by Melody Grace
Silence hissed through the room, and I felt even Theo flinch beside me. I caught my breath. “I’m sorry,” I said, to him, and my parents, and even the doctor too: all of them looking at me with such concern on their tired faces. All of them here with me, despite the costs. “I’m trying, I really am. It’s just hard, carving my life down into a smaller and smaller box.”
“I know, sweetheart,” my mom said, moving to take my free hand. “But we’ve talked about this. You always knew this day would come.”
But there was a world of difference between words and this—the reality of my failing body, the too-quick decay of my poisoned mind. It was coming, the car crash in the distance, too fast to swerve away. I could only watch it rear up in front of me, and brace for impact as best I could.
Unless . . .
“What about the trial?”
My voice slipped out before I could think. I felt every head in the room snap towards me, but I kept my gaze fixed on Doctor Benson, there at the foot of the bed. He looked back at me, measured. “I thought you’d decided against any more treatment.”
“I have. I did. But . . .” I swallowed. “Are you still running it?”
He dipped his head slightly. “We’re still active, yes.”
“So you haven’t killed everyone yet.”
Benson allowed a smile. “No. In fact, we’re seeing some improvements. The last test group went remarkably well.”
“How well?” My mom couldn’t keep her questions back; she leaned forward, her face so naked in the early fluorescent lights. “If you’re seeing improvements already, that’s good, right?”
“As I said, this is a very small test group. It’s almost impossible to draw conclusions yet.” Doctor Benson cut her off. “We have seen another three recent cases that showed a significant reduction in their masses. Still, the risks haven’t changed,” he added, warning. “This is an incredibly experimental treatment.”
“But you’re hopeful about the results?” she pressed.
“We’re learning a lot,” he answered, still so measured. “I thought Claire was clear about her wishes.”
“I am,” I answered in a small voice, but I didn’t feel so clear anymore. “But if, if,” I emphasized, looking to mom, “I wanted to be a part of the trial, am I still a candidate?”
He paused, reluctant. “You’re on the outer limits of our test profile. And given the rapid rate of acceleration, we would need to move ahead immediately.”
My heart clenched. “Now?”
“Within days.” He nodded. “Otherwise your tumor will be too advanced to even try. But as I said, the risks involved are significant. I can’t in good conscience enroll you, not unless you’re completely committed to this course of action.”
There was silence again, weighing in the tiny room.
“Thank you.” My father moved forward then, and shook his hand. “We appreciate you coming out.”
“Take care,” Benson told me. “And remember, no stressors of any kind. Environmental or emotional,” he added, as if he could see the tension that was shimmering between me and Theo.
“I know,” I exhaled in defeat. “I’ll do my best.”
We took a cab to their apartment through the early-morning city, and I collapsed, exhausted, into bed without protest. I could hear the low murmurs from outside my bedroom door, my parents’ voices and Theo’s too, until I drifted to sleep and woke in the later-afternoon twilight, the day already gone.
One more day down.
I shivered, even wrapped up in feather-soft pajamas and a robe. It was all slipping away too fast; I couldn’t keep my icy panic at bay. I’d barely even gotten started living, and although I knew I’d had more of a chance than most, it still felt like a cruel joke to rip this world away from me so soon.
How could I leave Theo now?
A sob slipped from my throat as I lay there, holding my pillows tight. I wanted so much more than this, wanted it with a fierce rage that gripped me from the inside out. I thought I would be ready by now, but I didn’t bet on him, and God, it hurt too much to bear. The loss rolled through me, and the tears came again, stinging with futility, but still I cried. I cried for the years I’d spent not knowing him, and the years he’d spend without me, long after I was gone. I cried for the empty space I’d leave at my mother’s table, and my father’s stoic tears. I cried for Hope, and Lucy, too, and every passing face on those endless cancer wards: too-short lives fading now in photographs in sad, gilded frames. The space in the world they used to be, God, such a waste of every breaking heart.
