"Hey, Dad, what's up?"

"Hey, sweetheart."

"Okay, I know that voice. Who died?"

"Reyna, honey, you should probably sit down."

"Okay, I'm sitting down."

"Is Cody with you?"

"Yeah, you're on speaker. What's going on, Liam?"

"Dad, seriously, you're scaring me."

"Averi has been feeling pretty off lately. Super tired, her eyes hurting, not being able to recognize stuff right away because her sight is blurry."

"Yeah, it took her a second to recognize us the other day."

"Well earlier today, she took quite the spill at the park yesterday and hit her head, so she was rushed to the emergency room.

"Is she okay?"

"They ordered a MRI. And Rey, honey, they found something."

"What did they find?"

"A tumor. It's big and it's not in a good place. They're doing a lot of testing, but they told us they think it's diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma."

"Which is?"

"Cancer, Cody. It's cancer."

"Oh my god."

"She's home now, sleeping. The kids don't know yet, but I figured you'd want to know this now."

"Yeah, thank you."

"I'm gonna give you time to process all of this, okay? I know it's a lot. Just call us when you've thought about it all and made choices."

"Choices?"

"I think he means about whether I'm going to Australia or not."

"Yeah. So just, take some time and think, okay, Bug? We love you."

"I love you guys, too."

"Same here. Tell the girls I love them and tell Keegan he's my bro."

"Will do. Thank you, Cody."

"Bye, Dad."

"Bye, sweetie."

"Now, why didn't he get yelled at for calling you Bug? That's weirder than Squirt."

"Cody, Jesus fricken Christ."

"Made you laugh."

•••

ha here's the drama. dipg will be explained in further detail later, but this is something that's close to home, so i've done extensive research on it. please don't hate on me for this plot decision. that's all.

[ 8.15.17 ]