Page 264 of Time Stops With You

Her eyes widen. “You mean… you left to get better?”

“I wasn’t sure if I could,” I admit, thinking back to those first few consultations. “I had the money to pay for the best treatment, but given my symptoms…”

Her gaze searches mine and she tugs her bottom lip into her mouth. “Dare told me about you coughing up blood.”

I nod slowly.

She smacks my shoulder. “How could you not tell me? You spent all night with me and you never mentioned you were in that much pain.”

I grasp her hand and slide our fingers together. In a deep, honest voice, I tell her, “I don’t regret anything we did that night.”

Her eyelashes flutter and she glances away shyly.

“The doctors told me that I had limited options and that the treatment was highly experimental. They strongly encouraged me to check myself into hospice.”

“How did you get them to proceed with treatment?”

I shrug. “If I didn’t have the money I did, I don’t think they would have. But I signed every document they put in front of me relieving them of responsibility. I had already made peace with my death, so I didn’t have high expectations to start with.”

“Did they do surgery again?” Nardi asks, putting her hand on my chest and dragging her finger above the scar.

I nod. “They put me on an extremely aggressive round of chemo.” I clear my throat. The memory of those first few months makes me shudder in horror.

Nardi lifts my hands and sees the bands of discoloration from where the twenty-one day cycle kept discoloring at intervals.

“Looks weird, right?” I say with a laugh.

“No.” She looks up at me, her eyes shining. “It’s beautiful.”

My heart catches in my throat. I shakily continue. “My body had every adverse reaction you can imagine, but I came out of it with a sexy new accessary.” I gesture to the tubes around my face that connect to my oxygen tank.

“I think it looks great.” She smiles and I instantly feel at ease about the change in my appearance. “But why aren’t you carrying an oxygen tank now?”

“I am.” I tap my chest. “I’m wearing an experimental valve. It basically does what a pacemaker does for the heart, but for the lungs.”

She bobs her head, squinting as if she doesn’t quite understand. “Does it hurt?”

I hesitate.

“Cullen, tell me the truth.”

“Yes.” I rub the scar on my chest. “The surgery didn’t go well. My body rejected it at first and I went into shock. The doctors said my heart stopped twice.”

A tear spills down Nardi’s cheek.

I quietly brush it away.

Nardi sniffs. “It sounds like you endured absolute torture. It was the very thing you didn’t want.”

I remain silent because she’s right. I knew that fighting to stay alive would hurt and that success would only mean living for a year or two more.

“What made you decide to get treatment? You were so determined not to.”

“I’ve thought about that question a lot,” I admit.

She smiles tearfully. The wind tosses her straight hair and she holds it back with a steady hand. I mentally trace the curve of her full lips, the soft contour of her cheek and the delicate line of her jaw as she turns her head.

I turn her back to me. “I’ve been sick for a long time, and I wasn’t afraid to die. Then I met you and I suddenly had this intense fear of dying. It even gave me nightmares.” I pause as I recall the dream I had where I was buried alive. “At first, I ignored the change in me. I told myself that it was better to leave this world on my terms than to desperately fight with Life only to lose in the end.”

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