“You have cancer.”
Three words that I never thought I would hear. Hearing those three words made me feel silly that 3 years
ago I was afraid of the three words “I love you”. Yet, three years ago, I was a junior in college still
undecided and trying to figure out how I was going to pay for dinner. Fast forward three years later and
now I have to figure whether or not I want to fight this. Whether I want to fight my broken body or give
in.
“Mrs. Green…”
My eyes adjust from the painting above Dr. Burke to him.
“Mrs. Green, are you okay?”
“I’m super doctor?”
Dr. Burke looks at me with concern, but doesn’t know what to say. You can tell he doesn’t do this often.
He hands me a pamphlet of a cancer center nearby that he says I should look into, and a paper. A paper
that says, “How to tell your loved ones you have the Big C”, “Big C” as if you are a struggling rapper.
That is when I realize that I have to tell Damon.
I met Damon six years ago at a concert my senior year of high school, he was the guitarist in the
underground band called “Neighbors” that one of my friends loved. He was interesting, and by
interesting, I mean he was weird. He had his hair drenched in sweat, a holey shirt and caci shorts. He can
argue that was in style, but thankfully it wasn’t. Somehow, he caught my eye and we ended up getting
married. We have been married for 6 days, 3 hours, and 35 minutes, and now I am dying. Talk about till
death do us part. I came in wanting to know if I had strep throat and came out knowing that I have
hypopharynx cancer.
Hypopharynx is the lower part of your throat and is the pathway for food and oxygen. Cancerous cells
started to develop in that area who knows when and now I am at stage three, well that is the hope.
Throat cancer is very common to diagnose late so Dr. Burke was not shocked that I did not notice
anything until now. They need to take more test to be certain I am at stage three because there are more
stages of this type of cancer than the common stages 0-4. Beyond stage IV there is stages; IVA, IVB,
and lastly IVC, IVC is when the cancer has spread all over. I hope for Damon that this cancer is not the
case.
…
It has been two weeks since I found out that I have cancer and I still have not told Damon, yet I have no
idea what stage I am at. I guess there is no way to tell him until I know for sure what stage I am at,
right? I just wanted to enjoy being newlyweds on our honeymoon, except I couldn’t, because I felt like I
couldn’t breathe on the plane, and once we got to Barbados, more symptoms start to come up that Dr.
Burke warned me about. For instance, it always feel like I have something in my throat, it sometimes
feels like I can’t breathe, and I’m tired all the time, but the one thing I am so tired about is trying to
come up with excuse not to tell him. I have to tell him.
“Hay babe, what are thinking about?” Damon says as we pull into the driveway of a house that we are
looking into buying together.
“Nothing, I was just noticing how the fence doesn’t give us any privacy form the neighbors.”

“Yah, I was noticing that too, but it is close to a good school district.”
I have to tell him.
“Um… I was thinking after this, we could stop and get some Chinese and go home and stay in tonight.
What do you think?” I ask anxiously.
“Yah that sounds nice, are you sure you are up for Chinese, you haven’t been able to keep anything
down.” He says with a concerned voice.
“Yes I am absolutely sure. I have been craving it.”
“Okay, my love.” He says as he grabs my hand squeezes it.
Our relator pulls up behind us and he gets off our car to greet her. The moment the driver door slams
shut a sense of disgusts comes over me because I probably will never get the chance to have the
beautiful life that I always wanted. I pull the visor down, fix my makeup and pull myself together.
…
We finally made it up the five flights of stairs to my crammed apartment with cartons of Chinese food.
The moment I walked through that door, I knew that everything was going to change. Damon places the
food on the counter top in the kitchen and makes his way to the living room. He turns on the television
and asks what we should watch.
“Um, I was hoping… I-I was wondering if we could talk.” I swallow hard, which only reminds me about
the lump in my through, literally.
He turns his head to look at me, then turns off the T.V and says, “I know.”
Those words made my stomach sink all the way to Ms.Heckels apartment on the 2nd floor.
I hesitantly say, “You kno-ow what?”
“Oh, Emmy I know that you are pregnant.” He says as he gets up and walks towards me with open arms
and a huge smile.
“I’m what?” as I push his arms down to his waist.
“Emma, you’re pregnant. Your cravings, you can’t eat anything without throwing up-”
“I-I am not pregnant.” Interrupting him mid-sentence.
“What?” He says as he looks at me with an uneasy tone.
“I’m not pregnant, I’m sick.” I can hear my voice almost break in the back of my throat.
“Oh.” He says with a little disappointment, “Do you want me to run to the pharmacy and pick up some
medicine for you, maybe a pregnancy test?” he says with a smirk.
“I’M NOT PREGNANT! I probably will never be pregnant!” This time my voice breaks completely and
tears, start rushing out of my eyes as if they were facets.
His grin fades and he rushes over and wraps his arms around me.

