3. Nina
— ? —
Nina
The oncologist’s office smells like industrial cleaner and bad news.
I’ve been sitting in this waiting room for thirty-seven minutes, watching other people’s tragedies shuffle past in paper gowns and terrified eyes.
The woman across from me is knitting something yellow - a baby blanket, maybe, or a scarf for a child who might not see another winter.
She hasn’t looked up once. Her needles click in a steady rhythm, mechanical and relentless, like she’s knitting herself into a trance.
I think that’s how she gets through it. I think that’s how we all get through it.
By not looking.
The man beside her - husband, probably, from the matching rings - stares at a magazine he’s not reading. His eyes are fixed on the same page they’ve been fixed on since I sat down. He hasn’t turned it once.
Cole’s hand finds mine, squeezes hard enough to hurt.
“You don’t have to be here.” His voice is rough, scraped raw by something he won’t show on his face.
“Shut up.”
“Nina-”
“I said shut up.” I squeeze back just as hard, feeling his bones shift under my grip. “I’m not going anywhere, so stop trying to give me an exit.”
“I’m trying to give you a choice.”
“I made my choice the week you landed, when you told me something was wrong and made me promise to keep it between us. I made my choice when I answered the phone in the middle of the night three weeks ago. I made my choice when I drove to your apartment and found you on the bathroom floor.” My throat tightens at the memory - Cole curled against the tile, shaking, a printed lab report crumpled in his fist. “I made my choice twenty years ago when I decided you were stuck with me forever, whether you liked it or not.”
“I liked it.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “Most of the time.”
“Most of the time is all I’ve got to offer.
” I lean my head against his shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of him - coffee and sandalwood and something medicinal now, something that didn’t used to be there.
“You’re not getting rid of me, Cole. Not now.
Not ever. So shut the fuck up and let me be here. ”
He laughs - a small, broken sound. “There’s the Nina I know.”
“She never left. She’s just terrified right now, so she’s overcompensating with aggression.”
“That’s very self-aware of you.”
“I’ve been in therapy. Shockingly, it helps.”
His arm comes around my shoulders, and for a moment we just sit there, two people holding each other up in a waiting room full of people doing the exact same thing.
The woman with the knitting needles glances up briefly, offers a small nod of recognition - I see you, I know what you’re doing here - then returns to her work.
Click. Click. Click.
The rhythm feels like a countdown.
The dinner party feels a hundred years ago now.
He asked me for one normal night before the war started, one evening of old jokes and lava cakes and nobody saying the word cancer, and I smiled until my face ached and gave it to him.
Adrian watched me glow all evening. He has no idea what the glow cost.
***
“Reeves?” A nurse in cheerful scrubs appears in the doorway, clipboard in hand, smile carefully calibrated. “Doctor Morrison will see you now.”
Cole stands. I stand with him, my knees protesting after thirty-seven minutes in a plastic chair.
“Nina, you really don’t-”
“If you tell me I don’t have to be here one more time, I will physically fight you in front of all these nice cancer patients.”
“That’s incredibly inappropriate for an oncology office.”
“Then stop testing me.”
He holds out his hand. I take it. We walk through the door together.
***
Doctor Morrison’s office is smaller than I expected - warm, though, with plants on the windowsill and framed photos of what looks like a golden retriever. She stands to greet us, and I notice the way her eyes assess Cole in a single sweep - the weight loss, the pallor, the careful way he moves.
“Mr. Reeves. Please, sit.” She gestures to the chairs across from her desk. “I understand you’ve brought someone with you today.”
“This is Nina.” Cole’s hand tightens on mine. “She’s... she’s my person.”
The phrase hits me somewhere deep. His person. Twenty years of friendship distilled into two words.
“It’s good to have a person.” Morrison’s smile is kind but professional. She’s done this before - thousands of times, probably. Sat across from terrified people and delivered news that would rearrange their lives. “Let’s look at where we are.”
She pulls up images on her computer screen - scans I don’t understand, shadows and shapes that mean nothing to me but clearly mean something to her. She studies them for a moment, then turns the monitor so we can see.
“The tumor is here.” She points to a dark mass that makes my stomach drop. “It’s grown since your last imaging, which isn’t unexpected given the aggressive nature of what we’re dealing with. But it does change our timeline.”
“What does that mean?” The words come out before I can stop them. Cole has gone silent beside me, his face blank, his hand crushing mine.
