Mum gently dabs the blood on my leg, pressing the cool washcloth to my skin and fighting to look casual. “It will heal, Alyssa, I’m sure of it.”

I don’t say anything, just staring at her with bloodshot eyes. It will never heal. We both know it. The chemo will stop wounds from healing until it’s over, and even if it didn’t, the leukemia is already at work making my wounds gush open and giving me cuts and bruises that I don’t remember getting.

“It’s like a battle wound,” she says gently, and I grimace in pain as she runs cleaner over the scrape, trying desperately to suck in deep breaths. “It’s a badge of honor worn by a girl who never stopped fighting.” She smiles weakly, but there’s fear glowing in her eyes.

“Thank you,” I whisper hoarsely. The world dances around me, and it’s hard to move, hard to keep focusing on what she’s doing.

“You’re welcome.”

She frowns and tries to rub cream on the wound, but it just mixes with my blood and smears all over my leg. “I don’t know what to do, Alyssa. We have to get it to stop bleeding. Will you hold on while I go get the cancer handout?”

I nod shakily, fighting the grey spots clouding over my eyes. I grip the chair to keep myself from tumbling backward, pushing on the wound to stop more blood from spurting out. I hear things clattering to the ground in the kitchen and I feel a twinge of anger that she hasn’t put it in somewhere easily accessible.

She bursts back in with the book clasped in her hands, and takes the cloth from me, wincing when blood drips out of it. “It’s not a deep cut at all, Alyssa. I don’t get it.”

But the fear in her eyes tells me that she knows exactly what’s going on.

The world spins wildly around me, and I grit my teeth together to keep from crying out. I can barely feel the blood trickling down my leg- everything is numb. Just numb.

“Mum, it isn’t working,” I mumble, hot tears searing my cheeks. “The chemo isn’t working.”

She’s turning pages furiously, and she pretends not to hear me, but I see the way her face twists in pain. When she finally looks up, her cheeks are wet too. She grabs my foot and lifts it above my head, and I give a low cry of surprise, holding my leg up as high as I can. “This will help stop the blood,” Mum tells me quietly, and all I can do is nod.

“Mum, I’m scared,” I whisper through my tears, dizziness sucking me down into the ground. She’s silent, and my own words echo around my head, pushing me downwards and weighing me down so that I’ll never get back up.

She yanks my foot higher, and I give a cry of pain, fighting back and giving a disgusted cry of “It won’t go any higher, Mum”. Her face crumples and she slowly begins to sob, pressing the cloth so hard against my wound that blood drips out of the soaking cloth and down my leg.

“I know, Alyssa,” she says hoarsely, and then she gives a loud wail, her desperate voice slicing through my misery and leaving my heart raw with pain. “I know,” she cries again.

“Mum, I can’t live like this. I want to live; I want a future. I never realized how...beautiful the world was, and now it’s too late.”

“The bleeding is slowing,” Mum says darkly, and there’s a bitter edge to her voice. She doesn’t acknowledge what I said, but I know she heard it. And I know she has no idea what to say.

I look down at my leg, and if the bleeding has slowed, it’s only by a little bit. Blood is still flowing steadily out of it. I know that Mum probably just said that to comfort me, but I press my hands tightly together and hope that she’s right. For my sake, she has to be right.

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“How much longer do you think I have?” My voice cracks and more tears drip down onto my lap.

“I don't know, Alyssa, I've never seen blood flow like this before. It looks like it should clog up in half an hour or so. If it goes longer than an hour, we need to call a doctor.” I can hear her struggling to keep her voice steady, but every word is coated with fear.

I choke back bile rising in my throat, and lift my head up to meet her eyes. “You know that wasn't what I meant.”

Her face crumples and she shoves my leg further up in the air, ignoring my yelp of pain. “You are not going to die, Alyssa,” she hisses through clenched teeth. Her fingers tighten together into a knotted fist, and she stares at me with terrified eyes. “You can't,” she whispers, and I know she's trying to convince herself just as much as she is me.

My heart thunders in my chest, and fury rips through my skin. “How long do I have?” I yell, and I wrench my leg away from her, sliding away the cloth and staring at the blood beneath it. The flow has dwindled, and I can already tell that it will soon be gone.

“I don’t know, Alyssa,” she mutters, her voice thick with tears. “I’ve been tracking your progress in the booklet. This isn't normal. But Alyssa, you're not dead yet. We can’t just give up hope. There's still a chance.” She rests a heavy hand on my shoulder and stares at me with her face twisted in pain. My heart sinks inside me and I squeeze my eyes shut, squeezing the cloth until blood squirts out of it. The bleeding has significantly slowed now, but oozing red goop is still dribbling out of it.

“Mum, what's the point?” I yank my leg away from her and drop it back onto the ground, terror crawling over my skin. “Is this all there is to life? To eat, breathe, sleep, and then die? I can't do this anymore.” I give a muffled sob, every part of me crying out in desperation. “I know you want me to be strong, but I can't.”

Mum slams the book down on the table next to me, and I crumple into her arms, crying softly as she rubs my smooth scalp. I can feel the blood trickling down my leg, but I don’t move, leaning my head on her shoulder and weeping bitterly. Mum’s arms wrap tight around me, and I can feel her steady breathing in and out, in and out. I sit there for a long time, and slowly, I stop shaking quite so violently and my breathing matches with hers.

“I’m so scared, Mum. I don’t want this to all be for nothing. When the doctor first told me about my cancer, I realized that I had never really lived. All the life that I had lived was going to be for nothing. I was nobody special- in a hundred years, no one would even remember me. And Mum, I was so scared. I thought maybe it would be better if I just got it over with and died.”

Mum backs up so that she can look me in the eyes, and I’m shocked at what I see there. Her eyes are bloodshot, and rimmed with tears, but there’s a certain fearlessness in them, and unspeakable courage. When she looks at me, I know that she cares, and something about that makes my heart flutter inside me. “Alyssa, your life is not for nothing. You are precious to me, you are beautiful, and-” she cuts off suddenly, crying too hard to be able to speak. “I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it.”

“Oh Mum,” I say through my tears, and I hug her tighter, my heart swelling at the words. I don’t know what it is about them that makes me feel so much happier, so much more beautiful, but somehow, her words make me want to live, make me want to enjoy each little moment with her. She would never have said that before.

“Even if no one else remembers you, I will remember you, Alyssa, because you changed everything for me. And I can’t imagine a life without you.” She gently lifts up my foot and rubs the wound some more with the cloth. The bleeding has nearly stopped. The blood is beginning to clot.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and the words feel wrong, somehow, like they can’t begin to express all of the feelings raging through my head. But for now, they’ll have to be enough.

She brushes my cheek with the back of her hand, and a tingling washes over my body. “Of course.”

I pick away at the dried blood caked on my leg, and then look up at her slowly to ask one last question. “Mum?”

“Yes, Alyssa?”

“Do you think there’s a God?”

She stops, and her hands drop limply to her sides. She stares at me with understanding in her eyes, but it’s a long time before she answers. “I…I don’t know.”

“Because if there is, that would change everything, wouldn’t it?”

She wipes away the tears on her face, and picks up the cancer booklet as if she expects it to have the answers. She nods slowly, and mumbles, “I think so.”

I stand up shakily, and start to walk up towards my room. She nods and carries the cloth back to the kitchen, and neither of us say another word.