Insurance covered most of the treatment, but the extra costs were crushing. Co-pays, medicine, special food, gas, appointments. Megan’s nurse salary was not enough, but she never let me feel like a burden.
Years later, I discovered she had taken out a second mortgage on her house so I would never have to worry.
Six months into treatment, she sat me down at the kitchen table. Waffles was asleep on the rug.
“Emily,” she said nervously, “I need to ask you something important.”
My heart froze. I thought she was sending me away.
“I want to adopt you,” she said quickly, tears already in her eyes. “Not just foster you. I want you to be my daughter forever. Would that be okay?”
I could not speak.
I just threw my arms around her neck.
The adoption became official on my fourteenth birthday.
I became Emily Rivera.
Megan gave me a silver necklace with both our initials on it.
“You’re mine now,” she said. “Forever.”
By fifteen, I was in maintenance treatment. My hair had started growing back, and I had energy again. But I had fallen behind in school.
“You are brilliant,” Megan told me one night, dropping a stack of textbooks onto the table. “Your biological parents called you average. We are going to prove them so wrong they never recover.”
She enrolled me in advanced online classes. She hired a math tutor with money she did not have. After twelve-hour hospital shifts, she stayed awake helping me study.
My anger became fuel.
I wanted to become a doctor. I wanted to be like Dr. Collins.
And I wanted to be like Megan.
By sixteen, I was taking college-level classes. I earned straight A’s. I scored higher on the SAT than Ashley ever had.
When college applications came, I had one dream.
“Columbia University,” I told Megan, staring at the brochure. “Their pre-med program is incredible. But it’s so expensive.”
“Apply,” Megan said immediately. “We’ll figure out the money.”
I got in with a strong merit scholarship, but housing and living expenses were still a mountain.
Megan promised we would handle it.
I went to New York determined to become everything my biological parents said I could never be.
College was exhausting. Organic chemistry, biology, physics—it felt endless. Every time I wanted to quit, I heard my father’s voice.
You’ve always been average.
So I studied harder.
I called Megan every night.
“You beat cancer,” she would say. “You can beat organic chemistry.”
When I came home for Thanksgiving during junior year, I noticed how thin she looked. Her scrubs hung loosely on her body, and dark shadows sat under her eyes.
