Wild Ride

A smile on her face

Third Person P.O.V.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Diana Greyson is a sixteen year old girl living in Boston. She moved here with her parents from Brazil when she was 8. She has just finished her freshman year of high school and her mom is sitting on her bed with her having very awkward birds and bees talk with her.

“Mija your body is changing and I just want you to have all the facts,” her mom Belmira says to her.

“I know mom, they covered this in health class,” Diana says to her mother. “I know all about s*x and condoms and birth control and STDs. You don’t have to have this talk with me.”

“Thank God!” Her mom said.

Diana has always been self confident of her body. She doesn’t look like the other girls her age. She is curvy with big breasts, big butt, and what she calls thunder thighs. Her mom always makes sure to tell her how beautiful she is. She dresses the same as the other girls her age even if they comment on her weight. She tells them to f**k right off. She has long brown/black hair with golden brown highlights, thick eyebrows, full pouty lips and a cute button nose. She has a beauty mark above her lip that she loves and dimples for days. Her tummy is mostly flat except for the little pudge under her belly button that she can't seem to get rid of but she stopped letting it bother her. She accepted it as part of her and doesn’t bother hiding it. The other girls tried to make her cover her body when she was younger and that just made her angry. She called them out for body shaming her in front of everyone at school and told them they were just jealous because they were flat chested and built like little boys.

 That was the first time she got suspended for making other girls cry. Of course her mom went to the school and made the principal cry because he didn’t let Diana explain her side of the confrontation and let him know that these girls had been bullying Diana and she was trying to be the bigger person. Her mom always had her back. After they left school they went to get ice cream and burn a hole in daddy’s credit card. Her dad was an American lawyer and she wanted to be just like him. He had gone to Brazil on vacation and met Diana’s mom. A week turned into a month. Then Richard took time away from his firm and moved to Brazil to be with Belmira.

 They lived happily in Brazil until his father passed away and Richard moved his family back to America. Diana didn’t know her whole world was about to crumble. Later that night she could tell her parents had something on their minds.

“What’s going on guys?” Diana asked, “I know something is wrong.”

“I got some bad news from the doctor today,” Belmira tells her daughter. “I have stage three breast cancer and the doctors said it is progressing rapidly.”

Diana’s whole world just imploded. She didn’t know how to react. She threw herself into her mother’s arms and started crying her eyes out. 

“Are you going to get treatment? Chemo? Radiation? Surgery? How are you going to fight this thing?” She asks.

“We don’t know yet. The doctors are going to meet with us next week and discuss all of mom’s options,” her dad says.

“Okay, can I come with you? I want to be there,” Diana tells her parents.

“Of course sweetheart,” her mom tells her.

They met with the doctor and decided on chemo and radiation. The treatment was working. Her tumors started shrinking and they were able to remove one entirely. The other kept getting smaller. Belmira continued with chemo once a week throughout the summer. She seemed to be responding to the treatment but Diana could tell her mom was getting worse. She was weak and in pain all the time. After six months they were told her cancer had spread to her other organs and that she didn’t have much time left. Belmira decided to forgo treatment and manage her pain from home. She didn’t want to spend the time she had left in the hospital. She wanted to be at home with her family. 

Bel and Diana spent everyday together. They’d watch TV, eat junk food, Diana would sneak her mom some edibles so she could keep her food down. She hid it from her dad because she knew he didn’t approve. They carried on this way until her mom passed peacefully in her sleep on January second two-thousand eighteen. Diana had gotten up in the middle of the night for a glass of water and saw her mom’s door was cracked. She went to go check on her mom because she always had trouble sleeping when her dad was out of town. Diana sat on the edge of her mom’s bed and touched her mom’s sleeping face. Only she was cold as ice. She had a smile on her face and she was holding a framed photo of their family on their last vacation. Mom wanted to see the world before she died so every other month her dad would take them somewhere on mom’s bucket list. The one she was holding was the three of them in front of the Eiffel Tower. Diana called her dad crying.

“Diana what’s wrong? It’s the middle of the night over there,” he asked.

“It’s mom. She’s gone dad,” she tells him everything. From when she woke up to when she called him. He tells her he’ll be on the next flight home and he’d see her in a few hours. Diana calls 9-1-1.

“9-1-1 what is your emergency?” The dispatch officer asks.

Diana is crying.

“Ma’am can you tell me where you are?” The officer asks.

Diana gives them her address and tells them she needs the coroner to come. She explains that her mother had cancer and how she found her that night. She also tells them that her father isn’t home and she is a minor. Her parents made sure to give her all the information she’d need in case this happened while her dad was out of town.

 The police and medical examiner got to her house and she led them to her mother. She was taken to the hospital and held her mother’s hand in the ambulance for the last time. She wouldn’t let go until they told her she had to. Diana became hysterical and had to be sedated. 

She was laying in a hospital bed when her father arrived. Richard didn’t understand why his daughter was restrained until she woke up. Diana was yelling for them to take her back to her mother. She didn’t calm down until her father was holding her. She clung to him and cried. They finally released her into her father’s care when they determined that she wasn’t a danger to herself or others. She was merely grieving the loss of her mother. They held a service for her mother and all their close friends were there.