by Melody Grace
I hadn’t noticed until he said it, but he was right: there was a strange movement to the whole room, barely fast enough to grasp. Theo gave his name to the hostess, and we followed her to our table, crisp with white linens and silverware on the edge of the glass-enclosed room. The menus were bound in thick, cobalt leather, and our water sat in heavy cut glass. I paused, waiting until the server had whisked away, before leaning in. “Theo, this is too much,” I whispered, not wanting to offend him, but painfully aware of the people around us, all dressed up with elegant clutch purses holding slim credit cards and crisp folded notes.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Theo . . .”
He smiled at me across the table, looking so damn perfect it almost hurt to stare. His skin gleamed gold against the white of his button-down shirt, a world away from his usual sweaters and bundled coats. “You only live once,” he said, and it was too true to think about, so I smiled instead.
“Well, in that case . . . let’s just cut straight to dessert.”
“Dessert?” he echoed, surprised.
“Cake. Ice cream. Pie. A perfect balanced meal.” I grinned, and he laughed.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” He beckoned our waiter back, and traded the heavy menus for the slim dessert page instead, and soon the table in front of us was covered with so much sugar, my teeth itched. Gooey chocolate torte and whipped fruit sorbets, lighter than air, and frozen hot chocolate piled with marshmallows and cream. We tasted everything, feasting on sweetness as the room slowly spun, and the city pulsed below us like a living thing, lightning running through its veins.
“How are classes?” I asked, skittering my spoon at the bottom of the ice-cream glass, reaching for one more bite.
Theo shrugged. “Fine. My thesis chapters are due, but I’m behind.”
“Why? You were so excited in the fall.”
“It doesn’t seem so important anymore.”
“Of course it is,” I insisted. “You’ve worked too hard for this to just let it slip away. Think of all the work you’ve put in even to get this far. The hours, the papers. The loans,” I added with a wry grin.
He laughed at that. “I guess. It’s just . . . I’ve been thinking, what does it matter? Getting the degree or not, it won’t make a difference.” His voice faded. “It won’t change things, for you.”
“Nothing will,” I said firmly. “But this is you we’re talking about, and the rest of your life. I won’t let you throw that away.”
“It doesn’t feel right.” He looked away, gazing out at that distant dark horizon, and when he finally met my eyes again, I could see the sadness there, the bittersweet regret. “I had all these plans, dreams for us together. I thought . . . I thought you’d be here. That we’d have a future, a real one.”
My heart split open, and I held his hand tightly. “I want that too, more than you’ll ever know. But you can’t waste everything you’ve worked for, not now, or . . . after. I can’t stand that. I won’t let you.”
“Is that an order?” he teased lightly.
“Worse, a dying wish,” I shot back. “So don’t even think about breaking it.”
“Low blow,” he told me, and even though his words were still light, I could see the pain in his eyes.
“I know. But there have to be some perks to this, right?” I took another taste of torte, determined not to let tonight slip into sadness. “I learned the hard way from Hope—it’s impossible to argue with a dead girl. So, now it’s my turn. And I won’t let you use me as an excuse for anything, Theo. I’ll haunt you until the end of time if you do.”
We stayed in the restaurant until the spire had made another full rotation, the full breadth of the glittering world. Then we paid the check, and Theo ushered me back to the elevator, and it was empty, the doors sliding shut on us alone. We looked at each other for a long moment, the air between us suddenly electric. I saw it shimmer in his eyes, that pulse, that undeniable hunger, and then he came to me: hands on the wall on either side of my head, his body arched, barely touching as he finally kissed me the way I’d been needing all my life.
I lost myself to him that night. Not a blind surrender, but a gift—to feel that kind of love, in every heartbeat, every breath. We stumbled from the lobby to a cab, and back to his place, barely coming up for air. There was something frantic in our kisses that night, as if the clock was already ticking just above us, and we were stealing every moment, running out of precious time. Through the door and down the hall, we shed coats and scarves and clothing until the door slammed shut behind us and Theo paused, gripping me tight. “Wait,” he whispered to me. “Just wait.”
