by Melody Grace
“All settled in?” Doctor Benson arrives in the doorway, checking one last round of charts before his day is done. “Good, good. We’ve got you scheduled first thing in the morning, so no more food tonight, I’m afraid, and let’s keep liquids to a minimum, too.”
I nod. I know the drill.
“Any more questions? Concerns?” he checks again, still watching me warily as if he doesn’t believe the dozen forms I’ve signed of my own free will. “It’s not too late for second thoughts.”
“Anyone would think you didn’t want me here.” I try a joke that falls flat through the tension in the room. “Worried my tumor is going to have you beat?”
Benson smiles. “I’d like to think I’m up to the job,” he says, and flips my charts closed. “But this is your decision, Claire. I don’t want you thinking for a moment that it’s not your choice.”
Choice. The word seems laughable. As if any of the last five years have been my call. I’ve been on the run, forced into a defensive crouch, sent spinning off course by every new symptom until I’m exhausted just trying to keep up. But this surgery, this one last shot, this is finally a choice of my own.
“I’m in,” I say, determined, and Theo’s hand tightens at my side.
“Alright then.” He nods and looks around the room. “I’ll see you all bright and early. Try and get some sleep,” he adds to me. “It’s going to be a long surgery, and you’ll need your strength.”
“You too,” I tell him, and he smiles.
“Good night.”
He retreats into the hallway, and my mom plumps my pillow again. “Do you need anything else, sweetheart? I can ask the nurses again about a trundle bed. I’m sure they’ll let us stay.”
“No, it’s fine,” I reassure her. “You guys need to rest, too. I’ll see you in the morning.” Mom looks like she’s going to object again, but my dad places a hand on her shoulder, and she swallows back her words.
“Sleep tight,” Dad says instead, and then they reluctantly leave us, their heads bent together as they disappear down the hall.
It’s just Theo left, and me.
“Do you want the light off?”
I nod, and he hits the switch, unraveling the blinds with a rattle to hide the outside world. “Come here,” I say, patting the bed beside me. He climbs up and curls one arm around my shoulders, glancing cautiously to the door.
“I thought they said no visitors after hours.”
“They don’t mind, not tonight, at least. Besides, what’s the worst they can do—take away my ice chips?”
I feel the rumble of his laugh, and I sink deeper into his embrace. His breath is steady, an easy, ebbing tide, and slowly, I forget the orderlies chatting down the hall and the surgery room waiting, instruments soon to be lined up neatly on a gleaming metal tray. I hold him and think of a tomorrow after that: watching movies here together, sneaking jello while my incisions heal. Back at my apartment for the springtime, walking to work under cherry-blossom skies and staying up late to watch the rising moon. The dream is so seductive, it already has a hold on me. Close, so close my mind refuses to think of it any other way.
This can’t be the end.
I try to sleep, but my mind ticks over, too loud, and it’s almost midnight when Theo turns to kiss my forehead. “Are you scared?” he asks softly.
I nod. “I don’t want to leave them. They’ll fall apart without me.”
“I’ll look out for them, if . . .” Theo pauses. Even he can’t say it. “I’ll make sure they’re doing OK.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
I take his hand and trace the faint lines of his palm, curl his fingers around mine. “I didn’t get to finish the list.” I feel a pang.
Theo draws back to look at me. “What’s left?”
“The skinny-dipping one.” I reply. “I guess she didn’t figure on me dying before the spring.”
Theo flinches against me. “It’s not a dirty word,” I say, tired. “It’s the truth, remember. Eighty-twenty, it’s stacked against us now.”
“I know. I just can’t bear to think of a world that doesn’t have you in it.”
I look up then and see the anguish written vivid on his face. Theo’s voice catches, and the steady mask slips; he’s raw and broken, holding it together by a single breath. “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he says through a sad, clenched jaw, “how we could find each other and then already be out of time. It’s not fair. None of this is close to being fair.”