I say while my face still buried into his chest, “I have cancer.”
In that moment I swear I could feel his heart stop. For 2 minutes he just held me, he doesn’t know what
to say. I begin to panic so I step back to look at his reaction. His eyes where full of tears and he was pale
as a ghost.
I broke my husband.
Hearing those three words from my wife had brought me back to when I was 12 years old and being told
that my twin sister had cancer. I had heard a few things about cancer from kids in my class, but I
assumed it was something older people got, not my sister who was only 3 minutes and 36 seconds
younger than I was.
I asked him to sit down, and he slowly in a haze makes his way back to the couch, I sit on the coffee
table across from him. Once he sat down he begins to ask in a unsettling way, “How-When did you find
out?” still with a blank expression.
“I found out when I went to the doctors to ask about my throat.”
He is brought back to reality when he calculates those days you can see his facial expression mimic his
anger as he shoots straight up from the couch saying, “Wait… You have known for two weeks! You
knew when we were on our honeymoon?!” He says with a frustrated tone, which only makes the tears in
his eyes build.
I fall silent as I try to find an excuse on why I didn’t tell him sooner. He begins to get frustrated with my
silence and says, “I’m sorry that this is my reaction, but I don’t know what you expected since it took
you two weeks to tell me, your husband, that you have cancer. We would have stayed and gotten you
treatment. Instead you let me talk about the future when we should have been talking about the present. I
cannot believe that you handled this situation this way, especially since you know what I went through
with my sister Dalizia.”
The moment her name comes out of my mouth I, begin to see her sitting in her hospital bed with a smile
from ear to ear as I walk through the door of her hospital room. I loved her so much that seeing her like
that made me resent life for giving her instead of me Leukemia. I am not ready to lose another important
woman in my life.
I need to say something, anything.
This whole time I tried to come up with the right words to say, but I had to tell him the real reason why
I had not. I reach for his hand as I am still sitting on the coffee table and he is standing and I begin
saying, “That’s the reason why I didn’t want to tell you so soon is because I wanted to enjoy our
honeymoon, I wanted to enjoy being your wife instead of a burden. I wanted to be with you, the cancer
was not going anywhere, and I did not want you to think the worst, specifically about Dalizia.” As soon
as those words left my mouth, I felt relieved, even though it was selfish of me. I think Damon saw the
relief in my face as well.
“Through sickness and in health Emma, I don’t care about the honeymoon I care about you. The fact
that you knew you were sick and still decided to go to another country blows my mind. What if
something happened, just the idea of something happening to you to where I wouldn’t know what to do
makes me feel like you do not trust my judgement as much as you should?” He sits in silence and
gathers himself.
“It was not my intention to not tell, but I was scared, it is not fair!”

I try to stop myself from wondering, but I can’t,I go back to that night. I at only 13 years old sprinting
down the dark hallway of the hospital as I hear Dalizia’s room number being paged through the
intercom, “ROOM 316 CODE BLUE! I repeat ROOM 316 CODE BLUE!” I get up to the door of her
room when everything goes silent and I can see all the nurses and doctors rushing, but in slow motion. It
wasn’t until the line that tracked her heart rate became flat. For a long time after, I believed that when
Dalizia’s heart stopped mine did. I became depressed and thought I would never recover, that is until I
met Emma.
I know what he is thinking about, he has gone through so much and I can’t believe he has to go through
this again all alone. I know I’m the one with cancer but throughout his life someone had to leave. First it
was father on his and Dalizia’s 5th birthday, then his best friend/ sister at 13, and lastly, his mother at
the age of 14 because she couldn’t handle grief. After the train of abandonment and loss he passed
through foster home to foster home, till he aged out of the system. Now I have cancer, with the
uncertainty of getting better. He wanted 4 kids, 2 boys and 2 girl so no one feels alone or left out. He
wants to be the dad he never had and teach his kids the things fathers are supposed to. He wants the life
that he had dreamed of late night as he cried himself to sleep in a different house every other week. I
promised all of those things and now we are living in uncertainty.
The gut-wrenching feeling of letting the love of my life down is worse than the pain of my body failing.
I begin to cry with that idea in mind. I say, “I’m sorry.”
He grabs my hand and squeezes it saying, “You could never be a burden my love, you are my world.”
As I look into his eyes I can see his mind wonder about what our next step is. I take his hand and bring
him back to me and that is when he realizes this is all real. The buildup of the tears in his eyes begin to
flow down his cheek like a creek falling through ever dip and edge on his face. He locks his arms around
me and pulls me on the couch; we sit for two and half hours in silence, just holding each other.