Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
NYLA
A strange kind of stubbornness suddenly takes over his expression. ‘For the last time: I’m not sick.’
I stare at him, appalled by his reaction. ‘You’re just like your mother, don’t you see that?’
He stares back, a mixture of incomprehension and anger in his eyes. ‘Don’t you start on my mother now, that’s not what this is about at all. Your diagnosis is completely far-fetched, and you know it. You’re overreacting.’
I most certainly am not. ‘I’m ordering a biopsy and a full-body CT scan,’ I reply urgently. ‘As soon as we have all the data, we’ll talk to my oncologist. Then you’ll start therapy as quickly as possible.’
Up to now he’s been leaning against the windowsill, trying to look casual, but now he pushes himself away sharply. ‘Now you’re already planning the therapy too? You’ve completely lost it.’
What is this supposed to be? Anger rises in me, but I hold it back so this doesn’t escalate. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll stay with you the whole time.’ Carefully I reach my hand out to him, but he shakes me off. ‘We’ll get through this.’
Shaking his head, he grabs his medical file and opens it. ‘I don’t see anything here that needs getting through,’ he says after he’s studied it. ‘And there are no unnecessary tests either.’
I rush after him. ‘Oh yes, you will have the tests done. They’re just a formality anyway.’ My words sounded like an order, but I don’t care.
‘Do you really think you can tell me what to do?’ His expression is dominated by disbelief.
All right, maybe my words were a bit inappropriate, but this is a critical matter. ‘Think of Lilly. If her illness had been treated earlier, she might still be alive. We have to make sure that you…’
‘Unlike me, Lilly had symptoms, and long before the diagnosis!’ he shouts angrily. ‘This has nothing to do with her or with me, it’s only about you.’
I blink, he looks at me with a pained expression, exhales slowly and runs a hand through his hair.
‘Okay, I’m going to leave now so you can think in peace.’ And come to your senses again, his look adds.
No, he is not going anywhere. ‘Forget it,’ I yell at him, more emotional than I intended, but I can’t help it. ‘If you don’t get treatment, you’re going to die! Think of your family, for god’s sake. They’ve already lost one child, are they really supposed to…?’
‘My God, Nyla!’ He looks at me as if I were insane. ‘Don’t you realize how crazy it is that you’re already talking about dying when there’s no diagnosis?’
‘But there is one!’ Maybe not in black and white, but the clues I already have can’t just be dismissed. Or can they?
He grabs my shoulders, a deep furrow forming between his brows. ‘Wake up, Nyla, you’re getting carried away with something here and I’m not going to support it as well.’
The woman with the swallowing difficulties whom I treated the other day haunts my mind. I was wrong about her too, even though I was sure.
No, this is different. He’s the one who’s getting carried away with something right now, and now he even pushes me aside and reaches for the doorknob.
I don’t believe this. I can’t believe any of what has happened here in this treatment room over the past fifteen minutes.
Still, the facts slowly seep into my consciousness. Like acid, they hollow me out where I was still intact until now.
All this time I’ve been wrestling with my feelings for Jaden because I was afraid my cancer would come back. I was constantly terrified that my illness would break him. It never occurred to me that it could be the other way around.
Shit. Jaden was right. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. But I do know something else: what we have to do now so that he still has a tomorrow.
I press my whole weight against the door so he can’t open it. ‘Okay, let’s talk about this rationally.’
He has to go through with the treatment, and I’m going to be by his side. Every damn day, no matter how brutal it gets.
‘Fine, then the first thing I want is for you to stop talking about treatments.’ Regret colors his words. ‘And for you to admit how far-fetched your assumptions are.’
He thinks I’m talking myself into this, painting everything black, seeing only risks. But that’s not how it is. ‘We have the bloodwork, the enlarged lymph nodes, and the CT scan. Taken together, that’s already a pretty clear indication.’
‘Yes, it is. That I have a cut and a harmless infection.’ I see him suppress a sigh.
‘I’m not letting you go without a biopsy.’ Never. In no version of reality. He can forget about that.
‘But this isn’t about you or what you want,’ he counters, visibly strained by this conversation.
‘No, it’s about your future, for fuck’s sake.’ A future that won’t exist if he doesn’t get treatment. But that’s not all. This is also about our future, about everything we still wanted to experience, everything we wanted to share with each other. I let him see exactly that in my eyes.
He’s raking his hands through his hair, getting angrier by the second. At me. Which is ridiculous, because all I want is to help him!
‘Just because it was like that with Lilly, it doesn’t have to be the same for you…’
‘Stop it already!’ he yells at me now.
I see his anger, and I know not only that he blames me for this state he’s in, but also that he won’t back down.
Nothing in the world could make him agree to treatment.
It will be his downfall.
Our downfall.
I never thought hearts could break like this. But that’s exactly what’s happening, right now, in this moment. My heart is shattering—into so many tiny pieces that it will be impossible to ever put them back together again.
His face blurs before my eyes; I can no longer see the treatment room. A violent sob racks through me. My nose swells, and tears stream down my cheeks without stopping.
‘So you’re not going to change your mind, and certainly not for my sake.’
He snorts wearily. ‘No more than you will, right?’ he replies, squeezes past me, and leaves the room.