Are you dying?

Yes.

“Ava?”

I realize he’s been saying my name and blink.

“Sorry?”

“Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

Yes. Why me?

“I know it’s a lot to take in and you’ll need time to process it all.”

He gets to his feet and comes around the desk, perching on one corner to look down at me sympathetically.

When did doctors stop wearing white coats? They barely even look like doctors anymore. Half the time they look fresh out of high school. Like this guy, Dr. Harrison. Under any other circumstances I would have been flirting with him. He is seriously good-looking in a cultivated, obvious way. I am willing to bet money that he had nurses falling all over him.

“Is there someone I can call? To come and pick you up?” he asks.

I blink again, realizing I am staring at his lips. Wondering what it would be like to kiss them. Inappropriate, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that what one anticipates is an appropriate reaction in a situation like this and what actually happens can be two very different things.

“No, thank you,” I tell him. “I’ll be fine.”

Except I won’t.

“OK. Take a few days to think about what I’ve said and then we’ll discuss options going forward.”

I snort bitterly. Options. Discussing options when the end result is unavoidable feels futile, but I don’t say that. Ironically, I don’t want to hurt him.

The autumnal air outside the hospital doors is crisp and fresh and I inhale a big lungful through my nose, feeling my belly expand like a balloon, the way my mindfulness app on my phone has taught me. I hold it for exactly six seconds before releasing it slowly through my mouth. The balloon deflates.

It doesn’t help the rising sense of panic I feel.

There is a bench seat in a little garden to the right of the hospital car park. I have sat there countless times, though not for a while. I perched there through seasons, like a watchful bird. When the seat was cold and the ground was hard and frozen. I sat there when the trees that hulked above were barren, and the air hazy with the smoke of a thousand chimneys. When the ground softened with the first buds of spring and the air became expectant and giddy with new life.

On this day, I sit there and observe a carpet of color as leaves of purple, orange, and red litter the ground. Occasionally a playful gust of wind swirls through and collects them and they dance away like children, with no reservations.

I’ll never have a child.

I’ll never marry.

One I always assumed would happen. The other I have dreamt of my entire life. The pain hits hard in my belly and I double over, clutching my stomach, my eyes squeezed tightly shut in an effort to block out the world.

“Are you OK?”

The voice is curious, concerned. Feminine but raspy, quivering with age. I refuse to look up. Whoever it is can clearly see they are intruding on a moment.