“I won’t.”
“I’m serious, Ethan.”
“So am I.”
He nodded once, then opened the door a little.
The room was dim.
Sophie lay in bed with her eyes closed, her face turned toward the window. The IV line disappeared beneath tape on the back of her hand. She looked smaller than she ever had in our bed at home, where she used to sleep curled toward me even on nights when we barely spoke.
I set the bag on the rolling table beside her.
As I turned to leave, her voice stopped me.
“You remembered.”
I looked back.
Her eyes were open.
“The tea,” she said.
“Of course I remembered.”
She looked at the bag for a long moment.
Then she whispered, “Thank you.”
Those two words felt like more than I deserved.
I stood near the door, not daring to come closer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She closed her eyes again, and for a moment I thought she was shutting me out.
But then she said, “For which part?”
It was a fair question.
A devastating one.
I swallowed hard.
“For leaving,” I said. “For not asking better questions before I did. For assuming silence meant there was nothing left. For making grief something we had to survive separately.”
She turned her face slightly toward me.
“And for being angry that I didn’t tell you?”
I took a breath.
“Yes,” I said. “For that too.”
A faint line appeared between her brows.
“I didn’t handle it perfectly either.”
I almost denied it automatically, but she gave me a look that stopped me.
“I’m not saying that to make you feel better,” she said. “I made choices too. I hid things. I decided what you could and couldn’t handle. Maybe I was trying to protect you. Maybe I was protecting myself. Maybe both.”
Her honesty filled the room with something delicate.
Not forgiveness.
Not reconciliation.
But a beginning.
“Can I come tomorrow?” I asked.
She looked away.
I waited.
The old Ethan would have filled the silence with pleading. Explanations. Promises. Anything to make himself feel less helpless.
This time, I stayed quiet.
Finally, Sophie said, “I can’t stop you from visiting a public hospital.”
That wasn’t a yes.
But it wasn’t a no.
So the next morning, I came back.
And the morning after that.
At first, Sophie barely spoke to me.
I sat in the chair near the wall, leaving enough distance that she wouldn’t feel crowded. Sometimes she slept. Sometimes she watched the silent television without really seeing it. Sometimes nurses came in and adjusted tubes or checked her temperature, and I stepped outside each time because I didn’t want her to feel observed.
I learned the rhythm of the hospital.
The breakfast trays came too early.
The hallway lights never fully dimmed.
The nurses changed shifts at seven.
The vending machine on the fourth floor stole dollar bills.
Sophie liked the blue blanket from the warmer better than the white ones folded in the cabinet.
On the third day, she asked me to pass her water.
On the fourth, she let me read aloud from the mystery novel I’d found in the gift shop.
On the fifth, she laughed.
It was small and hoarse, more breath than sound, but it was real.
The laugh came after I mispronounced the name of a fictional detective three times in one paragraph.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” she said.
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
“I’m bringing dramatic flair.”
“You’re ruining literature.”
For a moment, the room shifted.
Not back to what we had been.
Something like it.
Something gentler, sadder, and more careful.
Then her smile faded, and she looked down at her hands.
“We used to be good at this,” she said.
“At what?”
“Being together without trying so hard.”
The words settled between us.
I closed the book.
“I miss that.”
She didn’t answer.
But she didn’t ask me to leave.
A week passed before the biopsy results came.
Dr. Keller entered the room just after lunch with another doctor beside him, an oncologist named Dr. Anita Shah. The moment I saw both of them, my chest tightened.
Sophie was sitting upright, wrapped in a cardigan her mother had brought. Her mother, Linda, stood near the window, holding her purse with both hands like a shield.
Linda had barely spoken to me since she arrived from Milwaukee.
I didn’t blame her.
