I open my eyes, look at him. I don’t want to play.

“What’s the matter?”

I sit up, turn on the bedside light.

“What?” he says, finally. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know. Just, maybe you should look into some other options. Maybe there’s some experimental treatment that really is worth trying.”

“Oh, Myra. Please.”

“But maybe there is.”

“There isn’t.”

For a long time, neither of us says anything. Then I say, “All right. I’m sorry. I said I’ll respect your choice, and I will.”

“It’s better, Myra, believe me. Now, I need to talk to you about some specifics. Are you okay with that?”

“Yes.”

“If you’ve changed your mind about staying with me through this, I understand. In fact, if you change your mind at any time between now and then, I understand.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“All right. So I want to do it on Friday. That’s the day. I thought … morning. I thought that might be better for you. I know you have to go to work tomorrow, I’ll be fine staying here. I need to see my parents and I want to make some phone calls. But then maybe you could take a few days off.”

I nod. Then I turn off the light and stretch out beside him. It’s Sunday night. Tomorrow is Monday. Next comes Tuesday. I can’t do anything about it, and I never could. I read once about an idea in physics that says time branches out into more than one dimension, so that what doesn’t happen in one world may very well take place in another. It’s an old habit, using thoughts to comfort me. It’s something I don’t want to go back to.

The summer I was ten years old, there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played together every night after dinner. I often watched them from my window; a few times I even joined them in a game of hide-and-seek. Once I hid behind lilac bushes with a boy who stared uncomfortably ahead for a while, then turned to me and whispered, in a not unkind way, “Who are you?” But mostly I would watch. I would see them sitting on the grass in a circle, riding bikes around, playing statue and freeze tag, talking and laughing about things I couldn’t really hear. There was a time they set off a cherry bomb, and once they had a picnic by moonlight: Kentucky Fried Chicken and lemonade.