“WHAT THE F*** IS THIS?!” she screamed loudly and proudly in front of Professor Duncan.  “There’s no way he’s serious with this 89%, Lauren.  This is a joke.”  In Catherine’s eyes, there was no explanation for an 89%.  Her philosophy was that receiving a grade that’s anything less than perfect is a grade better not received.  She felt as though if one is lucky enough to gain a higher education for the price that a good one usually costs, it is ill-mannered to not exert the highest amount of effort possible.
  “Don’t worry, Cath.  The board’s probably not even gonna see it since you already applied several weeks ago.”  After those words left my mouth, her eyebrows loosened and her frown lines faded. 
“If they don’t accept me, Professor Duncan’s gonna hear it from me.  That’s for sure.”
I thought I could weaken Catherine’s desire to kill Professor Duncan with some coffee.  We walked from Goddard Hall to our favorite cafe on the end of Washington Square East.  Every street was surrounded with grey, reflective skyscrapers that towered over the crowds of people.  The smell of the sewer lingered in the atmosphere, yet not one person seemed to be phased by it.  It was the first day that the air was cold enough to nip one’s skin.  We weaved our way through the crowded street filled with other NYU students.  You could tell which ones were late by their facial expression and the pace at which they were walking-- or running.  From their appearance, you could also derive their major.  Any student with fluorescent-colored hair is likely to be attending Steinhardt, the art school of NYU.
We grabbed a table in the corner by the window.  Catherine rested her bony white cheek on her bony white hand as she gazed down at the drink menu.  Her long brown hair fell over her shoulders and arms in a graceful way.  The lashes that surrounded her vast, green eyes were voluminous, even without a touch of mascara.  Her look was all around effortless, quite contrary to her work ethic
.  “I’m gonna need five black coffees just to keep me up long enough to finish this paper that’s due tomorrow.”  Catherine and I were currently taking Organic Chemistry, often referred to as “Orgo Chem,” or “The Class That Flushes My Dreams Down The Toilet.”  The typical NYU student would pass the class in the B or C range.  However, Catherine was anything but typical.  She had maintained an A+ since the beginning of the course.
  “You’re looking awfully tired, Cath.  Maybe you should take it easy for the rest of the night, eat an actual dinner instead of something out of the vending machine.  You need to put some meat back on those bones, you’re lookin’ pretty weak.”  I was always straight up with Cath, because that was how she liked it. 
“I’ve been feeling even weaker, Lauren.  I don’t know what it is, but I’ve just felt like utter s*** for the past two weeks.”  We both paused and stared at each other.  “Whatever, I’m sure it’s just this class that’s making me look and feel this way,”  she broke the silence.  I told her I wasn’t going to allow her to drink another cup of coffee.  That’s the only thing she had been putting in her system all day.  As a result of this limitation, she ordered herself a peppermint tea.  As she looked down at it, the veins in her eyelids became a pronounced purple against the fair white of her face.  Her body was definitely dealing with something.
  “You know, for someone who’s wanted to be a doctor since practically birth, you give quite a small s*** about your own health,” I shared with her.
“That’s good,” she responded immediately and surely, “that’ll leave me with less concern about myself and more concern about my patients.”
The following day I stopped at Catherine’s to meet up with her before we both headed to Bio.  She lived on West 4th Street, which was only about a five minute walk from the Silver building.  She looked even more sickly than she did the previous night.  Upon our arrival, she was practically gasping for air.  Yes, it was cold, but not nearly cold enough to make the walk that much of a struggle.  What happened next brought me to terms with the fact that something was wrong with Catherine.  Just outside the doors of Silver, she paused.  She stared vacantly into space, as if she couldn’t even hear the vast array of honking and chattering around her.  She opened her mouth to speak, but all that she could get out was what sounded like a baby’s dialect.  She babbled until she realized that what was actually coming out of her mouth wasn’t making any sense.  A mask of panic quickly appeared on her face before she collapsed.
