(And what a nice home!)

“You are okay, my sweet,” he whispered to her over and over again, hoping she could hear him. Hoping he was reassuring her . . . or was it really just for himself? “You are okay.”

She couldn’t hear him. Her sickness had pulled her in too deep for her to hear. Like trying to listen to the surface when you’re ten feet under. He continued to speak to her anyway, tears swelling beneath his eyes but never spilling over.

My blood isn’t working. It’s only destroying her now.

He diagnosed her over and over again to find a better treatment for what he tried so hard to explain. But he’d never seen anything like what had coiled itself around her. Whatever was digging into her organs with thick spikes, killing her, somehow surpassed his skills and knowledge.

Death was taunting him. (Haha!) He understood that much. It was taking what it wanted and leaving him weak. It laughed at him while he struggled, egging him to just do it. To just pull the trigger or say goodbye to her forever. But he wouldn’t give in to it. He wouldn’t pull anything. Not yet.

He spent hours upon hours in his office, fiddling with steam and fire, producing pills and tonics. He treated her with the best medicines he had to offer, the best medicines he could find or create. But nothing worked. The sickness only grew all the more vengeful the more he attempted to heal her.

“Here, Vanilla. Open your mouth. Try this.”

It was so difficult to get her to swallow it all down. Her throat was too dry, even with rivers of water to help her drink the pills. So many different drugs to fill her, and still nothing worked. Nothing even relieved her of her pain.

(Just let her go.)

He took her bloodwork every day rather than once a month, thinking he would find a cell quickly mutating under the microscope that would explain something. Anything. It was easier to extract samples now that he didn’t have to turn off the light to distract her when he stuck her with the needle. She was too weak to see or feel anything, and he could no longer spare the time to keep her in the dark.

(Just . . . let . . . her . . . go.)

He took her bloodwork and continued transfusing his own, as he had been doing for the past twenty years since she was brought to him, sick and dying, as a baby. The treatment that had cured her and others both before and after, but was failing him now. He hoped that if he upped the dosage, maybe increased the frequency, it would make her better. But Death was too strong and now he was the one killing her. But he was scared that if he stopped altogether, she might die instantly.

Her weight and muscle mass wouldn’t stop dropping until he could see the deep outline of her ribcage and spine. He’d run his fingers along her skin, feeling the bumps and ridges of her skeletal system—it would be fascinating under any other circumstance, but he didn’t want to feel her dying core. Anyone but her. She grew skinnier, frailer, paler, until she finally withered away into the yellow skeleton he holds in his hands now.