Page 7 of The Cabin
“I let her,” Nadia’s mother had said, tearing up. “I shouldn’t have, she was too young, I knew it then and I know it now, but…she just had to do it. I couldn’t stop her. You know how she is, how once she’s set on something, there’s no stopping her. I knew then it was who she was—a nurturer, a caretaker. She takes care of people. If you’ll let her, if you don’t stop her, she’ll take care of you, until there’s nothing left of her. Nothing left of her for her.”
She had stared me in the eyes. Taken my face in her hands. “You can’t let her do that, Adrian. If you love her, you have to make sure she takes care of herself. If she gets a whiff of you being sick, she’ll drop her entire life, her entire existence to take care of you. She won’t sleep, won’t eat, won’t rest, won’t do anything but care for you until you’re better. It’s…well, honestly, it’s compulsive, with her. I hesitate to say obsessive, but that’s pretty near the truth of it.”
So, you see. I have to take care of her. If she knew I was sick, she would quit her job, she would baby me and sit at my side for every round of chemo and every experimental treatment, and she’d do her best to take the burden of my sickness on herself, and I just can’t put that on her.
I hate lying to her.
Hate it.
I’ve never lied to her about a thing. Not a single other thing. Not even, when we were dating, and I got drunk at a party and made out with another girl. I told her, the very next day. She broke up with me, and I didn’t see her for two and a half weeks, until she got sick of me sending her a dozen roses every day, box after box of chocolate, pages and pages of college-ruled notebook paper with “I’m sorry” written on it a hundred times. Mixtapes burned onto CDs of handpicked songs. She finally realized, somehow, that it had been a stupid drunken accident. Honestly, I’d been so blitzed I’d thought it was Nadia. When I realized it was someone else, I stopped, threw up, and ran away. Stupid. But an accident. Not an intentional betrayal. I’d never do that.
I hadn’t lied then.
I told her it was my fault the time I got into a car accident. I’d been messing with the radio and rear-ended someone.
I face the truth, no matter what.
But this is…
This is bigger than that.
I have to protect her. If she knew I had cancer, it would kill her right along with me. Her force of will is exactly that powerful. And I can’t handle that. Can’t have that on my conscience. I know she’ll be angry. She won’t understand. Hopefully, she’ll never know. But if somehow the worst comes to pass, by the time she finds out, what’s done will be done. She’ll have anger to deal with as well as grief, but at least she’ll be alive.
At a red light, two blocks from home, that’s what I think: at least she’ll be alive.
And it guts me.
She’ll be alive.
After I’m gone—if I’m gone—she’ll be alive.
The light turns green, but my foot is stuck on the brake. Horns blare, shouts are muffled and dim. I can’t swallow, can’t breathe. Force myself off the road, into the parking lot of a KFC.
She’ll be alive.
I’ll be gone.
I’ve never really allowed myself to even consider that truth.
Because this is Nadia. And my Nadia is loyal to the very bone, to the atoms. Down to her component electrons and neutrons, she’s devoted to me. If I die, she will mourn me the rest of her life. And that life will be short, if she has anything to say about it. She won’t just grieve, she’ll wear black forever, like Queen Victoria is said to have done. She’ll cut herself off from life. She will drive the empty shell of her body to work, and she’ll put on a mask along with her scrubs and stethoscope and rubber gloves, and she’ll care for the patients in the ICU, and she’ll drive the empty husk of her body home again, and every thought will be about me. Grieving me. Mourning me.
She will be alive…
But not living.
I’ve been developing this story for her and, up to now, I think my subconscious has been telling me some truths. This could be my last story. I’ll fight until there’s nothing left, but I can’t ignore the possibility. But this story, this love story I’ve been working on. It’s about second chances. Moving on after loss. I think my forebrain was thinking of it as a poignant set of themes, disconnected from my life. But it’s not.
