Hawk on a Line

The first thing I remembered was waking up in a brightly lit room high above the city as I could nearly see the tops of the highest buildings surrounding the hospital. The previous weeks, I had been in and out of consciousness in a dark room, where I was checked on and rolled from back to side to the other side, like clockwork. Each time I managed to drift back into awareness, I could hear the faint beeping of machines around me, monitoring my every breath and heartbeat. I recalled a strange mixture of fear and comfort at this sound; it was a constant reminder that I was alive, but it also highlighted the fragility of my existence. For three long weeks, I was tested, poked, and watched with relentless scrutiny. I was dying right in front of their eyes, and they didn’t know why.

I was freshly turned ten and just seven weeks earlier, I had undergone an emergency open-heart surgery to repair the aortic valve that was separating from the heart itself. I remembered the conversations the doctors had with my parents, their faces painted with concern and uncertainty. The sterile scent of the hospital filled my nostrils, a scent I would come to associate with one of the most terrifying experiences of my young life. The moments spent in the operating room, where I was surrounded by masked figures and bright lights, replayed in my mind like a haunting melody I couldn’t escape.

Here we were again. The same hospital, surrounded by unfamiliar faces in a place that haunted my very dreams. I was a child, and I didn’t belong here, I thought. This time, I was much more sick, which didn’t seem possible given all I had already endured. Just a few days had passed since I last felt capable of running and playing with my friends. I was getting better; I felt good again. But then, all of a sudden, I just didn’t. My energy slipped away, fatigue seeped into my bones, my body ached in ways I couldn’t articulate, and I longed for sleep more than the carefree laughter and playtime that used to fill my days.

Three long weeks it took for answers to emerge from the chaos of tests and pokes. They tested my heart, as I had a donor heart valve; naturally, they thought it was organ rejection. I was kept in an ICU room behind two heavy doors, the kind that felt like they were closing me off from the world outside. Infectious disease, cardiology, oncology—you name it, they were on my case, each specialist with their concerns and hypotheses. I could see the worry etched on my mother’s face, her eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, her hands trembling as she clutched the armrest of the chair by my bedside.

Eventually, a biopsy was performed, a routine procedure that felt anything but routine in my frail state. The silence was heavy in the air, filled only with the soft hum of machines that tracked my every heartbeat. Then came the news that changed everything: an extremely rare form of cancer had been discovered. Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin’s—rarely seen in children and typically found in male patients over sixty years. It felt surreal; how could this be happening to me? A child dealing with something so adult, so grim.

When I woke in the brightly lit room on my mom’s birthday, reality hit hard. My chemotherapy had already begun before I even regained full consciousness. It was already at stage 4 and rampant throughout my entire body. The medical team was on high alert, moving swiftly to combat this relentless intruder. My first memory after three weeks in ICU was hearing the words that no child should ever have to hear: “Your daughter has cancer.” Those words echoed in my mind, sending tremors of fear down my spine, and in that moment, I felt the weight of a thousand nightmares coalesce into one glaring truth.