“Yeah,” he agrees. “Twenty percent chance I’m going to die. Not the odds I would choose. You know, there’s a part of me that always thought I was invincible. That nothing would ever really take me down. But I think this might.”
“No,” I say. “Don’t think like that. Don’t say that.”
“It’s the small things—as well as this humongous thing. The nurse gave me anti-sickness pills to come home with. I didn’t think I was gonna need them. I thought, ‘I don’t get sick,’ so I didn’t take them. Of course I get sick. I got fucking cancer. I spent all night throwing up. My mom didn’t know what was wrong. I couldn’t even stop long enough to tell her I didn’t take the pills, so she could understand why I was throwing up so violently. I couldn’t even breathe through the vomiting.”
I close my eyes, a tear falls out and I can’t tell him what’s happening to me. What’s happening to him is the worst thing imaginable.
“Hannah,” he says softly. “This isn’t the way it was supposed to be between us.”
I slump into my bed, squish myself in against my pillows. “I know.”
“This isn’t how you and I are supposed to start. And I’ve thought a lot about that. I’ve had a lot of time to think, while I’ve been lying here doing nothing. It’s not fair,” he continues. “None of this is fair. Cancer coming for me at twenty-nine years old is not fair. The surgery, the chemo, the sickness, the steroids—none of this is fair. And I’m forced to take people through this with me. I can’t help it. My mom and dad. Grant. You.”
I tell him I’m happy to be with them on this. Well, not happy but here, very much here the whole way through this bloody awful journey.
“I’m not,” he says. “And so because it’s not fair and this isn’t what either of us signed up for…I’m ending it.”
My entire body goes cold, the edges of my face feel as if chill fingers have scraped down both sides.
“I’m ending it,” he says again when I don’t reply. “You’re not coming any further on this…this piece of shit roller coaster. This is where I keep going. This is where you get off.”
Oh my God. Tears prick at the back of my eyes, but I can’t speak.
“You still there?” he asks. I nod mutely and then realize I need to speak.
“Yes,” I say, and it comes out as an exhale. I haven’t breathed for the last few seconds. He can’t be serious.
“Are you OK?” he asks and it’s a genuine question, I can tell.
“No. Of course not. I don’t want that. Do you really, actually want that?”
“Yes,” he says and it couldn’t sound less truthful.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t do this. You and I have barely even got off the ground, and this is how you end it?” He starts to talk, but I cut in. “This will end. The chemo will end. You’ll recover and then you’ll come here and—”
“No,” he says. “I don’t think I will.”
I stare, shocked, straight ahead into my mirror and see the wideness of my eyes. “You’re not coming here? After…?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t tell right now. I can’t see anything past this.”
“Oh,” I say, thinking fast. I like him. I am not prepared to let go of this as easily as he is. “Then…I’ll come out to see you.”
“No,” Davey says again. “No, thank you,” he says far more politely than I can tell he feels. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to meet you.”
It cuts into my stomach. “Oh God, I see.”
“Not like this,” he clarifies.
“Then after…after all this is over.”
“No,” he says again and the sternness is back in his voice. “Because if I say that to you—if I say, hang on for me—it won’t be fair. You’re putting your life on hold, for some guy who’s hooked up to drips and monitors. Hannah?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“You, hitting pause on your life…that stops today.”
I fight off the fear that he actually means this. I vow to give him time to think about it. “I’m not putting my life on hold for you,” I counter. Is he right? Have I done that? Not while everything was normal—or as normal as it ever was between us. But these last few weeks since he was diagnosed, since he was supposed to walk through the automatic doors of the airport terminal and didn’t…yes, since then, yes I have, but of course I have. What else was I going to do?
