And in that moment, I realized the cancer was not the scariest thing in the room.
My first night in the pediatric oncology ward felt endless. I lay in a narrow hospital bed, attached to IV lines and surrounded by machines that beeped quietly in the dark. Rain streaked down the window. I was no longer only afraid of cancer. I was afraid of being unwanted.
By sunset, my parents had signed emergency custody papers.
I was officially a ward of the state.
Then the door opened, and she walked in.
Megan Rivera was thirty-four years old, a pediatric oncology nurse at Mercy General. She had dark curly hair tied back in a messy ponytail, warm brown eyes, and a smile that felt like light entering the room.
“Hey, Emily,” she said softly, checking my chart. “I’m Megan. I’ll be your night nurse. How are you holding up?”
“Terrible,” I whispered.
She pulled a chair close to my bed. “Yeah. I heard what happened. There really isn’t a nice way to say this. What they did was awful.”
Her honesty broke something open in me. I started crying again. Megan didn’t give me empty comfort. She didn’t tell me my parents loved me in their own way. She just handed me tissues and sat beside me in the dark while I mourned the family I had lost.