This was the side of life we never mentioned; these were the silent griefs we kept hidden, to keep from falling apart. Because I loved him, and it made no difference. Death would take everything, strip me bare of every moment, just like the others, until I was only a memory to them all, a dying flower on a long-buried grave.
The bedroom door creaked open behind me, but I couldn’t stop my sobs. Weight pressed into the mattress, and then familiar arms came around me, strong and safe. I didn’t have to look to see. My body knew him by heart.
He’d stayed.
Theo didn’t say a word that evening, he just held me through the storm. And soon enough, my body tired of weeping, my breath steadied, the grief slipped away. We lay there together as the skies darkened, velvet pricked with stars. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, turning to face him at last. His eyes were shadowed in the darkness, but we were so close, my lips moved against his.
“Don’t be.”
We breathed together, a shivering thread between us, suspended in the night.
“If I could take it back . . .” My heart ached. Not for me, though. No, I would trade every gorgeous moment with him in a second if it could save him the pain ahead. But Theo cradled my face softly, and when his lips found mine, it was as much as a confession as a kiss.
“I wouldn’t. Not for anything. I love you, Claire, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
Love.
The word whispered around us, a soft tattoo on my heart. I’d waited a lifetime to feel this, and even though it was already slipping away, it still shone bright enough to split the night in two.
This was all I wanted, and it would have to be enough.
I pressed my lips to his, damp with tears, and tasted what was left of our forever.
Chapter Thirty-One
What would you do for love?
It’s easy to rattle off the hypotheticals, safe scenarios on a distant page. I’d die for you. I’d kill for you. Run into a burning building. Throw myself in front of a moving car. It seems incredible, but the truth is, people do it every day. For all our capacity for fear and hate and violence, we have goodness in us, too. Self-sacrifice and devotion, without a second thought. My mother, dragging the both of us headlong through trials and testing, surgeries and prayer, never pausing for a moment, never giving up the fight. Kelsey’s kindness, that careful watching eye. Theo, crouched there beside me in a bathroom stall, carrying me down the stairs, holding me through the darkness that night as my bitter heart broke in two.
Love made miracles possible every single day, but it would take more than a miracle to save me now.
The next morning, I left Theo sleeping, sprawled and peaceful on my unmade bed. Part of me wanted to bind myself tight to him, spend every last moment soaking up the brightness of his sleepy morning smile, but I needed space to think, and whenever I was with him, I couldn’t see straight: he was always the only thing in view.
I quietly pulled on a pair of jeans and thick winter socks, found a T-shirt and sweater, and closed the door gently behind me. Dad was drinking coffee by the window. He looked up, surprised, and then concerned. “It’s OK,” I said quickly. “I can still get out of bed.”
“I know.” He relaxed. “Sorry. I guess we’re all on edge.”
“Is this what it’s going to be like now?” I asked sadly. “You guys flinch if I even try to leave the apartment?”
He gave me a rueful
look. “We can’t help it. Your mother would have bundled you back to Texas weeks ago if she had the choice.”
“Wrapped me up in cotton wool and put a bolt on my bedroom door?”
He smiled. “Something like that.” He glanced past me, to the bedroom. “Your gentleman friend stayed all night then.”
“Dad!” I couldn’t help laughing, he looked so uncomfortable. “Nothing happened. But I’m surprised you let him.”
“You and me both. But your mother said he would be a comfort to you.”
A comfort, and a prompt.
“I know what she wants,” I said softly. “She wants me to do the surgery. She thinks having him here will make me choose.”
“And what about you?” he asked, worry lines deep on his face. “What is it you want?”
I used to be sure, but nothing was simple anymore. All those resolutions I made were before Theo, before I knew what it was like to want an eternity so badly it broke my heart to think of the end.
“That’s what I need to figure out.”
