Chapter Two: Aria: Emergency Room

Mom rushed me to the emergency room at the Westfield Hospital.

In the car, I asked her "Mom, will-will I be all right?"

She didn't answer, but I saw her grip the steering wheel more tightly. She avoided my eyes, but I saw in the mirror that she was crying. She was also muttering about something.

"I should have known," she kept repeating.

I froze. Known what? Did she know that I was going to get cancer eventually? Had the doctor warned her when I had been born? If so, then why hadn't she done something?

I was about to ask her, but then Mom silenced me with a look. I swallowed my words and sat back in my seat.

***

"Well, Aria, there's no easy way to say this but I'm afraid you--you"

Dr. Fitzia Evelore sighed.

"What is it, Dr. Evelore?" I asked nervously.

Mom and I were waiting for my test results in the other room, two days later.

"You have...an unknown disease," Dr. Evelore said solemnly.

Mom's hand went stiff on my shoulder. Me? Well, let's just say that everything inside of me seemed to stop. It was like I was waiting for the doctor to say: "Just joking around, Aria! Ha ha! You're perfectly healthy! Nothing wrong at all!", or "Don't worry, Aria! It's curable!" But, to my great dread, Dr. Evelore didn't do that.

Instead, she walked over and whispered something to Mom that I just managed to hear a snip of."We'll just have to be strong for her, Lidia," the doctor said. "I'm afraid it's all we can do."

She and Mom were best friends. Mom said the two of them had studied something together for years in college, but she had never mentioned what.

"Those Horastians won't get her," Dr. Evelore said, even more softly.

Mom froze.

"Don't say that word in front of her! She can hear you. She has her father's you know what!" she snapped.

"She doesn't know?" the doctor asked, evidently surprised about something.

"Know what?" I interrupted sharply.

Mom and the doctor exchanged a glance.

Dr. Evelore removed her glasses and inspected them, acting as though she hadn't heard me. My curiosity got the better of me.

"Know WHAT!?" I yelled, glaring angrily at both of them. If looks could knock out people, mine was so fierce that they would have been knocked out dead.

Mom sighed, but it sounded more like a strangled sob. She looked as horrified as I felt.

"It's really not anything for you to know, Aria," she answered shakily. "Right now, we must focus on you."

"If you want to know so badly then… there is a way for you to obtain this knowledge." Dr. Evelore interrupted a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

Why did she look so HAPPY?

"Fitzia!" Mom protested.

Dr. Evelore ignored her.

"There is a shiny, hard-covered blue book in the public library, buried under a pile of books, all of which are about something called "homoas", which most people on Earth don't know of. But "homoas" is the Horastias word for disease. It is an English word, though. No one is interested in that topic, so the blue book, the one that looks new, is under there. It has been there ever since the school first started."

My jaw dropped, about to ask what in the world was Horastias, or if she was just plain crazy when she interrupted me.

"You will find out the answers to your questions when you read the book."

Now I was puzzled. Was the doctor making a joke? I wondered. Or did she sincerely believe the information that she had told me?

Mom looked livid, so I decided to change the subject. Dr. Evelore was probably just joking around, trying to lighten my mood, as I had just been diagnosed with an unknown disease. Horastling was probably just one of those complicated scientific names for something.

But deep down, I felt that if I tried, I would discover something incredible and possibly too much for me to withstand if I wasn't careful.

"So," I said anxiously, not really expecting my next statement to break the tension. "Am I going to die?"

"Your treatment will start in one week," Dr. Evelore said, avoiding answering my question. "I would recommend not going to school, as we don't know anything about this disease. In the meanwhile, you will stay at the hospital"

"Thank you so much for all you've done, Dr. Evelore!" Mom answered quickly and impatiently.

"Oh, and one more thing, Aria." Dr. Evelore called to us as we were about to leave. "We will do one more quick test two days before your treatment starts, to make sure we know exactly what and how much of it to give you."

Okay, that made no sense. I was right. Dr. Fitzia Evelore was just plain crazy.

But as we left, I remembered Dr. Evelore's words. They had seemed so honest.

"There is a shiny, hard-covered blue book buried under a pile of other books, all about something called "homoas", which are unheard of. But "homoas" is the Horastian word for disease. It is an English word, though. No one is interested in that topic, so the blue book, the one that looks new, is under there. It has been there ever since the school first started."

What was this book? I decided to find out.