The Strongest One by TheRoost (little readers txt) 📕

The blasting monotone of I.V. drippings and droppings are the first things Kayla hears in the morning and one of the last things she hears at night. Her eyes, an unchanged and unchangeable Fruit Loop green, flutter open, taking in the starch white hospital walls that glared at her from her bed. She sighs a happy sigh. Today was not a day for sadness.

Her mother, Marie, must have thought the same thing, because she entered the room wearing her rare, pretty smile. Her long sunny hair was swept under a baseball cap, and Ed hazel eyes were fighting back stubborn tears. Her voice, nearly suffocated with emotion, choked out a "Hello, sweetie."

"Hello, Momma," Kayla replied eagerly. Her multiple needles and tubes prevented a close, or long, embrace, but any was better than nothing. "Is Papa coming to see me today?"

Marie seemed to swallow something back as she stared at her eager daughter: it seemed to be both pride and a deep, unthinkable pain. "Papa can't come until tonight, baby. I'm so sorry, but you know how Jodi is."

Kayla nodded; she did, in fact, know how Jodi was. She was a mean, heartless woman who ran a very big bank for a very rich an, and was well paid for it. So was her father, but most of the money was spent on Kayla now.

Marie ran a hand on her daughter's forehead as the familiar tap-tap-tapping of nurses' shoes echoed in the still and empty hall. "Darling, listen to me, okay?"

Kayla looked up, her attention on her mother, while her silent and impassive tears raced down her cheeks.

Her mother continued, never once leaving her daughter's carefully pain-concealed gaze. "You are the bravest, kindest, most pacifying girl I know. You do know that, don't you?"

Kayla sighed, happy, vague memories floating through her mind as she replied with a simple, silent nod.

The nurse burst in then, shattering the moment, the day-dream. With the check of a chart and the click of a pen, she patted Kayla's head, which once held locks of woven gold, but now lay bare and cold.

"Looks like you're in Chemo-Therapy today, honey," the nurse said sweetly, adjusting the bed to easily push her down the sweeping, twisting corridors. "Are you ready?"

With a squeeze from her mother's hand and a nod from the girl herself, the three walked down the halls where they had walked a thousand times before, and would walk a thousand times again. And when they reached the room that killed off the cancerous cells, and the healthy ones, Marie leaned in and whispered "Happy 6th birthday, my Angel."

Publication Date: 08-11-2012

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