This is where the story started.

It was a dull October afternoon, and I was huddled in the Bodleian library, surrounded by books about General Surgery. The thought of going to the Clinical Medicine seminar I was supposed to attend did not really make me jump with joy. So I decided I'd rather stay there and study some more.

I loved studying among old books. Many of the greatest in history were in that room, with me. They were dusty and yellowy, and nobody had time to read them anymore. But they guarded the keys to the present, and being close to them somehow made me feel able to do great things, to lead the way into another era.

There was only another girl in the room. The rain outside the window seemed far away. I felt trapped in my own dimension. As I turned on my laptop, I remembered my dream about Nora that night. I hadn't been able to take it off my mind in the whole morning. I closed my eyes and tried to get back to Brighton, to that unfinished conversation, and find out why it intrigued me so much.

I dreamt about her almost every night, but the dreams were usually banal. In the last one I had had before the unnerving one from that night, she told me something about the balloons full of paint we had left back at Africa's house. Ever since Africa started studying Fine Arts, the three of us had plans of painting a wall by throwing balloons full of paint and making them explode against it. We finally set a day for our plan two months before Nora died. She was already living - or fighting hard to survive - at the hospital, but the doctor said some excitement would do her good. Africa suggested smoking some weed at her backyard, but I thought numbness was not the most appropriate sensation to go for when you did not have many days left.

Even though I had known Nora would die all along, during her agony I had secretly hoped someone up there, or down there, or at the other side of the moon was hearing my prayers and would not be as cruel as to take away half of me and leave me empty and alone.

I looked for Nora every day. In my dreams, inside my head, beside me. I tried to figure out what she would advise me to do every time I was hesitant. It was not too hard, because I had heard pieces of advice from her for nearly twenty-two years.

Every day, my family and Africa told me I should stop thinking of Nora all the time. It had already been a year since she had abandoned me and her future, but I tried to make her unable to let go of life completely, by hanging on to our memories and shared dreams.

I started to feel too miserable as my mind started to race over the plans we had and would never actually make real, so I decided to attend the second part of the seminar.

I rode my bike as fast as I could through Broad Street, but it was raining so hard that I was soaked in less than a minute. I looked for shelter beneath the entrance to Blackwell library. It didn't look like the deluge was going to stop anytime soon. I gasped for air, and rode back into the storm again.

As I made my way to Worcester College, I thought about how I had always loved medicine. Back when people at school said they were going to be models or astronauts, I already knew I wanted to become a physician. I was fascinated by the human body. I could not quite get how my small pale body managed to do such good for me. And how Nora's tan slender body had surrendered to leukemia. However, despite my unconditional love for medicine, I usually wondered if I would have chosen it if it were easy. If it wasn't a challenge, if I didn't need to decipher anything, would I still have chosen to take care of people? That thought disturbed me.

I stepped into the classroom, and luckily Professor Richmond was still out for the break between the two periods. I took a sit next to Alex, who, quite unusually, was not sitting at the front row that afternoon.

Alex and I were not really friends. I tended to be cautious when deciding someone was not my friend, because I was aware my concept of friendship was probably stricter than other people's, due to the relationship I had had with Nora. But Alex and I were definitely not friends. We were compatible classmates. We were more comfortable with each other than we were with the rest of our peers; that was all. And we were rivals, too. There was a silent battle between us; we secretly counted the A-s on each other's academic record.

"I thought you were not coming today." she said, without lifting her eyes from her laptop screen.

"I wasn't, but I've been skipping classes too much this week. Besides, I was getting fossilized back at the library. So, what have I missed?"

"Nothing interesting." she said, still typing furiously. "We have another assignment. A research project."

There was no excitement whatsoever in her voice when she said that, but the word "research" had always been one of my turn-on switches.

"What about?"

"Whatever we want. Open research. Well, we have to choose among the subjects we've studied in these four-and-a-half years, which-hello!-includes everything there is to know about medicine in the whole wide world. Come on, just look at this book."

I ignored her sarcastic comment and said:

"I find it quite motivating."

"It is not bad" she said, finally looking at me. "It will just take me ages to decide what I am going to look into. What about you?"

I did not have to think much.

When I decided I wanted to become a doctor, I was determined to specialize in neurology. But ever since leukemia took my best friend from me and broke my heart into pieces, I just wanted to make sure no one would ever get killed by cancer again. I had to win every fight, and cancer had challenged me. So Oncology was my first option.

"Cancer."