My blood boiled for him, curling deep inside, but he touched me so gently, it was like time stilled, and we were suspended in the golden hum. Lips on my bare neck, fingertips sliding softly down my spine. He peeled my dress from me an inch at a time, covering my skin with a hundred kisses until I was gasping and molten in his arms. I didn’t know if it would be the last time, so I held nothing back. No shame, no doubt. Just a love that seemed to make everything right, steady as the pulse ticking under the pale skin of his collarbone, the flinch of his stomach, the way our bodies fused together, searching in the dark for answers that would be gone by morning.
“You should do it.”
After, we lay on his bedroom floor, cocooned in a fort of blankets and pillows. My body still hummed, a live-wire, too hot to touch, so we were side by side, faces tilted together, his eyes dark pools in the night. “Do what?” I asked, drowsy and half-delirious still.
“Haunt me. I could get used to having you hanging around.”
I laughed. “A friendly ghost.”
“Very friendly . . .” Theo’s fingertips skimmed my bare stomach and I shuddered. “But seriously,” he said, his voice sleepy. “Do you ever think about it? If there’s anything . . . after.”
“Sometimes . . .” I sighed. “But it doesn’t make a difference to right now, so who knows?”
“You don’t wonder?”
“I did. I do,” I admitted. “Maybe I’ll move on, somehow, or maybe it really is the end. Hope put it on her list, you know,” I added softly. “The final entry says, Begin again.”
“That’s nice.”
I smiled. “She used to say it couldn’t all just be for nothing. She didn’t believe much in anything, but she believed in that.” I trailed off. “But I won’t ever know until it’s too late, so . . . you can go crazy thinking like that. You just need to focus on today. Tonight.”
Theo fell silent again. I pressed my palm to his heart, feeling it beat.
“Tell me about this surgery.”
I sat up so fast the world tilted. “Don’t.”
“Come on, Claire, I just want to know.” Theo sat as well, and our fort came tumbling down around us. “Tell me why you don’t want to do it. Your mom said it might be the answer. I just need to understand.”
I wanted to bolt. Just like that, something had slammed between us—the distance between his eager curiosity and my long years of disappointment. But he didn’t know; how could he unless I spelled it out for him?
There were no miracles in these Hail Mary prayers, only desperate, dangerous hope.
“It’s a clinical trial,” I said, twisting to face him. “Do you know what that means?”
“They’re testing it.”
“It means we’re guinea pigs,” I told him, heavy in my chest. “Someone, somewhere in a lab came up with a theory. They ran the simulations, tested all the chemicals in a tube, maybe even fed it to a few hundred rats to see if it killed them right away or not. And enough of those little critters survived long enough that they’re trying it on humans now, too. Pumping us full of whatever drugs they think are fierce enough to destroy the cancer, and just praying they don’t kill us instead.”
“But they work sometimes, don’t they?” There was naked hope on his face, so bright it seemed to fill the room. “I mean that’s how medicine evolves. Something doesn�
�t work, and then it does.”
“In a dozen years, maybe. But we’re not there yet. I would die on the table, Theo,” I told him, trying to make him see. “It’s not even fifty-fifty, the odds of this thing yet. It’s still so early, and you can never tell . . .” I bit back my frustrations. “I have a little time left, on my terms, not another shot in the dark that could put me in the grave. I’ve made my choice now.”
Theo looked stubborn. “So you’d rather die for sure in a few months than take the risk to have years, maybe more?”
I scrambled up. “You don’t get to judge me. This isn’t your life on the line.”
“I’m not judging, Claire. I’m just trying to understand.”
“Understand that I’ve spent the last five years wrestling with this, OK?” I had to reach for the chair to steady myself as the room dipped and spun. I tried to pull my dress back on, but it was twisted and tangled in a clump of silk. I tugged at it, frustrated. “I’ve been through this too many times. Coming so close, and getting my hopes up, then having it all pulled away. I can’t do it again. I just can’t. I don’t have the time!”
