All Dolled Up!

Charlotte’s POV

The past few weeks were some of the best weeks of my life. Could I truly say that they were the happiest moments of my entire life? Perhaps there was a time in my childhood or some other memory I was forgetting that was even better, but I couldn’t recall those clearly anymore. Certainly, since I had started this new life of mine in this new body, it was the happiest I’d ever felt.

And this happiness only grew as the months passed - because now, the nights were beginning to outlast the days. I was able to see off Charlie before he went to work, and soon, I would even be able to be there for him when he came back.

The only thorn in this garden of roses was the time he had gotten sick. I tried not to worry myself too much about that, because I knew that it would worry him in turn, but thankfully he had made a full recovery.

It might have been silly, but the fact that it was a lung disease awakened memories within me - and they were not very pleasant. Memories of coughing nonstop, and of streaks of blood being found on my hands after a particularly long fit. Even now, when it was apparent that disease could not hurt me, I shuddered at those memories.

“Charlotte, there’s something I wanted to tell you,” Charlie said one day.

I looked up at him, and felt my own smile falter. He was not angry, or upset, but there was something… off about his facial expression. As if something had happened that was greatly troubling him. He had waited by the side of my case for over half an hour just so he could tell me as soon as I awakened, so it was clearly something urgent.

“What is it, Charlie?” I asked him.

“There’s uh, I don’t know how else to say this, but there’s bad news,” Charlie said.

What could it be? What came to my mind instantly was that either something had happened to his family, or that he realized he didn’t love me. The second one was likely just my mind overreacting, but the first one was something that was an actual possibility. “I uh, there were some things that weren’t completely right in my blood tests back when I went to the ER, and I was asked to just follow up with someone outpatient regarding them. They thought that they would go back to normal soon enough, but they didn’t. They even got some more blood tests done, and it turns out that it looks like I have leuk - I mean, I have a kind of blood cancer, Charlotte.”

My heart nearly froze in its chest. This was not something that I’d been expecting, but it was far worse than either of those two things that I had thought about. “Charlie, are you…” my voice cracked as I tried to say it. A word I didn’t even want to think about. “...dying?”

He ruffled my hair. “I… let me not bog you down with technical details, but it’s spread to other parts of my body. Like my spleen and lymph nodes in other places. The doctors didn’t say that it was completely hopeless, but they can’t say anything definitive about whether a cure would be possible or not yet.”

He then began to describe what the treatment would be. I don’t think I would’ve understood most of it even if I was calm, but at the moment it felt like the world was collapsing around me and so it all went in one ear and out the other.

“That sounds… barbaric,” I told him when he had finished repeating it a third time for my benefit. From what I understood, they were going to completely kill the organs that made cells for the blood!

“Well, it’s not pleasant, I can tell you that,” he said. “But, there’s little other options. There are some clinical trials as well, but, I don’t know if I want to go for something untested when I have another route available to me. Charlotte, I don’t want to leave you but - for them to give this to me, not only will I be very sick, but they’ll have to keep me in the hospital. And it won’t just be overnight this time, I have to be there while they monitor what my blood is like, and that can take weeks.”

“Take me with you then,” I said without hesitation. He looked quite surprised, because I had refused to let him take me out in my lifeless doll form before. I had told him multiple times that I was not some toy to be bandied about like that, and that he did not fully understand how it felt to be trapped inside your body, able to hear and see everything, but not being able to move.

“Charlotte, won’t that meant that-”

“-that I’ll be a statue, yes,” I told him. “And I would despise every second of it. But I would hate it if something were to happen to you and that I couldn’t be with you in your final moments even more, Charlie. Please take me with you, keep me by your bedside at all times.”

“Charlotte, even then, I don’t think that can work,” he said. “I mean, they likely will not let me keep a life-sized doll near my hospital bed. And what if something happens to you when I’m away getting treatment or something? What if you’re stolen, or… any number of things that can happen. And Charlotte, it would be absolute agony for you, you wouldn’t be able to move for several weeks. I don’t think that you really want that.”

Now, tears began to coat my face. “I don’t - but I also don’t know what else to do.”

“I’ll call you every single night, I promise,” Charlie said as he wiped away my tears. He had done so many times before, but this was the first time I had seen his eyes moistened ever so slightly as well. That only brought another flood from my own. “And I’ll let you know how I’m doing.”

“This… just had to happen now? When things were so good between us, and it’s winter, when we would’ve had more time to spend with each other…”

“I know,” Charlie said with a faint smile. “I must have the worst luck in the universe - is what I would say, but then again, we met entirely through luck, didn’t we, Charlotte?” He then took a deep breath. “Charlotte, this isn’t a death sentence, at least not yet. I mean, I am fairly young so I certainly have a better chance than say, someone who’s eighty of getting through this.”

Something he had said earlier snaked its way into the forefront of my mind. “Didn’t you say that things sometimes didn’t make sense… that an old lady could be doing fine while someone younger…” I didn’t finish that sentence.

“Yeah, sometimes diseases don’t make sense,” Charlie said. “But, life doesn’t always make sense either, Charlotte. But I’m still so grateful for it.” He smiled as he looked down at me and I understood what he was saying. We still hadn’t figured out how my curse worked, or why it worked like this, but he was thankful nonetheless, because without it, he wouldn’t have been able to meet me.

“When are you leaving?” I asked him.

“If things work out, next Monday,” I told her.

“I’ll try to keep the house in one piece for you,” I told him.

“Hey - no need to worry about that right now,” I told her. “And like I said, I’ll be back, you know. I just am not sure when right now.”

I fidgeted. There were so many things that I felt like I wanted to say, but at the same time I couldn’t get them out. “I love you.”

It was the only thing that made sense.

“I love you too, Charlotte,” Charlie said.

“Did you let your family know?”

“Oh, them…” he said, suddenly chuckling. “I haven’t even considered how to tell them, I was so preoccupied with telling you. Yeah, they’re going to throw a real fit about this.”

I hugged him. “Please come back to me Charlie.”

“I promise I will,” he said. “After all, I haven’t fulfilled my other promise yet, have I? I haven’t turned you back into a woman yet, have I?”

“I would have no qualms about staying as I am right now, if only I could be with you until your ripe old age, and if you could live a full life,” I told him.

“There’s no need to worry about that,” Charlie said. “One day, once your curse is broken, we’ll both leave this place, together, arm in arm. There’s an entire world for us to explore together out there, Charlotte, after all.”