opportunities now that I wasn’t a dead girl.
A man wearing all blue scrubs appeared over me, plastic-gloved hands hovering near my face. He had a surgical mask over his mouth, but I recognized his eyes. He’d done surgery on me before.
“You know the drill, Lisa,” he said. “Nathan over here’s going to give you some anesthetic and you just-”
“Count backwards from ten,” I finished. No teenager should know that.
“Good girl.” He patted my nose. I rolled my eyes. Apparently surgeons had rituals, and his was to pat the nose of his patient every time he did a surgery. Whatever. He was saving my life.
I felt a small prick in my arm. I began counting backwards. My limbs felt heavy but my head felt light. Why was someone playing harp in surgery? Panic seized me. This was what dying felt like. I was dying. The cancer was killing me, seconds before we would kill it. What a cruel twist of nature! Why?
I tried with all my will power to keep my eyes opened. I tried to memorize the layout of the ceiling. I wanted to say goodbye. My parents needed to be in here, Mom clutching my hand and sobbing, Dad smiling down at me and assuring me that it would be all okay. I wanted my parents. I didn’t want to die surrounded by a bunch of doctors. Invisible strings pulled my eyelids down and I was engulfed in darkness. For a moment, I remained conscious, and then the shadows surrounded me, picked me up and whirled me away forever.

When I woke up, the first thing I felt was embarrassment. I was still alive. Awkward. But also very amazing.
I sat bolt upright. No pain. I lifted a hand in front of my face. With unobstructed, unblurred-by-chemo vision, I could see the obvious lack of an IV there. They weren’t feeding me drugs anymore. I wanted to look around. My feet obeyed, and suddenly, I was out of bed and standing on my own, with no help. Mom and Dad burst into the room and covered me with hugs and kisses.
“You’re all right!”
“Thank goodness.”
It went on and on with me standing, staring at the ceiling, the floor, their faces. No pain, no sadness. No more shadows.
The weeks flew by in a blur. Rachel, Sarah, and Nikki came to visit me a lot. They brought all sorts of cakes and cookies, like they wanted me to get heart disease instead of cancer. After seven days, I went outside for the first time, and it was like experiencing heaven. I put my arms out to my sides and spun, staring at the sky, the deep blue sky, and the sun. The sun! Then I lay on the ground and let the dirt surround me, the grass tickling my back. I wanted to stay there forever.
No pain, no sadness, no shadows.
No Doctor Jena.
I looked around for her sometimes and even asked my parents, but she was nowhere to be found. That was what I thought. Then, a day before I got released from the hospital and the clutches of death, I thought I spotted her hair in a crowd of doctors.
“Doctor Jena!” I cried, chasing after her as the group scattered. “Doctor Jena, wait!” I didn’t even notice I was running for the first time since my death sentence. “Doctor Jena!” I grabbed the back of her white coat. She turned around. For a moment, I thought it wasn’t her, and I was just running around pulling off doctors’ clothing. But no, there she was, cheekbones and all.
“Lisa? There you are.”
I hugged her and almost cried, but not quite. “Doctor Jena, I have to ask.” I pulled away from her and stared into her eyes, which were actually below my eye-level, she was that short. I took a deep breath, since my question was quite embarrassing. “Are you an angel, Doctor Jena?”
She chuckled. “Of course not. I’m just trying to help.”
“Have you helped other people, then?”
She looked at me sideways. “Other people? I’m just here to check up on you.”
“Other cancer patients, I mean. You found a cure to cancer. You need to share it with the world.”
“Oh, no, you were the first person that we tried my treatment on.”
I frowned. That was kind of scary. I mean, who cares what it did to rhesus, it could’ve killed me. That treatment could’ve actually been a death sentence. But it hadn’t. That was the important thing. I was alive and living. “But aren’t you going to help other people?” I asked.
“We have to see how you end up first, Lisa.” Doctor Jena nodded in that way doctor’s do when they don’t want to answer a question.
“But I’m fine. The MRIs and x-rays and that whole battery of test I went through, they all said I’m fine with a zero chance of relapse.”
Doctor Jena smiled like I didn’t understand anything. “You’re treatment’s only just begun.” It was like she was talking to herself.
“What does that mean?”
My savior looked down sadly for a moment. “Sit down, Lisa,” she said. I sat down on a bench that I hadn’t seen before. Doctor Jena did likewise. She sighed and looked into my eyes woefully. “It would be impossible to cure cancer as far along as yours, Lisa. You were going to pass away any day when I found you.”
“But you saved me,” I stuttered. She wasn’t making any sense.
Another deep breath. “I didn’t save you, Lisa. I just made your last few days bearable.”
“But I’ve been cured for weeks now.”
Doctor Jena nodded. “Fast weeks, Lisa. Beautiful weeks, but fast ones. I just came back to make sure you were indeed enjoying yourself and to warn you about what’s going to happen any moment now.”
