Mina's Magical Journey

I stared at my aunt’s pale and drawn face as she sat on the hard plastic bed. She refused to look at me, but I had eyes only for her.

“Aunt Jen, please tell me what’s wrong,” I begged. “This isn’t like you. You never cry.”

Finally, she looked up at me, searching my face with her glazed and bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, Mina. My sweet girl,” she sniffled. “This is all my fault. I was so foolish. We should never have come here, we should never have left your father…and now look at you! You are sick and getting worse by the day and nobody knows why…oh God! What have I done? This is all my fault. It was all my idea!”

I gasped in horror and slid down to the floor next to her bed until we were eye to eye. I took her shaking hands into mine and tried to calm her down.

“Aunt Jen, honey, please don't cry again…please, it's not your fault! Please don't say that! Whatever brought us here is not your fault! If you blame yourself for this….for me being sick....we can go back home right now and you won't have to see this awful place again! We can go home right now if that's what you want! Just say the word and we will pack our bags right now! But please don't ever say that this is your fault! Don't take this onto your shoulders...you're too good a person for that! Please Aunt Jen, do not even think it! Do not even think it!”

She shook her head against my chest and gave a weak laugh through another sob as she wrapped her arms around me.

“No Mina...it's too late for that now....we are here....we cannot run away from it anymore....this is our home now...this is where we belong...until you are better...no matter how long that takes....no matter how much danger we are in....we will stay here because this IS our home now...and we must find a way to make things better for you..to make things better for each other.......but I'm afraid.....I'm so terribly afraid......that there is nothing anyone can do.....nothing anyone can do but watch you both die.....and there's nothing anyone can do but bury you when it happens......because.....because.....there is no cure for what's wrong with you..........my baby......my poor sweet Mina.........oh God......you have so little time left in this world......so very little time.....please understand that.....I'm so sorry......so very sorry....."

Her words stabbed through me like a knife piercing straight into my heart.

"NO!" I screamed, jamming my fingers into my ears as I pressed myself against her trembling body. "You're lying Aunt Jen! You're lying!"

"It's true," she whispered brokenly into my hair, "and if there was anything more I could do...anything more in the whole world that I could do to stop this from happening to you...to save you from dying before your time.....I would do it......I swear on my life that I would do anything......" Her voice broke off into sobs again as she clung onto me desperately as if fearing that someone or something might rip me out of her arms any second.