After the seminar was over, I set out to meet Africa at the Covered Market. Both of us studied at Worcester College, but she did not have many classes on Fridays. She usually spent them at one of the small cafes in the market, painting or reading. She liked their authenticity. I liked their brownies.

I walked past the artisan cake shop and the flower stands, and found her drinking black coffee and reading "Shopie's world" in a corner cafeteria. She did not see me. She was lost in irrelevant philosophical thoughts, very typically of her.

"Hey." I said as I took a sit next no her. "How was your Friday?"

"Really quite well until Spinoza started to mess with my mind about whether I am or not a part of God." she frowned, and her blazing green eyes almost touched me. "Scary."

I laughed and ordered a cappuccino.

"What about yours, swot?" she teased me.

"You should know I skipped yet another seminar." I joked.

"Wow, revolution is getting to Med Studies!" she laughed.

"Well, I only missed half of it."

She rolled her eyes at me.

"And the part I attended was really fascinating, Africa."

"That sounds much more like you."

"I have to investigate something."

"What do you mean, something?"

"Whatever I want, it is an open research project."

"And you're going to look into Nora's cancer."

She knew me so well, I did not even need to nod. I had only known her for four years, since both of us started beings roommates at Worcester College. But she was prodigiously familiar. Her fiery red curly hair, her opaque green eyes. She was terrifyingly beautiful. She looked dangerously addictive. I knew I would have never approached her if we weren't roommates.

We started to get even closer when she got her driving license and started to drive us back home to Brighton every Friday, and to Oxford on Mondays. One Friday night of our first year in college I introduced her to Nora, and the three of us bonded as we took every existing ride at the Brighton Pier again and again, until we were so dizzy we couldn't take any more.

I felt free and happy at the pier. A bit as if I was in a vintage movie, in an old amusement park, eating popcorn and wearing a leather jacket. Since Nora died, the pier looked even more taken out from another time. From a blurry, blissful time.

"What time do you want to get going today?" she asked, drawing me back to reality.

"I have to go to the hospital now, but I reckon I'll be done by half past six."

"Okay. Brian told me they are having dinner at Food For Friends tonight."

Brian was her latest lover. She wasn't in love with him, she just thought we should have as many wild pleasures as possible while we were in our twenties and our skin was terse. That was one of the things she repeated most. She seemed to get a more accurate feeling of the time passing by than the rest of us did. She usually got poetical when we sat at the beach on summery Saturday nights, and said we were just like the waves that broke on the shore, and that we would be gone as fast as them.

Sometimes, she got angry at me for having such a dull life, but I didn't consider my life dull at all. My definition of a wild thrill was not exactly having sex with a bland and easily forgettable guy. When I pictured a passionate life, I thought of French actresses and Lung Transplants. Emergency surgery. Broken hearts in a smoky Parisian atmosphere. Stem cells. Sunsets in Sicily. Marie Curie.

Love triangles in Florence and courageous women were also the kind of things that came to Nora's mind when we talked about living crazily. I missed her too much when Africa criticized my lack of fervor.

"I don't quite feel like going out tonight, Africa." I said.

"Come on, you haven't seen anyone that isn't related to medicine for weeks, apart from me."

"I have seen my sister too."

"Lindsay's a doctor, Tess."

I laughed, apathetically.

"You could use some excitement."

There she went, talking about freaking excitement again. I considered it for a while. I could either stay home and have yet another insomniac night trying to get used to the idea that Nora would never be back, or have dinner out with Africa, Brian and his bland friends. I knew Africa would keep on insisting until I said yes. I didn't want to go out, but I didn't want to be alone either. Besides, if dinner turned out to be tedious, vegetarian pizza and a chocolate soufflé would surely make it worthwhile.

"Okay." I shrugged.

Africa looked astounded, and she finally let me go.

As I rode towards John Radcliffe Hospital, I looked at the orange sky and at the dreamy spires I was leaving behind. I thought Oxford was not a city in which forgetting was easy. It was just too nostalgically beautiful, like an old sepia photograph.

The hospital was antagonistic to that slow melancholy. Doctors run in every direction. I liked the frenetic activity in there, ongoing at every hour of the day. It made my heart pump faster. My sister was a second year Pediatrics resident, so I looked for her at the Children's hospital, which was in the Bellhouse-Drayson Ward. She wasn't studying at the Residents' Room, nor sleeping at the On-Call room, so I decided to peek through the cracks in every door. I was kneeling to look into another room when I heard a voice behind me.

"Are you looking for someone?"

An elderly nurse was staring at me from over her glasses, with a very skeptical look. I stood up.