“What are you talking about?” My slow mind tried to process her words. It had been weeks. Why was she saying I would’ve died in a few days? Of course I knew that. She’d saved me. That’s why I now thought she was the best person on the face of the planet. She’d pulled me back from the brink of death and brought me to this world of light.
And what was this about fast weeks? I mean, they had seemed fast. They’d even been a little blurry. But I was cured. No cancer.
“Lisa, what I said to your parents outside was the true experimental group we were placing you in. There’s no way bacteria could kill all your cancer in twelve hours. That’s just not feasible. What I discussed with your parents was a form of virtual reality. I told them I couldn’t cure you, but I could make your last few days last as long as possible.”
I shook my head. “So you’re saying I never got cured?”
Doctor Jena nodded. “I’m a neuroscientist. What you see here is a very well constructed form of virtual reality.”
That meant I wasn’t cured? I still had cancer somewhere? “But, I talked to my parents and my friends.”
“Figments of this world. Your parents filled me in on their personalities and I programmed them into your virtual reality. This world was designed to be your perfect year.”
“It hasn’t been a year, not even a fast one.”
Doctor Jena pursed her lips. “I’m afraid you were farther along than I had feared and that this virtual reality did not prolong your consciousness as much as I had hoped.”
“So my perfect year is ending? Is that what your saying?”
“Yes, any second now, you’re going to wake up.”
“Wake up… with cancer? With the pain again, and the poison in my arm? With the shadows all around, obstructing my vision?”
Doctor Jena nodded. “I’m so sorry, Lisa. There was never any hope for a cure.”
I gasped. This was worse than the day my doctors had told me I was going to die. At least then, there wasn’t really any semblance of hope. Doctor Jena had given the man in the desert a water bottle filled with sand. She’d thrown a lifeline to the drowning man only to pull it just out of reach. She’d propped a ladder up against a tree only to have all the rungs fall out once it was up. She had given me hope and snatched it away, played with my brain until I couldn’t tell what was real anymore.
“I would say that for a first experiment, though, it was a success. Definitely worth repeating.” Doctor Jena nodded.
How could she say that? How could she sit there all prim and happy about her terrible experiment? I leaped to my feet. “I hate you,” I shouted.
“Well not me,” she corrected. “I’m a construct of this virtual reality as well, built in to warn you that the program is almost done.”
It was so real. That hope, it was so real. I’d actually believed that she’d saved me from the monstrous cancer burning up inside me. Instead, she’d just taken my consciousness and stored it in some computer program as my body withered away. She’d taken away my last few days of life and replaced them with a mass-produced lie.
And she was going to repeat the experiment. I needed to warn someone. She was a thief, stealing lives and minds. Someone had to know. Someone had to stop her.
Then, suddenly and jarringly, I blinked and opened my now heavy eyelids in my hospital room, staring out the glass window. Mom gasped. “Lisa,” she cried, hugging me. And these hugs were real. “Lisa, I love you,” she whispered, squeezing my hand so tight. “I will always love you, no matter what.”
Dad was there too, standing over me like a wall. Nothing would hurt me with him there. Except, everything was hurting. My limbs ached as if they were broken. I was back in the world where my body was rebelling against me, killing me from the inside out. “Did you enjoy your year?” my Dad asked. “I love you so much, sweetie. Your mom and I are going to stay here until… until it’s done.”
I was dying. All that time I’d spent mentally preparing myself was useless because here I was, really dying, unable to do anything as I took my last breaths, each one softer. My bones were made out of lead, pulling me through the bed. Mom and Dad were still talking, but their voices blurred and swirled above me.
“I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Breathing was so hard but I had to tell them that Doctor Jena was evil, that she’d taken away my last living days and replaced them with the antithesis of life. “Doctor Jena-” I choked out, the words clawing at my throat.
“Love you. Love you.” Mom squeezed my hand. My breaths were shallow now and there were lights dancing above my eyes, like mini-angels. The lights turned dark, shadows, blocking out my family’s faces. I squinted and tried to see but then forgot what I was looking for. The shadows elongated and covered my eyes. I closed the lids and air pushed itself from my chest for the last time, a gasping, scared breath. Shadows covered my world. I couldn’t feel anything, like my mind was floating away in the darkness. And then, an unexpected peace. I love you, too, I wanted to say. Just make the darkness go away. I’m scared, Mommy, I’m scared. Make the darkness go away. But in those last moment, I could say nothing, do nothing. The last thing I felt was my mother’s hand in mine, trying to make me stay tethered to the earth. Trying not to let me leave. But despite her best efforts and my dad’s best efforts and Doctor Jena’s mind games, nothing could keep me there. It was futile. I couldn’t feel her hand anymore, although I knew it would be there until the end. I couldn’t hear them anymore either. Everything was just sweet blackness and in the end, the doctors were right.
It was just like falling asleep.