Choosing Each Other Anyway
We stayed on that floor for hours.
We talked about doctors and treatment plans and statistics until the numbers blurred together and all that was left was this giant unknown.
He told me about the chemo he’d already started, about the nausea he had hidden, about the day he shaved his head in a friend’s bathroom so I wouldn’t freak out when it started to fall out.
The anger in me gave way to something heavier, a grief for all the times he’d sat alone in a waiting room instead of letting me be there.
Eventually, we crawled into bed without even changing out of our wedding clothes.
We lay facing each other in the dark, our hands clasped between us like a bridge.
“If you want out,” Jake said quietly, “I will understand.”
I squeezed his hand so tight my fingers ached, and I was weirdly grateful for the pain because it anchored me to the moment.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “This isn’t like signing a lease I’m planning on getting out of in a year. I’m signing up for whatever this is, however long it lasts.”
The next morning, while Jake showered, I opened my phone and typed a message to my closest friend.
“I married my best friend,” I wrote, “and he just told me he has cancer,” and I stared at the words for a long time before hitting send.
My phone started buzzing almost immediately, people asking if I was okay, if I needed anything, if this was some kind of horrible joke.
I turned it face down on the nightstand.
I needed all my bandwidth for Jake.
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