I press my palm to his cheek, wordless. I know the powerlessness he’s fighting, that wretched struggle against fate. But I can’t argue with him, not tonight: this is what we have. Ten more hours together, maybe. One last night.
And I’m not finished living just yet.
“What would it take to get a car tonight?”
Theo pauses at my question, but then I see him race ahead, catching up. “Moose has one I could borrow, it’s a beat-up wreck but it runs, just about. Won’t they miss you?”
“We’ll be back before morning.”
He looks torn. “You need to rest.”
“I’ve only got one more thing left,” I say, half-pleading. “I can’t leave it unfinished, not this time.”
He hesitates only a moment longer, and then flashes me a grin, my partner in crime to the bitter end. “You get dressed, I’ll stand guard.”
I laugh and carefully scramble out of bed, pulling on my warm winter clothes while Theo keeps watch by the door. “The nurse just left the desk on break,” he whispers, hurrying me. “Quick, before she comes back this way.”
Hand in hand, we creep down the hallway, walking fast to the stairwell when we make it clear past the doors. After that, it’s easy: two doors and we’re on the street again, nobody giving a second glance to the couple in bulky winter coats as we spill onto the midnight sidewalk, giggling like we’ve just staged a prison break. A quick cab later, and we’re back at his apartment, me waiting just inside the doorway—stamping my feet against the cold—while he pleads with his roommates and emerges, victorious, with a stash of blankets over one shoulder and the keys dangling on a leaf-shaped chain.
“You weren’t kidding about this thing,” I say, as he wrenches the door open. Peeling blue paint and a dent in the passenger door; it looks as if it could barely run a mile, but there are four wheels and a working engine, and that’s all we need tonight. “Are you sure it’ll go?”
“Fingers crossed.”
Huddling inside, Theo sets the heater on full, and cajoles the engine to life; it splutters with protest. “Your chariot awaits,” he says with a grin, and I laugh with the thrill of it, snapping the seatbelt on tight. This is our adventure, one last reckless goodbye.
“Where are we going?”
Theo pauses, then spreads in a slow, quiet smile. “I know a place.”
So I curl up in the passenger seat, and watch the lights of Boston glide past, snaking outside the steamed-up windows as we fly onto the neon freeway, heading south, out of town. “I never left the city,” I say, looking out at the dark shadows looming and the empty highway trail. “All this time, I didn’t even take a day trip somewhere, into the country, or down the coast.”
“We’ll go this summer,” Theo says, his arm draped over the console, his right hand steady on my thigh. “I have a couple of months off when school’s out. We can go anywhere you choose.”
“Even California?” I tease, remembering. “You can teach me how to surf.”
Theo smiles into the highway lights. “Even California, someday.”
The rhythm of the dark road washes over me, and right then we’re perfect, complete in this gold-lit bubble of our own. I want to hold onto it, preserve every moment even as it passes, but the miles slip by in a dream, and I must have fallen asleep, because too soon, Theo is gently shaking me awake. “Claire,” he whispers softly. “We’re here.”
I squint through the sleep and rub my tired eyes. It’s still da
rk out, but the first pale rays of dawn are slipping over the horizon, shadows looming all around. Theo is crouched beside me, the door open, nursing a steaming cup of gas station coffee. “Where’s here?” I ask, yawning.
“I’ll show you. Come on.”
He takes my hand and helps me out of the car. We’re the only vehicle in a dark, empty lot, but I can hear the ocean, somewhere close by, and smell the sharp tang of saltwater in the gently whipping winds. Theo hoists the blankets and leads me into the dark, past the lone streetlight flickering on the edge of the asphalt, the ground giving way to softness beneath my boots as the shadows reveal themselves to be sand dunes, tipped with the rustle of swaying grasses and reeds.
“I came here once in summer, back when I was a kid.” Theo’s voice is hushed, but it still jars against the silence, miles from the hum of city life. He walks beside me, guiding every step. “Mom decided, spur of the moment, and we all drove down for Fourth of July weekend. We stayed in a crappy cheap motel, and ate PB&J sandwiches from the cooler, but it was the best vacation I ever had.”