"I... I am looking for Doctor Lindsay Blake."

I wished I had followed my sister's advice and worn my white coat and student accreditation, although I would've probably still drawn attention kneeling to look into patient rooms.

"Are you a patient?"

I almost laughed at her having mistaken me for a Pediatric patient, but I managed to hold myself back. I wondered what she would say if I answered yes, and reckoned it would be something like: "Perhaps you should be transferred to Psychiatry".

"No, I'm her sister, and I'm a fifth-year Medicine student. I usually meet her in the Residents' Room, but she wasn't there today."

Despite having clarified my situation, the nurse still looked at me very mistrustfully.

"Doctor Blake had a difficult case today. She should be at the Intensive Care Unit."

I smiled, relieved.

"Thank you ver-"

 "I don't think you'll be welcome there, young lady." she said, before I even finished the sentence. "Perhaps you should wait here."

I sat in the waiting room, frustrated. Still not being a doctor was one of the most difficult aspects of being a fifth-year Medicine student. I spent my life learning about diseases to their most insignificant details, but it wasn't of any use, because I had no accreditation. I didn't have proof of everything I knew, and that rendered my knowledge completely useless.

Lindsay understood that frustration perfectly well, because she had been in the same situation not that long before me. That's why she had offered I could help her out some afternoons. I only got to update charts and do research for her, but sometimes I visited patients with her, and that was enough to marvel me and keep me motivated. I wondered what her difficult case was about.

People that didn't know me very well usually thought I had decided to study Medicine because Lindsay did, but those who understood my way of thinking knew it had to do with my insatiable need to solve enigmas, to understand every phenomenon to its ultimate detail. We were nature's biggest mystery, and I needed to dismantle it.

I looked at my watch. It was already 5.30. The nurse that had kidnapped me was busy organizing pills on a trolley. I decided to push my luck and stormed to the exit. I walked past the Heart Centre and arrived at the entrance of the main building. I had never been at the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. As a fifth year medical student, I was supposed to learn about specialist clinical areas. However, the spectrum of specialties I could choose among was not as wide as I wished it would, and, even in the specialties I could work on, the things I couldn't do exceeded those I could help in.

I found a panel that said the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit was on the first floor. I raced to the lift. The feeling of missing my white coat grew bigger as I approached the unit. I couldn't see much across the semi-transparent glass of the doors. Definitely, I wouldn't be able to get in there. Resigned, I walked towards the waiting area.

I was thankful Nora hadn't agonized at John Radcliffe. I would have needed to transfer to another school if it had been that way. The Brighton General Hospital would always feel like a cemetery for me. I remembered the waiting rooms there. The smell of disease. Her trembling voice, whispering my name hours before the monitor flat-lined. The last words I said to her were "I'm sorry I failed you", but she couldn't hear me by then.

The noise of the door cracking open startled me. Lindsay bumped out and run to the lift.

"Hey! Wait!"

She saw me, and came out just before the doors closed. Her blond hair was sweaty and messy; her ponytail was stuck to her Intensive Care Unit gown. There were many wrinkles on her forehead, and her eyes were empty.

"Did someone die?"

"No, no... In the end, he didn't."

"Who's he? Tell me about it."

"It's Danny, he's eight, and... he has Hutchinson-Gilford's Syndrome."

I searched the medical database in my head. Hutchinson-Gilford sounded like wrinkles, and hair loss, and strokes... in children.

"Is that... Progeria?"

She nodded, and I could tell she was making a big effort not to cry.

"... Which means... he ages much faster than the rest of us?"

"Seven times faster. He had a heart attack."

She moved around and drummed her fingers against her head. I had never seen her so out of control, so lost.

"He had a heart attack, and he's eight, Tessa. I am very used to seeing children suffer from children-illnesses, and it's already a damn bummer, but seeing them agonize with illnesses that shouldn't affect them... It's... It's unnatural. It's cruel. Hutchinson-Gilford is the cruelest, Tess."

I should probably have asked many other things first, but there was only one question willing to come out of my mouth.

"Can I see him?"

She grabbed me by the arm and rushed to the changing room at the entrance to the Intensive Care Unit. I put on a gown, gloves and a mask, and we went in. The walls of the rooms were made of glass at the ICU, because patients had to be in sight at all times. Most of the patients were sedated and had tubes and machines breathing for them. It was silent and tranquil, but not peaceful at all. Two nurses walked up and down the hallway, vigilant, waiting for disaster to unfold at any second.

