“Margo, hurry up and put on your shoes! We don’t have all day!” 

“I’m trying to! Stop yelling at me, Evy. It’s really hard!” exclaims my sister in her squeaky five-year-old voice. She continues to attempt to tie her pink tennis shoes. 

After about two more minutes of this, I pick up Margo in one arm and grab her shoes and backpack in the other. She flails for a second, clearly wanting to do it herself, but we have to hurry. My appointment starts in 15 minutes. 

We walk out to my car I quickly buckle Margo into her “big girl” car seat, then climb into the driver’s seat. 

My appointment is only five minutes away, but it always takes me a while to convince Margo to come inside with me. Usually I just bribe her with an ice cream cone and she hops right out of the car. It becomes clear when I pull up in front of the huge office building that it might take more than an ice cream cone this time. 

“But Evy, that lady is going to make me go away. I don’t want to go away!” Margo cries. 

“Sweetheart, she’s not going to make you go away. I will tell her that you have to stay.” 

“Promise?” she asks, but it sounds more like “pwomise?” 

“Yes, I promise.” 

“Fine,” she says. She grabs her backpack, her shoes now tied. She unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out of the car. 

Margo grabs my hand, marching in front of me and pulling me through the front doors. The cold air hits me, a harsh contrast to the hot summer air just outside. 

“Good morning! Why don’t you go ahead and sign in right here, dear?” says the woman at the front desk She pushes a clipboard toward me. She must be new because I have been here once a week for almost a year now and have never seen this woman before. 

I send Margo over to the kid’s area to my right, grab the pen, and sign my name and fill out the sheet. 

Name: Evelyn Carter. 

Age: 16. 

Reason for visit: 

I hesitate on this one. I hesitate every time.  

I know what they want me to write: depression and schizophrenia. But the thing is, I don’t feel depressed. Everything seems pretty real to me, so writing that feels wrong. But I write it anyway and continue down the sheet. 

Physician: Dr. Caroline Harris. 

I actually laugh a little when I write this. Dr. Harris is eccentric. She is the kind of person whose only goal in life is to be happy and to make other people happy. Although she means well, she is as oblivious as they come. But I decided to like her a long time ago. She is just trying to help. 

I hand the clipboard back to the woman at the front desk. As I turn away, I think I see her skin turn green out of the corner of my eye. But when I look again, she’s completely normal.  

“It’s not real,” I whisper to myself. “None of it's real.” 

I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath, composing myself. Then I walk over to sit with Margo. She is coloring in her princess book and humming a song she must have learned in school. 

Just as I sit down, I hear the receptionist say, “Evelyn Carter? Dr. Harris is ready for you.” 

“All right. Come on, Margo. Pack up your stuff. We need to go in now,” I say, poking her in the arm. 

“Fine,” she snaps, annoyed with me. She packs up, then slides her little hand into mine. We walk into Dr. Harris’s office together. 

“Good morning, Evelyn! It’s so nice to see you again!” Dr. Harris announces as she runs over to give me a hug. “How have you been?” 

“Good,” I say, trying not to tell her more than necessary. “I brought Margo again today.” 

Her face falls for a second, but she quickly recovers, saying, “Oh. Okay. Great. Well, I guess we have quite a lot to talk about today, don’t we?” 

I nod and take a seat on the couch. Dr. Harris sits across from me on a matching loveseat. Margo climbs up beside me and begins finishing her princess picture, her little hand resting on my thigh. 

“So, Evelyn, is today the day?” 

She is asking if today will be the day that I finally tell her what happened. I wouldn’t let my mom tell her when she forced me to go to therapy in the first place, and even after a year, I haven’t said anything. 

But I’ve been thinking about how tired I am of being sad and how tired I am of seeing things that aren’t there and how bone weary I am of lying and pretending things are okay when they are not. 

“I think so,” I tell her, my voice shaking. 

Her face lights up. “That’s wonderful! I’m so proud of you!” 

I feel like I have given in to something terrible. Personally, I believe that there is a difference between giving up and giving in, but right now, I can’t what it is. 

“Okay, so...just begin when you’re ready,” Dr. Harris says. 

I close my eyes for a second, focusing on the little hand resting on my thigh. I take a deep breath. I open my eyes and stare at the woman sitting across from me. A little voice in my head is telling me not to tell her anything. To take Margo and walk out and never come back. 

“I still remember the day she started complaining about the pain in her chest,” I say. “At first we thought she had just bruised it or something stupid like that. My mom ignored it  until about two weeks later, when Margo woke up screaming.  

“I should tell you that nothing scares me too much, but when you hear your little sister let out a blood curdling scream at three in the morning, I mean...that scares the shit out of you.” I pause for a second and take a deep breath. 

I look up at Dr. Harris, who is fiercely scribbling down everything I just said into her notebook. She finishes, looks up at me, and nods for me to keep going. 

“By the time my mom and I got to her, she was struggling to breathe. We rushed her to the E.R. My mom drove while I was in the backseat with Margo, trying to keep her calm.”  

I stop talking, lost in thought. 

I remember carrying my little sister into the hospital. Then a nurse came up and took her from me. I just remember screaming at them, demanding for them to let me go with her, but they just carried her away.  

My mom and I sat in the waiting room, clutching hands. Mom had tears streaked down her cheeks. I just stared at the wall across from me, waiting for something, anything, to happen. 

I don’t tell Dr. Harris this because even though I have decided to come clean, I still want to keep some things to myself. Instead I say, “We took her to the hospital and they took her back. My mom and I sat in the waiting room until a nurse came and told us we could see Margo.” 

For some reason, I can still remember the nurse that took us to see Margo. I remember her name was Julie, and she had long, red hair twisted up into a bun. I remember the sad look she wore as she brought us back. But most of all, I remember how when we arrived in the ICU, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Then she spun on her heels and walked out. 

“By the time we got to her, my sister was asleep. She had a hospital gown on and a cannula in her nose. We sat with her for about ten minutes before the doctor came in to talk to us,” I tell Dr. Harris.  

“They did a PET scan on her and found out that she had stage three thyroid cancer. He told us that they would try, but Margo only had a 20% chance of living past the age of ten.” 

I don’t tell Dr. Harris about how my mother sobbed as we watched my sister be kept alive by machines. I don’t tell her how I screamed at the doctor, telling him that he was lying, that it can’t be true, that he had to fix my baby sister. 

“We were devastated, sitting in that cold hospital room waiting for Margo to wake up. About an hour later, she finally woke up. We smothered her in hugs and kisses. And then, because my poor mother couldn’t bear it, I was the one who tried to explain to my little sister that she was really, really sick.” 

After saying this, I go quiet for a few minutes, remembering that terrible moment when she looked up at me with her bright blue eyes and asked me if she was going to die. I promised her that no matter what, I would not let that happen to her.