“Why?” she asked, and I felt my blood cool.
I looked up to Susan—Dr. Dela Cruz—and she nodded in encouragement. Then she said to Mia, “Shall we leave the girls to chat for a while?”
Mia glanced at me, and I nodded. Mia and Susan left the room, and Tala patted the edge of the bed. “Please, sit,” she said. “My family are coming soon.” She smiled. “I’m going home today …” She trailed off, and I sat down beside her. I knew why she was going home. For the same reason Poppy had near the end.
Tala never let go of my hand. It was weak yet held so much strength.
“Why do you want to be a doctor?” she asked again. “For cancer patients?” she tacked on.
“Yes,” I said. “Children’s cancer, specifically.” She studied me and waited for the second part of her question to be answered. “I had an older sister …”
I said and really fought to keep my voice steady and blinked away tears from my eyes. “She had cancer—Hodgkin lymphoma. Like you.”
Tala’s face grew serious. “Where is she now?” she asked, and my soul cried.
I stared into her forest-green eyes. “In Heaven,” I said, and I let myself believe that with my entire heart.
Tala’s fingers tightened in mine. She looked down at our joined hands. Then she said, “I’m dying too.” Those three words caused an almighty rip in my soul.
“I know,” I whispered and held her hand tighter.
A wash of tears made her green eyes shine. “I try not to be scared. But sometimes …” She swallowed, a single tear falling from her eye and drifting down her cheek. “Sometimes I can’t help it.”
“It’s understandable,” I said and shifted closer to her. “What you are facing is the hardest thing a person can face.”
“Was your sister scared?” she asked, then said, “What was her name?”
“Poppy,” I said. “Her name was Poppy.”
“Poppy,” Tala said, sounding out the name. She smiled. “I like that name.”
She waited for me to answer her previous question. “Poppy wasn’t scared,” I said. “At least, she tried not to be.” I thought of Poppy’s resilience, her smiles and the innate happiness she’d radiated right up until her final breath. “She was so happy. She loved her family, and her boyfriend, fiercely. She loved life … right up until the end.”
Tala turned her head and stared at a picture beside her bed. There was a Filipino woman in it, a Caucasian man, and a young boy and girl. And of course, there was Tala, her arms wrapped around them all. “I love my family too,” she said, running a finger over their smiling faces. Turning to me again, she said, “I think I’m most scared of leaving them behind.”
“Poppy was too.” I wrapped both my hands around hers. “But we are okay,” I said and felt something shift inside of me. I was getting better. For the first time in four years, I had hope that I was getting better. That I
would be okay. I smiled. “And I still talk to Poppy,” I said. “At her grave near where we live. And I talk to her in the stars.”
“Stars?” Tala asked.
I gave her a small smile. “I like to think of her shining down upon me, living among the stars.” A tear fell down my cheek. But it was a happy one. I was remembering Poppy with happiness. “She shone so brightly in this life, I knew she could only shine brighter in the next.”
Tala was smiling, but then it faltered. “I like that,” she said. “What you said about the stars.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, noticing something was on her mind.
“I just feel tired a lot now. So tired.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “I’m not sure I shine as brightly as your sister did. Sometimes I feel like my light is fading. That things are getting dark.”
My heart skipped at her sad words. Leaning down, I squeezed her hands tighter and said, “Stars shine brightest in the dark.”
The smile she gave me in return rivaled the glow of the stars, the moon, and sun itself. “My name,” she said, “Tala, in Tagalog, our language, means ‘bright star.’ I’m named after the goddess of the stars.”
I felt it then. A ripple of destiny shimmer between us. The feel of a soft hand pressed in on my back, and I knew Poppy was beside me. A sense of fate or something like it filled up the room. I knew that Tala’s path and mine were meant to cross. I was meant to meet her and she me.
A knock at the door sounded and Susan popped her head in. “Tala, your family are here to take you home.” The door opened wider, and a young boy and a girl entered, jumping onto Tala’s bed, wrapping her into their small arms.
“You’re coming home, darling!” a man said with an English accent from the doorway, blushing slightly when he saw me beside his daughter. “Oh, sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s no problem,” I said. When I looked to him, I saw Tala’s green eyes staring back at me. I smiled at him and the woman who came through next—her mama.
Rising from the bed, I released Tala’s hand. She smiled at me. “Bye, Savannah.”
“Bye, Tala,” I said, my throat graveled. Because I knew I would never see her again.
She swallowed, then over her sister’s and brother’s heads, said, “I’ll see you from the stars.”
I gave her a watery smile. “I’ll be looking for you,” I managed to say back before leaving the room and walking straight into the private family room to the left. I lifted my head toward the ceiling and let the tears fall in twin rivers from my eyes. I covered my face with my hands and just let all the sorrow for Tala’s situation spill forth.
Tala was so brave, so pure. She was such a beautiful soul and didn’t deserve to die.
“Savannah?” Mia came into the room, followed by Susan, shutting the door behind them.
“I want to do this,” I said, without a single doubt in my heart, my voice thick with emotion. “I want to be a pediatric oncologist. I want to help cure these children who do not deserve to be sick. I want to work so hard that one day, cancer won’t take people away from their loved ones. I want to help so that cancer—
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.