The phone rang in the middle of the teacher’s lecture on who-knows-what. My teacher answered it and a worried look ran over his face. I, knowing me, was doodling on my paper, not realizing that he was looking directly at me.

“I’ll send her down,” he said

I looked up to see that he was walking towards my desk.

“Emily, they want you down at the office. Take your stuff. You probably won’t be coming back.”

I grabbed my stuff and left the classroom. Walking down the hallway, I thought I did something wrong and was going to be in trouble.

I was thinking about what I could have possibly done. Did I get blamed? Did I get marked absent? Or did something happen to someone?

I walked into the office and saw my mother sitting in the office with tears running down her face. She looked up at me and stood up to greet me.

“Get in the car. We are going to the hospital.”

As soon as she said those words, I instantly started asking every question that was going through my head.

“Who’s in the hospital? What’s going on? What’s wrong? Did someone die? Is someone dying?”
So many questions. But there were no answers.

Finally, the 15 minute drive that felt like an hour ended, and we were at the hospital. We parked the car towards the middle of the lot and walked inside.

The lady at the front desk looked up and asked “Can I help you?” she asked in that annoying high pitched ‘I’m trying to be nice, but I don’t want to be” kind of voice. My mom walked up to her and asked her what room my mom was in.

My grandma. My best friend was in the hospital. I had instant tears as I tried to figure out what was going on with her, and if she will be ok.

We got into the hospital room and I ran right up to her bed.

She said that everything was okay, that she will be ok and had to have surgery to remove breast cancer.