There were no family members, because the visiting hours were over. I had always hated that they were so short when Nora was in the hospital. Even almost being a doctor, it was still difficult to understand why you had to abandon your loved ones at their worst for their own good.

We arrived at Dannyz's room. He was asleep. He was bald, and his skin tone was a mixture of white and grey, with blue, dilated veins showing through. He had wrinkles all over his face, deep wrinkles, showing that time had cut into his organism in an atrocious, violent way. He looked like a severely ill sixty year old man.

"How can this happen?" I whispered, as I stepped closer to the boy.

Lindsay came beside me, hugged me, and gave me a medical explanation, even if she probably knew I wasn't asking for that.

"We all have a time bomb inside. The cells in our body replicate all the time, they give birth to new cells. Each time our cells divide, our DNA gets damaged: Some parts of it, which are called telomeres, get shorter. The shortening of telomeres is basically the reason we age. Danny's telomeres were shorter from the start, and they have shortened at a higher rate too, so he has aged in an extremely fast way."

Telomeres reminded me of a walk at the Brighton Pier. I asked Lindsay to explain to me why Nora's body couldn't get rid of the cancer cells, despite medication and radiation, and telomeres were definitely part of the conversation.

"But... hang on... aren't telomeres also related to cancer? You told me something about that when Nora got sick."

"Yes... Telomeres are the main power of cancer cells. Their telomeres don't get shorter, and that makes them immortal."

My heart started to beat faster. It was too much of a coincidence.

"So... the shortening of telomeres makes us die, but the cells whose telomeres don't shorten make us die too?"

"Yes... It's a paradox. Nobody has understood the time bomb completely yet."

My breathing accelerated, and my heart bombed so fast I was afraid I would have an infarct. That was it.

"I had the weirdest dream last night." I said.

"About Nora?" she asked.

She knew me so well, that she always followed my line of thought flawlessly, as if her mind and mine worked together. She was not disturbed by my apparently changing the subject so brusquely, because she knew it would be related.

"Yes. She told me she had achieved her goal to live forever... by dying."

"That's one positive way of looking at it."

"I would say. But the strangest thing of all was that she told me I had taught her how to do it.

"How?"

"When she was sick, she asked me to explain what was happening to her. So I told her how cancer cells work. I told her they are immortal cells. In the dream, she told me she became immortal when those immortal cells took hold of her body completely."

"Wow. How creepy."

"I know, it was a really spooky dream. And then, I told her she was wrong, and that she would only be immortal if her healthy cells where everlasting. And she got angry, because she understood I had lied to her that time at the hospital when I talked to her about cancer. She shouted at me one thing that has been spinning in my head for the whole day."

"What?"

"She told me I should change how that works, turn it around."

"You mean... make healthy cells immortal?"

I nodded.

"When Nora got sick, I promised myself my goal as a doctor would be to kill cancer cells, that is to say, to deprive them from a feature of their own: immortality. Why not do the opposite? Telomeres might be the key to achieving that!"

"Tessa, you're definitely crazy." she stated, and she laughed.

"Why?"

"Because that is not possible."

"Why are you so sure?"

"If it was possible, some Nobel winner would have accomplished it already."

"Nobel winners are not Nobel winners from birth, you know? They start by being average students."

"I wouldn't exactly define them as average."

"You know what I mean! Why not at least try?"

"I don't know why you're asking me, Tess. You know you're going to do it no matter what I say."

I laughed. She definitely understood my way of thinking.

"You're right, I am. Many people say dreams give us the answers we need. I think I had that dream because some switch in my mind turned on after connecting the many things I have read and thought, and now this... This patient, today... It's... it's a miracle."

I didn't really think it was a miracle. It miracles existed, Nora would still be alive. Nonetheless, if I believed in God, if he, or she, or it, hadn't disappointed me so badly, I would have definitely attributed what happened that day to a force from above. I would describe it as a sign from heaven.

What I was sure of was that I believed in science. In medicine. I had to work out the way to make my own miracle happen.

"You don't lose anything by trying."

"That's what I think. They assigned us a research project today, and I am going to work on this. I'll learn many things even if I don't get to the end."

"I suppose you realize you're going to have to work like mad."

"I have a feeling it will be worth it."

What did you think of this chapter? Let me know in the comments! I am entering the Wattys2016, so, if you enjoyed it, please don't forget to vote :)

To find quotes and pictures from the book, follow me on Instagram: seasidewhispers

To find news and updates, follow me on Twitter: swhisperswriter

You can contact me at: [email protected]