“Shh, Claire, it’s OK. I’m sorry.” Theo was on his feet, pulling me close. “I’m sorry.”
I let him hold me, the wild fury in my chest clawing and raw. I had to fight so hard to keep it at bay, but there it was, rearing up in an instant. The unfairness of it all. He was asking the impossible. He wanted the best for me, I knew, but this was torture of a different kind. It brought those whispers back, taunting in my mind with their tempting hum. What if, what if?
“Let’s go back to sleep,” he said, trying to tug me towards the bed, but I shook my head. I was too wide-awake to dream tonight, and I knew there was worse to come.
“I need to get back. I’ll be passed out all day tomorrow, and I’d rather be in my own bed.” I dressed quickly, feeling his eyes on me, and trying to stay steady despite the giddy spin. I didn’t have long until the nausea gripped me completely, and I couldn’t let him see me like that: broken and clinging to cracked porcelain.
“I’ll walk you.”
“It’s OK, I need to take a cab.”
“So I’ll ride with you,” Theo said stubbornly.
“No, Theo, it’s OK.”
I ordered a car and bundled up tightly, arming myself against the cold, and the look of disappointment in his eyes. Coat and scarf, shoes and mittens, but it still wasn’t enough to stop my stomach swimming, and the pain roaring, a muffled thunder in my brain. My phone buzzed with a text. The car was already downstairs. He followed me down the hall, and stood there in the doorway, watching as I braced myself for the outside world.
“Thank you for dinner,” I said, looking away. I didn’t want to hurt him, but he couldn’t understand. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Claire, wait.” His fingertips caught mine, tugging me back, and I had no choice but to look at him again—the perfect face that still ripped me open, even now. “I know you’ve made your mind up,” he said, imploring. “But if there’s even a chance . . .” Theo caught his breath, looking down to where his fingers intertwined with mine. “I know it’s selfish, but just think about it, please. For me.”
“Don’t ask me that.” I pulled away. “You don’t understand. Ask me anything but that.”
I took the stairs too fast, in heels too high. The world was still off-kilter, and when I stepped out, there was nothing but air.
“Claire!”
I didn’t fall far, a few steps maybe, crumpling painfully into the concrete as I grabbed for the rail, but my head hit hard, and my knees stung, and the world dipped again, turned on its end as the pain ricocheted through me, hot shards slicing through my skull.
“Claire, are you OK?” I fought for balance. Theo was holding me now, cradling my face, stricken. “Claire? Say something!”
The nausea rose up and it was all I could do to hold it back, gasping on the dirty ground. I shook with rage and sickness and fear, God, that ice-cold terror stuttering through my limbs. I didn’t want him to see me like this, but it was no use. I was losing this battle, I could feel it, helpless now against my traitorous body, no matter how hard I tried.
My tumor was done waiting. It was claiming me as conquest, already marching to a victory drum.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Theo said, and I gripped his arm tightly.
“No, please,” I managed to beg through the tremors. “I’ll be OK. I just need a minute.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
“No!” My sob ripped the hallway apart. “There’s a car outside,” I gasped, steadying now. “It can take me home. I’ll be fine, this happens all the time.”
But Theo just set his jaw in a determined stare. “Wait here, don’t move an inch.” He took the stairs two at a time back up to the apartment, and it was barely ten seconds before he bound back down, half in his coat, with keys in his hand. “Put your arms around my neck,” he ordered, and I didn’t have the energy left to protest. He lifted me like nothing, carrying me carefully down the rest of the staircase. Outside, a car was idling on the curb, and he deposited me gently in the backseat before climbing in beside me. I sank against him, drained. I heard his voice from far away, talking to the driver, but the words didn’t sink in, and it wasn’t until the lights flashed outside and a siren wailed, too close, that I realized: he wasn’t taking me home.
