Watching my daughter battle an illness at 17 was the hardest thing I’d ever faced as a mother. I thought the surprise waiting in her hospital room would be the most emotional part of the night, but I was wrong.
The hospital coffee in my hand had gone cold an hour ago, but I kept holding it as if it were the only solid thing left in my life.
Six months had passed since the word “leukemia” walked into our living room and refused to leave. My daughter, Carol, was 17, and I was a single mom who’d learned to smile through things no smile should have to cover.
***
My daughter used to cut dresses from magazines and tape them to her bedroom mirror.
“Mom, promise you’ll do my hair that night,” she’d say, even back when she was in the fifth grade.
“I promise, baby. I’ll do your hair for every prom you ever have.”
Now her hair was gone, and the magazine pictures were still taped to the mirror at home, waiting.
I sat by her hospital bed that afternoon, watching her doze.
The latest round of chemo had hollowed Carol out in a way the others hadn’t.
Her cheekbones looked sharper, and her hands looked smaller.
On the rolling tray beside her sat a leather journal I’d bought her in February. She wrote in it every day now. Letters, too, were carefully folded in thirds and addressed in her looping handwriting to names I recognized from her class.
When I leaned over to fluff her pillow, my daughter stirred and quickly slid the journal under her blanket.
“Sorry, honey. Didn’t mean to startle you,” I quickly apologized.
“It’s fine, Mom.” She gave me her tired smile. “Just girl stuff.”
I nodded as if I understood. Teenagers needed their privacy, even sick ones. Especially sick ones, maybe.
Carol’s phone buzzed on the tray. The name Daryl lit up the screen before she turned it face down.
Daryl had been her best friend since middle school, the kind of boy who held doors open and remembered birthdays.
“He’s just being Daryl.”
I smiled and squeezed her foot through the blanket. “He’s a good one.”
Carol’s eyes drifted to the window. Prom was four days away.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“Do you think I’ll get to go?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, of course. The doctors were optimistic, anything to fill the silence with hope. I’d decided that was my job. Hope was the one thing I could still hand her.
What happened next changed everything… continues on the next page.
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