I took a cab to the city. Dad didn’t want to let me go alone, but I had my cellphone, and I needed the space. Everything they wanted was pressing down on me—him, Mom, Theo, and all their unspoken fears. I needed to step out from under that weight if I was ever going to get some clarity for the dozens of contradictions swirling in my mind. So I went to a place I remembered from the fall, a hidden corner of the city I’d discovered by accident, months ago now. Tucked away behind the old, grand walls of the Boston Public Library buildings I’d found a small courtyard, a square footprint of calm guarded from the rest of the chaotic city streets. Today, it was almost empty, the visitors preferring the warmth of the café inside, so I was left alone on a wrought iron chair beside the frozen fountain pool, watching the sparrows chase after a stray scatter of pastry crumbs on the ground.
I always liked sparrows best. Hope said I needed a better Patronus—a soaring eagle, or a strong, vicious hawk, but there was something brave about their delicate fluttering: quietly resilient, even for their tiny size. The door from inside suddenly opened, and a toddler came barreling out—spiral-curled, with pink cheeks almost hidden beneath her bright red hat. The birds flew up as she lunged for them, gurgling with laughter, and a split-second later, a woman followed.
“Gentle, Eloise, don’t scare them!” She was young, in her thirties, maybe, in boots and a puffed up jacket. “Sorry,” she said, noticing me. “They’re her new favorite thing. Ducks, too. All she wants to do is go feed them.”
“It’s OK.” I smiled. The woman took a seat, pulling snacks from her bag, and called the girl back over. A trio of teenagers hustled out and sprawled at a table, dangling book bags and coffee cups as they gossiped and huddled around their glowing cellphone screens.
Life went on.
My breath shivered in the cold, icy air and I fought the sting of tears. Life went on. My death would barely make a ripple on the surface of the world. These people here would never even notice. My parents would mourn, and Theo, too, but in months and years, the traces of me would slowly fade away. Tessa would find another roommate, and strike out on the water with her crew every morning, barely thinking of the girl she used to know. Another group would spin behind the counter at Wired, a different crowd of students lining daily for their coffee fix; someone else would fill my studio with their clutter, and even my paintings would gather dust in storage somewhere, fading in the summer afternoon light.
I would be gone.
Unless . . .
I felt it flutter in my chest, that seductive hope, dancing just out of reach. The surgery. The clinical trial. I knew the data and the facts and all the slim, reckless odds, but my heart couldn’t help it. It wanted to believe. The same desperate instinct that had driven me here, to this glorious blank slate of a city, craving more, everything, now, was awake all over again, grasping for that light in the distance, demanding just a little more time.
Was this how Hope had felt? Clinging to life so hard as her body stuttered and stumbled, watching the wires and tubes multiply to a halo, snaking oxygen around her head. I always wondered why she fought so hard at the end, when they’d exhausted every option, and there was nothing left but pain. Well, now I knew the truth. Pain was living, at least. Pain was one more moment on this endless earth. And pain was all that was left ahead of me now. A slow death, watching my parents try to keep it together, and Theo be brave, for my sake. Feeling my organs fail, and the tumor—that fucking tumor—take a victory lap inside my brain. I already felt it dancing; it had been waiting so long for this day to come, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Nothing, except roll the dice.
The choice clawed at me, splitting my chest in two. One bad month, or a chance at a future. You’d think it would be simple, but you don’t understand the odds. If I got on that table tomorrow, had the doctor slice me open and pump chemicals into my brain, I might not ever wake up again, and that one bad month I still had left would just be gone.
How much time could I cling to? How much loving was still left for me to do?
I wasn’t ready to die, but I knew now, I wouldn’t ever be. I’d been running from the truth of it for so long, as if someday, somehow, I would wake up in the morning and be at peace with my end. And maybe I would have—back in Texas, where all I had to lose was safe, and contained, well-worn footsteps I’d been traipsing my entire life. But here? The bright city was alive around me, and somewhere back across the bridge, a boy waited for me in a sunlit bedroom with a love that brought me to my knees. The fire in my heart was raging, and now I knew I wouldn’t ever stop wanting more.
But how much did I want it? How much of my life would I trade for a chance at forever with him?
What would you do for love?
