Whenever the world became lonely and cold, she always smiled at me, radiating warmth. The only sun in the sky holding everything together.

"Hello, are you a relative?" The doctor asked as he stood in the doorway.

Joey collected himself, stood up to face the man, and nodded.

"Please join me outside for a moment?"

Joey followed him into the white hospital hallway, standing in the echoes of pacing patients and medical staff. "I'm her son, Joey Fiore."

"Hello, Mr. Fiore. My name is Dr. Peterson. I'm the gynecologic oncologist who has been assigned to your mother's case.

"Doctor, what's wrong with her? When will she wake up?" Joey's crossed his arms, his nails digging into his ribcage.

The doctor glanced down at his clipboard. "As far as we can tell, your mother has merely fainted. She should wake up soon. However, the hospital has performed some scans…" His eyebrows made a tiny squeeze and his body shifted a little.

This was the moment Joey regretted having his empath ability…He wished he wasn't an expert at reading people…not for this!

"I'm afraid I have some bad news about her condition...She has ovarian cancer. Unfortunately, it's spread to other areas including her liver. It's already quite advanced. The official diagnosis is stage 4…We will—"

The doctor's following remarks droned out as Joey's universe imploded.

What was this news if not the end of everything? Joey's sun was set to explode, and he knew it would wipe out all life with it. The most catastrophic event. Leaving nothing.

"I suggest we immediately start the following course of treatment…"

After what felt like an eternity in darkness, sounds of sparks in the chaos awoke a trace of awareness in Joey. "Doctor! What can we do? What are her chances?!?"

"We should start a round of neoadjuvant chemotherapy to shrink down the cancer. After that, we'll need to perform surgery to remove as much of it as possible."

A hint of hope resurfaced in Joey's expression.

"As far as the prognosis…In cancer patients, we give a prognosis based on past survival rates of similar patients. With your mother, we discovered it very late, which is common with ovarian cancer. While some people recover, I'm afraid you must prepare yourself for the worst…"

Joey's eyes became bloodshot. He clenched his teeth so hard that he bit his gums. The taste of iron floated through his mouth like a stabbing ghoul. "What are her odds?"

The doctor swallowed and looked at his clipboard again. "The chance of someone with stage 4 epithelial ovarian cancer surviving 5 years is 17%. But...your mother's case is severe. My personal prognosis is it will be difficult to make it past 6 months."

The words hung on Joey's chest like cold cadavers on meat hooks. Weighted down, his gaze fell to the ground. "Will she have a chance if we do the treatment?"

The doctor nodded. "She will have a chance, yes, but the treatments will be very expensive…"

"How much?"

"According to our records, she doesn't have insurance. In such circumstances, the chemo treatments will cost upwards of 10,000 per month. As far as surgery and post-care, it will depend on how the cancer responds to the chemo, but…it will be much more."

Joey looked up at the doctor. "So I just need money and you'll fix her…"

The doctor sighed. Delivering this kind of news to a young man was never easy. He looked into Joey's eyes planning to persuade him to manage expectations, but he stopped as if he ran into a brick wall. Something he saw there frightened him, freezing him from the inside out. Instinct made him swallow back his words. They went down jagged like a dagger.

He'd seen eyes like that too many times. They were the eyes of corpses in the morgue; without life, stiff and cold, with no signs of a soul left in them. But those corpses were dead empty shells, and Joey was alive…Yet, why were his eyes even colder? More lifeless, more soulless than the dead? And hungry. Starving for life. Looking at him like a snack…

"W-w-we'll discuss when she's awake." The doctor backed away and walked around the corner with urgency, wiping the dense sweat from his brow as he tried to regain his composure.

Joey stared into the space where the doctor had been standing. An unknown amount of time later, he walked back into his mother's hospital room, sat at her side, and held her hand, with all the gentleness he had remaining.

His other hand condensed into a fist, weaponized and ready to break anything or anyone who got in his way. He'd do anything to get her what she needed.