The dunes open up before us, and there it is, the endless midnight sea. Dawn is sneaking over the edge of the horizon, turning the dark waves silver, and streaking the sky with light.
My heart shivers in my chest. “It’s beautiful,” I whisper, like we’re in church. And I guess, in a way, we are. The great world is waiting, magical and vast, too magnificent for words.
Theo drops the blankets. “Are you sure about this?” he asks, still so careful. But I’ve come too far to turn back now, and the sun is rising. We don’t have much time.
“Hope said there’s nothing like it.” I unpeel my coat, trying not to shiver against the icy ocean breeze. My sweater follows, then I kick off my boots. “Besides,” I say, as I strip down to nothing. “You only live once.”
I turn and run towards the water, and she was right, there’s no feeling like it in the world. Cold and sharp, pure and free, my bare feet pound the wet sand and the water hits me like a slap. I cry out loud at the shock of it, but I keep going, wading out into the foaming waves and then ducking under, my body already numbing against the frigid cold but still feeling so alive, I could weep with joy.
I surface to find Theo beside me, grabbing me close.
“You’re crazy!” he yells, trembling with the cold, but his smile is like the sunrise, and I laugh, our naked bodies tangled and twisted, shifting in the waves. We run for the shore again, already shaking uncontrollably, the air now like ice against our wet skin, and then we’re huddled under the blankets together, holding on for dear life against the chill.
“If we die of hypothermia, it’s all your fault,” Theo says, his teeth chattering. I wrap my arms tight around his waist and feel the pale heat of our bodies grow stronger.
“But it was worth it, wasn’t it?” I turn to watch sun break the night sky wide open, flooding the world for a brand new day. Theo watches with me, falling silent as the sea turns again from slate to silver to a pale aching grey.
“It was all worth it,” he says against me, as our heartbeats dance, together in the dawn.
The drive back is different, the dusty freeway hushed and empty, and the minutes counting down, closer to the end. I hold Theo’s hand tightly, and try not to feel afraid, but I can’t help it. Fear is blossoming wide open in my chest, thinking of what lies ahead today: the best or last day of my life. I know that the panic is a good thing; it means I have something left to lose. He’s right here beside me, his steady hands on the steering wheel and his brilliant mind guiding us home, but still, I wish the road would last forever. I come close to telling him a hundred times: turn the car west, let’s just keep driving, away from those sharp surgical tools and the syringes of poison waiting for me, someplace safe, where we can just treasure each other, alone.
But every time, I remember the sunrise. Those first, clear gasps of morning light, peeking over the horizon, the cold water on my bare skin, and how alive I felt to be breathing, blessed to see another day.
I want a lifetime of sunrise, and this is the only way.
I hold onto that memory the entire ride home, and soon we’re outside the hospital again. “They probably have a search party out for you,” Theo says, finding a spot to park. It’s seven a.m. already, and I know my parents are already upstairs somewhere, pacing the floor.
“I should go up alone and take the worst of it. They can’t exactly hold it against me.” I smile, but Theo shakes his head.
“Together,” he says, lifting our hands.
“Together,” I echo.
Together until the end.
We head upstairs, and I brace myself for the scene to come. But when we hurry off the elevator, and find my parents waiting in the hall, they don’t even scold me. “They’ll be at your room for pre-op rounds in five minutes,” my dad says, hustling me down the hall.
“You didn’t eat anything, did you?” Mom demands, anxious. “There isn’t time to push it, even one more day.”
“No, Mom, I didn’t eat. And I slept some, too.” I change quickly in the bathroom, and I’m safely back in my robe by the time the medical team arrives to make the final checks. If they notice my hair is still damp, and my skin smells of saltwater, nobody says a thing, they just click the side rails of my bed into place.