Chapter Thirty
Another night in the emergency room. Another narrow hospital bed. My parents met us there and we all waited for another round of tests that wouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Doctor Benson was off that night; a nurse was trying to reach him, so we sat, together, in a tense silence broken only by distant sirens and the wail of a drunk, fighting just outside.
“I’ll go get some coffee,” my dad said at last, rising. “Sue?”
Mom nodded. “It’ll probably be a long night. You don’t need to stay,” she told Theo gently. “These things can take a while.”
“Thank you,” he said, so polite. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
They went in search of the cafeteria, and Theo climbed up onto the bed with me, holding me to him as the drugs slipped through my veins. I felt lifeless, a faded carbon copy of myself, but I was past shame now. That had gone the way of dinner, wretching violently into the bathroom stall as he held back my hair and murmured soothingly until I was crumpled and utterly used up. He’d helped clean me with damp paper towels, dressed me in a paper-thin robe, and by the time my parents burst anxiously through the doors, I was already hooked up to an IV machine with a blissful cocktail snaking into my soul.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered into his chest. I was holding onto him for dear life, and hating myself for it with every breath. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“Shh.” He stroked my hair gently. “What’s a little vomit between friends?”
I tried to laugh, but it stuck in my throat. This is what I’d become: the invalid, the needy, wretched girl. It seemed like only yesterday I’d cycled the autumn-blaze city for hours: my limbs strong and burning, my lungs gulping in a bracing chill. I’d been invincible, and I hadn’t even realized.
I’d tasted the best of it, and now there was nothing but the slow crawl to the end.
“Please,” I said again, tears stinging. “You can’t stay. You don’t know how bad it’ll get.”
“Then I’ll find out.” Theo didn’t hesitate, but why would he? He hadn’t seen it up close the way I did with Hope, how even watching from the sidelines ripped you apart, tearing tiny pieces from your heart with every desperate breath. All that was ahead of us now, and I couldn’t save him from it, even if I tried.
They say that despair is a deadly, treacherous thing. Patients who give up in their hearts see their bodies fail long before the fighters; the ones resolved to endure somehow make it out, through sheer force of will alone. Every specialist told us the mind-body link is a curious thing, and sometimes there were
no explanations for the way determination makes all the difference in the world. But sometimes I wondered if hope was more dangerous by far. Hope that slipped unbidden into the back of my mind, tempting me with possibilities I knew were out of reach. Ever-decreasing odds, and wild-card draws. If one in five make it, maybe I could be that one . . .
Lying there in Theo’s arms as the city slowly woke from its slumber outside the windows, I felt hope start whispering again, that desperate, reckless plea. Maybe I didn’t have to go like this. Maybe, against all odds, there was another way.
What if? What if? What if?
Doctor Benson arrived with the dawn, his shirt buttoned up wrong and his white coat crumpled. “I’m sorry to drag you in,” I said quietly, wondering about the family he’d left behind to rush here this icy morning, but he just smiled and polished his glasses before perching them back on his nose to check my charts.
“It’s fine. Now, what happened here?”
“She fell and hit her head,” Theo answered for me.
“Barely,” I added quickly. “Just a tap.”
The doctor gave me a look, unconvinced, and checked through the tiny printed numbers and digital films. “It looks like there’s no contusions or bruising. But I thought we talked about taking it easy,” he said. “At this stage, you need to be reducing all stress from your daily routine. Any exertion is only going to push your body to breaking point. Which is clearly what happened tonight.”
“Claire.” My mother’s voice was full of reproach.
“I’m being careful,” I insisted, my jaw set. “I’ve cut my hours, I sleep half the day, I barely walk anywhere anymore. You can’t expect me to just give up. Not yet.”
Benson softened. “I’m not saying that. I just want you to understand your limitations are changing. Things that were manageable even a week ago may no longer be wise, given the rate of your tumor’s growth. You need to take this seriously, Claire.”
“Because I’ve been acting like dying is such a joke.”