“Anaplastic Astrocytoma,” Catherine repeated after Dr. Heinberg.  As he went on to explain Catherine’s condition, she sharply interrupted.  “An anaplastic astrocytoma is a grade III tumor. It’s rare, and it requires a more aggressive treatment than the benign pilocytic astrocytoma.”  Silence resonated throughout her hospital room.  Catherine knew every medical condition in every book.  Catherine’s father stood aside her bed with his hand holding his mouth.  You could see a glaze fall over his eyes as his eyebrows contracted together.  He lowered the rest of his face into his hand.
“When do we start treatment?”  He asked as his voice broke  “As soon as possible,” Dr. Heinberg answered firmly.  “Because the tumor is located in a vital spot of her brain, it’s important that we stop it from progressing as soon as we can.”  Catherine’s lip began to quiver as two tears slid down her pale cheeks.  She opened her mouth and her shaky voice came out.  “Let’s begin then.”
For the last two months of the semester, I’d walk to class all by myself.  I’d get my cup of coffee at the end of Washington Square East by myself.  I’d pass Catherine’s apartment without stopping all by myself.  The only time I wasn’t by myself was when I was visiting Catherine at the NYU Medical Center.  As the days went on, they pumped her body full of poison while the cancer remained.  The fact that she was getting sicker became the elephant in the room.  The elephant that no one spoke about, but everyone heard roaring.  It got to the point where I had to acknowledge that every time I went to see her could have very well been the last time.  The goodbyes got harder and harder as she became sicker and sicker.  It looked as if the purple veins in her eyelids had leaked and the blood had filled her eye sockets.  Her long, brown hair was long gone, and in its place was a light pink bandana that complimented her ghostly complexion.  Her eyes were still big and green, yet the few lashes she had left weren’t able to make them pop like they could before.  She looked more and more like a ghost every time I saw her.
“Bring me flowers one more time.  I dare your ass.”  Catherine always hated receiving attention and praise, especially when she was in a vulnerable state.
  “You’ll only be happy once I come here with that letter in my hand, won’t you?”
  “You know me so well, Laur.  Hey, odds are you run back to my apartment now to check again?”  She had me and her father go to her place to see if she heard back from medical school in shifts.
  It was my turn.  “Alright okay fine.  But I am gonna come back with another bouquet while I’m at it.”  She flashed me a sarcastic smile, then I grabbed her keys and walked out.  Her father was in the lobby finding comfort in the vending machine.
  “It’s my turn, once again,”  I said as I swung her keyring around my index finger.  It was obvious that the grin he looked at me with was forced, but you had to applaud the man for trying.  He had practically stopped working just so he could sit there with his daughter through her treatment.   It was way too cold to walk the full seven blocks, so I hopped on the subway.  One stop later, I reached the front door of her apartment building.  I shuffled into the narrow corridor where the mailboxes sat side by side in the wall.  Inside the one labeled “G, Catherine,” there sat a single white envelope from the Mt. Sinai Medical School.  Catherine’s long and painful wait had finally come to an end.
I made my way back into the brisk air as I clutched the envelope in my left hand.  My back pocket holding my phone began to vibrate-- it was Catherine’s dad calling me.  My stomach immediately dropped out to my feet.  I already knew this wasn’t going to be a good call before I even answered.  With every second it took for me to put the phone up to my ear, the pain in my chest got significantly more aggressive.
  “Hi, what’s going on?”  I immediately said with an unintentional tone of panic.  It was when he didn’t even say anything back that I knew.  I listened closely to hear his gentle sobs on the other end of the call.  “No, no, no.  Please no.  I’m holding her letter in my hand, God, please.”
  I realized that the words spilling out of my mouth couldn’t change anything.  “I’m on my way back right now,” I said, then quickly hung up the phone to stop myself from spewing words.  The tears that rolled down my face provided streams of warmth on my cheeks.  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk, I slid my thumb underneath the flap of the envelope I had been holding onto so tightly.  “She would want to know,” I kept whispering to myself as the tears kept flowing.

Dear Ms. Gilliano,
It is with great pleasure that we inform you of your admittance to the Mount Sinai Medical School...