“We’ll give you a moment,” Doctor Benson says, motioning, and the interns melt back a tactful distance into the hallway outside.
There’s silence.
“So this is it,” Theo says, his voice twisting.
I nod, catching a sob in my throat. “This is it.”
I look around the room at my parents’ faces—the ragged heartbreak hiding in their eyes. We only have minutes now before they wheel me out, but how could that be even close to enough time?
How can you fit a lifetime of love into just a few short words?
How can you ever find a way to say goodbye?
Mom clutches my hand tightly. “We’ll be right here, sweetheart,” she says, her voice catching. “I’ll be praying for you.”
I nod, the tears coming now. It’s all happening so fast, there isn’t enough time. “Dad?” My voice trembles.
“It’s alright, baby girl.” He leans over and hugs me, swift and hard. “Whatever happens, we’ll be OK. You don’t need to worry about your old mom and dad.”
“I’m sorry.” I frantically wipe my tears away. “I didn’t want to cry.”
“You and me both.” He gives a watery grin, and then we’re both laughing together, crying and laughing because there’s no other way.
“I’ll see you soon,” I promise, and he has to turn away before he breaks.
“I’m counting on it, sweetheart.”
Now there was only Theo.
“I’ll walk you in,” he says, holding my hand tightly. The doctors return, and slowly begin wheeling my bed down the hallway, towards those distant swinging doors. I force a smile and wave back to my parents, clutched together in the doorway, holding each other up for air.
Closer, closer.
“It’s going to be OK,” Theo promises softly, keeping pace with every step. “You’re strong, Claire, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. You’ve made it this far, it can’t be over—” He can’t even finish, and we’re at the doors, but it’s too fast. This is all slipping away too fast.
“Wait,” I beg the doctors. “Please, just give me one more minute.”
They stop, and I don’t care that they’re watching, because this is all I might have left. This one moment. This one last moment of loving him.
I pull him closer, and kiss him with everything I have to give. “It was you,” I whisper fiercely. “You were my second chance. These were the best days of my life, and it was all because of you.”
“Claire . . .”
“No, there’s no time.” I cradle his face in my hands. I want to hold onto him forever, every beautiful plane, those lines I’ve etched into a sketchpad so often that I know him by heart
. But the brushstrokes blur with my tears, water seeping over the page. “Just promise me one thing,” I beg. “Please, Theo, whatever happens, you have to promise me.”
“Anything,” he swears.
“Promise me you’ll live. Every day, the way I wanted. Don’t ever waste it, not one single breath.”
He nods, just once.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I’ll always be right here.”
And then we’re moving again, and his hand slips away from me, and the last thing I see is his face as we disappear between those swinging doors.
I hold onto it, every memory, down the long hallway, and into that pristine room. The first day I saw him, all the way to this, the last. As they lay me back on the operating table, I fall into his arms; I kiss him a hundred times as they slip the mask over my face, and I watch the dawn break with him, shaking joy from every limb, while the doctor waits, steady above me.
“Are you ready, Claire?” his voice comes, so far away.
The sun is rising, and it’s a brand new day.
I close my eyes and say a final prayer.
And I begin again.
One year later
Theo
Claire died at 6:13 p.m. on the twenty-second of January, ten hours into the surgery we hoped would save her life.
Looking back, it’s clear she knew it somehow, when she said goodbye to me that one final time. The odds were too high, and her tumor had already ravaged too much of her, but still, we went on believing in miracles, right up until the end. I can still see the look on the doctor’s face as he slowly walked towards us; the way her mother crumpled and her father gripped my hand without a word.
The best thing in my world. I’d barely started loving her, and she was already gone.
Spring passed in a blur of whiskey and pain. I was failing her with every moment, breaking that last whispered promise, but I didn’t know any other way. I woke every morning with a bullet wound gaping in my chest, and drank until the wretched ache numbed away. I blew off classes and friends, let my work gather dust, slipped so deep into the darkness I could hardly find the air to breathe.