I sat in the courtyard all afternoon, watching kids melt down in fevered tantrums, old women chat, and harried library staff steal a cigarette break alone. I wanted to stay suspended forever, the world kept at bay outside the old crumbling walls, but my phone buzzed with worried texts, and I knew I couldn’t hide there for long. I called a car and headed back to the apartment and found them all waiting there for me: Mom fussing with something in the kitchen, Dad working on his laptop, and Theo spread on the couch with his reading lists and papers, marking with a red pen nibbled between his lips like nothing was wrong.
My heart swelled for them and broke, all at once. This was my family, the love I was lucky enough to find in this world, and leaving them would be agony, either way, in the end.
“Claire.” Theo looked up, and a smile spread across his face. Automatic, the way my senses leapt whenever he walked into the room. “Hey, how was your afternoon?”
“Good.” I slowly peeled off my scarf, then stopped, the knit stripes hanging in my hand. “I had some time to think.”
My mom stopped her clattering in the kitchen. My dad quietly folded his laptop shut. I felt their eyes on me, but Theo was the only one I could look at: the man who had strolled into the café a hundred days ago, and turned what was left of my bitter-sweet world upside down. I wasn’t looking for a guy to walk through the door and change my life that day. I thought I wasn’t that kind of girl at all. But here I was, forever changed. And love, only love, mattered in the end.
“I thought about the surgery,” I said softly. “I want to do it. I can’t just give up, not now. I have to try.”
For us.
I didn’t finish, but he knew. I saw his expression shift—bloom wide open—as he realized the choice I’d made, because of him.
“Claire—”
His voice was lost under my mom’s shriek, and then she was hugging me, already gulping with noisy sobs. “Thank you, sweetheart. Oh God, thank you. I know it’s a risk, but you’ll make it. I can feel it, this is going to work, it’s all going to be OK.”
Dad stood there, guarded. “Are you sure? You heard what Doctor Benson said. You need to be committed, a hundred percent.” He looked so protective, but I saw it
there too: that flicker of longing, so close you could almost touch.
“I’m sure,” I nodded, and then he was holding me too, the both of them sandwiching me tight with iron-clad relief. Our last, desperate chance. I knew they’d prayed for it even more than me, but even smothered with their hope, I couldn’t stop from glancing over their reaching arms to where Theo still sat, silently watching us.
He didn’t speak, he didn’t have to. I could see it all in the silent reflection of his stare. I curled a private smile, and he smiled back, bright enough to set the world on fire. I felt it blazing, and I knew I would never take it back. Yes, I’d roll the dice on forever, and risk everything for that smile—not just what we’d shared, but for the chance of a thousand more to come.
I wasn’t done loving him, not ever. Not yet.
Chapter Thirty-Two
So here I am. At the end of my story, or the beginning; I still don’t know just yet. It feels like I’ve had a lifetime waiting to start over again, but the time slips by so fast. I’ve been lucky, I know. Most tumor patients barely see twelve months, and I’ve had five stolen years, but those years have passed in a heartbeat, and now they’re already gone. One minute I’m a girl, skidding downstairs for an afternoon snack, and the next, I’m barely a woman, waiting in a hospital gown as they hook me up to the monitors and prepare to do battle one last, brave time.
Tick, tick, tick.
The surgeons move fast, just like Doctor Benson said they would. They whisk me through the paperwork and mandatory counseling in the space of a single afternoon and check me into a small, neat room on the third floor of the surgical wing, with windows overlooking a bleak, busy intersection and a square patch of dark, starlit sky. Mom is fussing as usual now, unpacking my pajamas and sweatpants in the metal dresser, while Dad introduces us to the nurses and brings armfuls of fresh flowers from the gift shop downstairs, “just to brighten the place up.” It’s sheer blinding optimism, preparing for the weeks I’ll spend in recovery here, when the surgery itself still looms, too dangerous to face, but I let them plan and hope for the best while Theo sits, still silent beside me, holding my hand tight.