Chapter 2 - Crossing the Threshold
Elena fought me at first. She was exhausted, battered by the disease and the pregnancy, but her pride was a fortress. She told me to go back to my life, that she had hired a visiting nurse, that she didn't need my pity.
I didn't argue. I just went to the cafeteria, bought two bottles of water, and sat right back down in the plastic chair outside her room. I sat there through the afternoon. I sat there as the sun set. I slept in that chair.
By the third morning of my stubborn vigil, the oncology nurse, a no-nonsense woman named Brenda, finally took pity on us. “She’s being discharged today,” Brenda told me quietly. “Her white blood cell count is stable enough for her to be at home until the second trimester when we can try a low-dose chemo. But she shouldn't be alone. She’s weaker than she pretends to be.”
When Elena emerged in her sweatpants and an oversized hoodie that swallowed her, she saw me standing by the elevator with her discharge papers in hand.
“Daniel, you have a job,” she sighed, leaning heavily against the wall.
“I took Family Medical Leave,” I replied smoothly, taking her duffel bag. “My car is out front. We are going to my apartment. It has an elevator, there are no stairs, and it’s ten minutes closer to the hospital than your place.”
She was too tired to fight.
Walking into my apartment with Elena felt surreal. The place was a sterile bachelor pad—a leather couch, a TV, and a fridge filled with takeout boxes. It was the physical manifestation of my empty life without her.
I set her up in the master bedroom, fluffing the pillows and drawing the blackout curtains. She curled into a ball on the edge of the mattress, looking so incredibly small.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked, lingering in the doorway. “Water? Saltines? The nausea meds?”
“Just… sit with me?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.
I walked over, kicked off my shoes, and laid down on top of the covers beside her. I didn't touch her—I didn't feel I had earned the right to yet—but I stayed close enough that she could feel my body heat.
“I’m scared, Daniel,” she confessed to the dark room, the walls finally coming down. “I’m so terrified that I’m going to go through all of this, and the cancer is going to take me before I ever get to hold this baby.”
May you like
I finally closed the distance, wrapping my arm around her waist, pulling her back against my chest. “You are the strongest person I have ever met, Elena. You are going to hold this baby. And I am going to hold you. We are going to fight this war together.”
For the first time in months, as she cried against my chest, we weren't two ghosts passing in the hallway. We were husband and wife again, even if a piece of paper said otherwise.
