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| Nicole's Story continued |
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| So, next school started in the Fall. 7th grade. I think 7th grade is the worst year in middle school, but that's just me! First hour I had math, Anna Breiter was sitting next to me. I remember looking at her and thinking about how skinny she had gotten. She came to school for a few days, and then they told us she had rhumatic fever. To this day I still don't know what that is, but I remember not really buying it because it sounds like something you'd get in the jungle. Of course our class made get well cards and all the stuff that teachers put together to make you feel special for being nice. I can't remember exactly when I heard. Maybe it was in CCD, maybe it was from my mom, but I learned that she had a tumor or a cyst in her brain. I guess I really couldn't believe it. I do now because of all that has happened, but I didn't then. Things like that happen on TV and movies, but they don't happen to people I know, at least they shouldn't . . . . Around Halloween, Kristy, Sara, Sarah and I went to Rochester to see Anna in the hospital. I remember pretty much everything leading up to getting to her room. I remember feeling so horrible that children, 10 years old, 5 years old, 7 years old, died from and are dying from cancer. From pain and suffering, and I get to live. I remember walking into the room. I remember her voice. Her laugh. She had the best laugh!! There, lying in a hospital bed, 12 years old, was Anna. She had gauze around her head, and a few of her brothers and sisters, her mom and dad, were standing around her. We talked with her for awhile, and then we went home. I started writing letters to her. Mainly out of guilt I think, telling her what was going on, and how much I loved her. |