Page 86 of Reclaim Me

“This is so unfair,” I sob, my hand over my mouth as I try to quiet the pain. “Why does it have to be you?”

Why does it have to be me?

The unspoken question floats around in my head, bouncing off of the images of my mother’s face, the memories of port placements, chemo infusions, and daily radiation appointments just for nothing to work. Just the thought of it all gives that tugging sensation strength, turning it into an incessant pull that I feel dragging me back to New Haven, demanding I surrender my life and my dreams to this beast of a disease that only exists to steal away everything I hold dear.

“It’s not fair. It’s not fair,” I murmur over and over again, unable to stop.

“I know, Sunshine,” Hunter says, and the gentle strength in his tone reminds me that he does know. “But we have to be strong for Will, okay?”

“And I’m going to be strong for y’all,” Will chimes in. “Do you hear me, Rae? I’m going to fight, and I’m going to beat this thing, okay? I promise.”

He can’t promise.

He knows that.

Cancer patients aren’t supposed to make promises to their family members. We’re supposed to make promises to them. Vows of love and support and sacrifice. That’s what I’m supposed to be giving Will right now, but my mouth won’t open. The words won’t come out, and I feel awful because I’m supposed to be able to give them to him. I’m supposed to be able to tell him that I’ll come home and I’ll take care of him. That while he’s fighting, I’ll be in his corner of the ring, but I can’t do it. I can’t bring myself to promise that I’ll come home and watch him die.

“We’re going to beat this thing,” Hunter says to Will, but the words are a soothing, reassuring salve to my soul. “I don’t want you to worry about anything, Sunshine. The doctors have already come up with a game plan, and we’re going to follow their instructions to the letter. I’m going to take some time off from the gym so I can take him to all of his appointments. I’ve got him covered, okay?”

Relief mixed with the purest love courses through my veins. I nod, even though Hunter can’t see me. “Okay.”

32

HUNTER

Then

The last person I watched suffer through the hell of cancer was my mother.

It took her quickly, so the battle didn’t last long, but that doesn’t mean that the days went quickly. Every second felt like an hour, every hour a decade, every breath a struggle. I’ve never seen time go by that slowly. If I hadn’t lived it myself, hadn’t sat by her bedside holding my breath and watching her chest, not breathing until she gasped and sputtered for air, I wouldn’t have believed it could.

I used to look back at the short time between her diagnosis and her death and think God was cruel for not giving her time to truly fight, to show the disease what she was made of, but after the last few months of watching Will be decimated by the most aggressive forms of chemo and radiation, I’ve changed my mind.

This is cruelty.

The lingering and prolonged suffering. The volleying between hope and despair. The constant appointments, filled with poking and prodding and infusions that leave him weak and frail for days. And the fatigue isn’t even the worst side effect. No, that’d have to be the nausea that guarantees he’ll vomit on the way home or the dryness that leaves sores in the roof of his mouth, or the darkened skin on his hands that make me feel like I’m watching him decay in real time.

But perhaps the cruelest thing of all is his smile because it hasn’t changed even though he’s dropped fourteen pounds in the last month. It’s still as wide and awe-inspiring as it was the first day I met him. He likes to smile at me all the time, even when he’s too weak to talk, and I take it as his way of letting me know he’s alright, so I can pass the message along to everyone who calls to check on him because in-person visits stopped being a thing after a runny nose turned into pneumonia, which almost killed him.

“How is he?” Rae asks, her voice distant and far away, just like she’s been for months. She came home to visit for a weekend right after Will got the diagnosis. That was back when things were more hopeful, when we could still go to meetings and our world hadn’t shrunk down to include nothing but each other and the host of medical professionals trying to keep him alive.

“He’s alright.” I stretch out on the couch, my back aching from sleeping in the recliner in Will’s room all night long. There are plenty of beds to choose from in this house, but I prefer to stay close, to make sure he doesn’t need anything. “Sleeping right now.”

“How many more treatments does he have left again?”

My jaw clenches. I don’t know how to tell Rae that there is no number in mind now. That the doctors told me today that the infusions are the only thing staving off the cancer that’s invaded everything, including his lungs.

“They’ve changed the protocol, so I’m not sure.” I hate lying to her, but Will told me I had to. He made me promise to keep her in the dark about how bad things have gotten because, by some sick twist of fate, Rae’s life is improving while his health is rapidly declining. Her successful debut as Juliet has led to her being promoted to a principal role, which has made her a shoo-in for the lead in other company productions. It won’t be long before other, larger companies are looking to poach her, which means she’ll have the world at her feet any day now.

Will told me he didn’t want anything, not even him, to stop her from focusing on her dreams, and I’m not in any position to deny a dying man his last wishes.

“Oh, could you send me the new schedule?”

“Of course, Sunshine.”

She goes quiet, and I listen to the hustle and bustle of the city through her end of the line, missing people more than I thought I ever would. It’s hard being here alone with Will day in and day out, especially when he’s sleeping most of the time and sick the rest of it. Before this little stint in quarantine, I thought I preferred to be alone, but now I’m desperate for human connection.

And I need a meeting, badly, because, as it turns out, watching someone you love die is triggering as hell.

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