Gemotions

"Everything will be fine, right?" she asked the doctor, her voice barely a whisper. The doctor's smile was reassuring, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. She stared at the sterile, white ceiling, trying to focus on anything other than the implications. They told her her scan results, were, "inadvertently" combined with someone else's.

A tremor ran through her, making the chair feel unstable beneath her. Her breaths were short, shallow gasps. She clutched her hands together in her lap, her knuckles turning white. The doctor explained the process of rectifying the error, but the words seemed to blur. She couldn't shake the feeling of something being terribly, irreversibly wrong.

She had asked her husband to wait outside. "I don't know what I'll do if something happens to me," she had said, and now the words echoed in her mind. He was the only thing anchoring her to reality, and even he wasn't enough. She closed her eyes.