At fourteen, Vanessa Hoffman started complaining of headaches and fatigue. Her stomach was finicky, and her appetite dwindled. Sometimes she found herself out of breath and sometimes her hands and legs felt numb and sometimes her joints hurt. Her balance would go off intermittently. She answered adults with “Yes, sir” and “Yes, ma’am” and mostly got along with friends and friends of friends. She had an undisciplined enthusiasm for almost everything that popped into her head, was spunky and pesky with her brothers Ethan and Taylor, and was comfortable with herself, including that part of herself hanging onto a tomboy temperament. She could get dreamy-eyed when thinking about her life and her family and her future and talked on and on about exploring the world beyond Wainwright, Illinois.

She was pretty: brown hair, brown eyes, an aquiline nose she didn’t like it, and thin lips she didn’t like either.

The headaches and fatigue, the numbness and the finicky stomach … all that stuff? Her mother figured her daughter was going through a growth spurt. A young girl turning into a young lady … there’s a lot going on there … but Vanessa’s complaints persisted, so Lauren Hoffman made an appointment with her daughter’s doctor who asked her loads of questions and tested her blood, urine, hearing and eyesight. Nothing jumped out at him, but being cautious, Vanessa’s mother did some persuading and convinced him to make some appointments with specialists. The specialists requested tests: an electrocardiogram, tests for kidney and liver function, an enzyme analysis, x-rays, MRIs, CT scans, a brain scan, a bone scan, an ultrasound. The tests took place over a month and a half, and by the time they were complete, Vanessa was tired of doctors and doctor visits and feeling a bit embarrassed. It was, she thought, much ado about nothing.

Tests completed, results in, she and her parents returned to her family doctor’s office, and when the family doctor said ‘cancer,’ the room instantly went quiet. Vanessa and her parents sat freakishly still, shocked. Their thinking stopped abruptly, a threatening silence intervened, and then their thinking flooded back and chairs were scooched around and heart rates increased and respiration intensified; eyes blinked and hands trembled. Paul and Lauren Hoffman, Vanessa’s parents, leaned forward, lips parted, tongues searching for words, hoping they’d heard wrong. Vanessa did not move a muscle.

One other thing happened at that moment and it only happened to Vanessa and it would be months before she realized it had happened at all. During those months, while she struggled to come to terms with her diagnosis, she gradually recognized that she’d been provided a new skill. When the word ‘cancer’ was uttered, Vanessa acquired, or was endowed or cursed with, the ability to accurately remember every single detail of every day for the remainder of her life.

From fourteen years, four months, and eleven days, until seventeen years, ten months, and four days after that diagnosis, she could effortlessly recall each minute, each hour, each day, precisely what happened and what was said and how she felt, who she was with and what time it was. This enhanced recall … had the disease provided that? She would wonder about that for the remainder of her life. She would live an additional three years, five months, and twenty-two days.

During healthy periods, she would look back and describe, with play-by-play accuracy, how she’d felt during a treatment, a stretch in the hospital, weeks and months at home. These memories could be, and would be, delivered to family and friends with an uneasy “been there, done that” attempt at humor. The memories … were they a relief valve? Examining her days in crazy detail, would that keep her from gazing too far into the future? She felt as if those recollections were guiding her. The sights and sounds she recalled, hospital hallways, conversations and emotions and family and friends visiting, doctors prodding and nurses soothing, riding in the family car, going here and there, these things seemed to pour light on a path that appeared right in front of her. It was unsettling and it was fascinating and it was, for her, normal. Isn’t normal just what happens?

Receiving the diagnosis, her reaction was dismay, fear, and embarrassment. She wanted to hide. She wanted to go backwards. She wanted a do-over. Who wants to be fourteen when fourteen delivers this mess? On a scale of one to ten, her understanding of what was going on was somewhere between four and five, and so, for the remainder of that fourteenth year, she met too many doctors and endured too many tests, was poked and prodded, had her diet reshaped and her physical day-to-day adjusted and then restricted, and fourteen was – for Vanessa Hoffman – a disappointment.

“I’m only fourteen!” she shouted at her parents one day. It was after yet another day spent in two different doctor’s offices, spent huddling with them, spent shoved into two different machines and told to stay perfectly still. Spent listening to doctors explain what had just been measured and what those measurements meant. At the end of that day she was as exhausted and as angry as a fourteen-year-old is allowed to be.

Throughout the remainder of that fourteenth year she wanted to tell family and friends, even acquaintances: “Please don’t ask if I’m okay. Please don’t ask what’s bothering me. Please don’t ask if there’s something you can do, or if I feel up for something. Please. Don’t ask.”

That’s what she wanted to say, but she never said that to anyone.

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.