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.

It’s more than that.

It’s for her.

But…now that I begin to allow myself to really think about this, it’s a big, complicated, thing.

Because she’s complicated. Complex. Deep. For more than ten years I’ve loved her, and I’m still just beginning to plumb her depths, to understand her.

Then an idea forms.

Sitting in the parking lot of a KFC, two blocks from home, still a bit nauseous, whether from chemo or the cancer or this realization, I don’t know—I understand what I have to do.

It’s just going to require a lot of thought, a lot of care, a lot of planning.

Best-case scenario, it’s all for nothing. I’ll get the all clear, cancer free.

A niggling worm in my gut is worried, perhaps far more than worried, that it won’t be for naught.

I wipe my face. I’ve been crying, apparently.

I collect myself.

It’s eleven twenty-six, Thursday. I promised her I’d be home by noon.

I keep my promises.

I also promised I’d tie her to the bed and not let her leave for days, and that’s a promise I intend to keep as well. That part is tricky, though. Chemo has a lot of awful side effects. It is poison, after all. One of those side effects is sexual. Not one of desire, oh no. That’s as intact and fiery as ever. Energy, though, is an issue. As is physical ability to sustain the necessary hardness to act out that desire.