Her Little Secret

It had been a year since Jackie had received the diagnosis.

Thinking now, about the scene that had occurred in her doctor’s office, she felt simultaneously despairing and angry.

She recalled that when she had responded to the disastrous news by saying to her doctor, “So we don’t know when or where it will happen, but basically you’re handing me a death sentence,” her doctor had retorted, “We’re all going to die sometime, Jackie, and most us don’t know when or where.”

Jackie remembered the moment well; it had seemed amazingly callous, yet it was the truth.

She resolved from that moment on, two things: she would live in whatever way she wanted to, and she would never tell, anyone—not a soul—about her death sentence.

It would be her “little secret,” hers alone.