“It means we need to start treatment soon. Within the next two weeks, ideally.” Morrison looks at Cole, her expression gentle but direct. “The good news is, we have options. Several protocols have shown strong results with your type of lymphoma.”
“And the bad news?”
“The bad news is that waiting isn’t one of those options anymore.”
Cole nods slowly. I watch him process - watch him file away the fear somewhere deep where it won’t show on his face.
“What kind of treatment?” he asks.
“Chemotherapy, primarily. Possibly radiation, depending on how you respond to the first rounds.” She pulls out a folder thick with papers. “I’ve outlined three protocols we could consider. Each has different side effects, different timelines, different success rates.”
“Success rates.” Cole’s voice is flat. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“For the most aggressive protocol - which I’d recommend given your staging - we’re looking at a seventy percent five-year survival rate. Possibly higher if you respond well to treatment.”
Seventy percent. The number hangs in the air.
“And the other thirty percent?” Cole asks.
Morrison doesn’t flinch. “We don’t think about the other thirty percent. We focus on what we can control.”
“But if-”
“Cole.” I squeeze his hand so hard I’m probably leaving bruises. “Seventy percent. That’s what we’re working with. That’s what we’re betting on.”
“Nina-”
“Seventy percent, you hear me? You’re not allowed to think about anything else.”
His eyes meet mine, and I see it - the fear he’s been hiding, the terror that lives underneath his careful composure. For a moment, he looks like the nineteen-year-old I met in that coffee shop kitchen, soap suds on his arms and uncertainty in his eyes.
“Seventy percent,” he echoes quietly.
“Damn right.”
The rest of the appointment blurs past - consent forms and treatment schedules and lists of side effects that make me want to scream.
Cole asks questions I wouldn’t think to ask, takes notes in his phone with hands that barely shake, presents himself as the calm, collected patient every doctor dreams of.
I know better. I can feel the tremor in his fingers when he reaches for the pen. I can see the way his jaw tightens every time Morrison says words like “aggressive” or “intensive” or “monitoring.”
“Do you have any other questions?” Morrison asks finally.
“Just one.” Cole leans forward, and I brace myself. “How long do I have if we don’t do any of this?”
“Cole-”
“Months,” Morrison says, her voice gentle but unflinching. “Maybe a year, with good palliative care. But I really wouldn’t recommend-”
“I know.” He holds up a hand. “I’m not saying I won’t do treatment. I just... I need to know what I’m fighting for. What the alternative looks like.”
Morrison nods slowly. “That’s fair. A lot of patients feel that way.” She closes the folder, looks at him directly. “The alternative is that this spreads. Quickly. To your spine, your organs, everywhere. It wouldn’t be peaceful, Cole. It wouldn’t be easy.”
“Okay.” He stands, and I stand with him. “Thank you for being honest.”
“That’s my job.” She shakes his hand, then mine. “I’ll see you Monday for your first treatment. Bring someone with you - the first day can be rough.”
“I’ll be there,” I say. “I’ll always be there.”
Cole doesn’t argue this time.
The drive home is silent.
I take the long way, down America’s Cup Avenue and along the harbor, because Cole loves the water and I need time to put my face back together before Adrian sees me.
The harbor chop slaps against the seawall, indifferent to our small tragedy, and I think about how strange it is that the world keeps turning when everything inside me has ground to a halt.
“You have to tell him,” Cole says finally.
“I know.”
“Adrian. About all of this.”
“I know, Cole.”
“He’s going to find out eventually. The transfers. The time you’re spending. The-” He waves a hand vaguely. “All of it.”
“I’m going to tell him. Soon. I just need-”
“What? What do you need?”
“Time.” My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “I need you to be stable. I need to know the treatment is working. I need-” My voice cracks. “I need one thing in my life to not be falling apart when I blow up my marriage.”
“Telling him won’t blow up your marriage.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Adrian loves you.”
“Adrian loves who he thinks I am.” I pull over - abruptly, without signaling - into a scenic overlook that’s empty except for seagulls.
My hands are shaking. “Adrian loves the woman who’s honest and open and tells him everything.
Not the woman who’s been lying to him for weeks about where she goes and who she sees and why she cries all the time. ”
“You’re not lying. You’re keeping a promise.”
“Same thing, Cole. In his eyes, it’ll be the same goddamn thing.”