My favorite, though, is reading together. It’s approaching winter in Atlanta, now, so the days are cooler. We turn on our gas fireplace and sit on the couch and Adrian reads to me. At first, it was just once in a while. But gradually, it becomes our Thing. We stopped watching TV. I’d buy books on Amazon, print or e-book, depending on the price, and he’d read to me. Sometimes when his voice got tired, I’d take over, but I’m not as good at it as he is.

He reads to me for hours. We read everything together. We go through the entire Little House on the Prairie series in a week. We read Nora Roberts, Stephanie Meyer, Harry Potter, we even start on the Game of Thrones series. Sometimes he reads from one book in the morning and a different one in the afternoons, after lunch.

But as the days crowd together, one after another, never leaving our house for much of anything, it becomes harder and harder to pretend that what’s happening isn’t real.

I want to keep pretending.

Pretend the days reading on the couch are just a magical interlude before our regular lives resume, me working in the ICU, him writing and researching.

But I can’t.

He needs more and more pills to keep the pain and nausea and everything else at bay, and then it gets to the point of diminishing returns, where the drugs take away his lucidity along with the pain. And he hates that, more than anything. Says he’d rather be present with me and in pain than lost in narcotic la-la-land.

I try to make him promise that when it’s bad enough, he’ll take what he needs to be comfortable, but he refuses.

“We’re doing this your way,” he says. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I’m going to live out my remaining days on my terms. And I’m going to be here, with you.”

A month after his reveal, his doctor makes a house call. Wonder of wonders—but then, Adrian has always had a way with people. After a checkup, some poking and prodding and questioning, the doctor says there’s no point going in for MRIs and all that. Meaning, don’t waste your time learning what you already know. He prescribes what he calls the nuclear option, some kind of strongest-possible opiate.

If you just want to float away, he says. I’m sure I’d know what it is, but my eyes are too blurry with tears to read, and it doesn’t matter. He won’t take it.

Not yet, anyway.

I read to him, now.

Tess shows up. Adrian does his dead-level best to get me to go out with her, just for an hour, just to breathe. Begs me, pleads, tries ordering, demanding.

I won’t.

I can’t.

I fucking can’t.