“Time was a waiting room—waiting for doctors, waiting for blood transfusions and test results, waiting for better days. I tried to focus on the preciousness of the present: the moments when I was well enough to walk around the oncology unit with my parents, the sound of Will’s voice as he read out loud to me each night before bed, the weekends when my brother came to visit from college—all of us together now, while it was still possible. But try as I might, I couldn’t help but feel an incipient grief and guilt as my thoughts turned, inevitably, to what would happen to Will and my family if I didn’t survive.”

Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 91)