Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
NYLA
He lost his sister.
That thought consumes me, fills me up, leaves hardly any room for anything else.
He lost her—and it destroyed him.
‘Were you her doctor?’ he asks.
Silently, I shake my head.
‘How did you know her then?’ His expression turns pleading now. ‘How do you know about her illness?’
He lost her—and since then he has been on the run.
Tears stream down my cheeks unchecked. ‘From the chemotherapy.’
Despite the veil of tears before my eyes, I see him gasp for air, clutch his chest, and stagger back against the wall.
‘We had it together… I mean, at the same time…’ I can’t say it out loud, but in his expression, I see that he understands anyway.
‘So that’s what you meant when you talked about your increased risk,’ he says tonelessly.
‘Yes.’ And I had the same illness as his sister, but I can’t bring myself to say that in this moment.
For a while he just looks at me, his face frozen in shock.
‘No, that can’t be true.’ His tone is as fragile as this moment, as I am, as we are, as everything that connects us. ‘But you beat the cancer, yes, you did, you’re healthy,’ he continues incoherently, and for the first time since he entered this room, he seems as if he can breathe again.
‘I’m in remission. Cancer-free for nine months,’ I reply, wishing that is all there is to say about it.
‘That’s good. Very good.’ He runs his hands through his hair, again and again and again. ‘Fantastic. We have to celebrate. Yes. Celebrate. We need wine.’
I know exactly what he’s doing right now, and I also know that it’s wrong.
I look at him intently. ‘You watched her die,’ I say, fully aware that it hurts him. But how could I pretend now that everything was perfectly fine? What he’s doing to himself. The many months he has already spent running from the painful memory, from the grief, from reality—this can’t go on.
His muscles tense. ‘No.’
‘You may not have been there in the very moment, but that doesn’t change anything.’
‘No, that doesn’t change anything. Nothing changes that, nothing at all.’ There is a plea in his tone.
I walk to the window and look out. The lights of the night appear distorted, the red taillights of the cars on the street glow as if they wanted to warn me not to go on speaking. Still, I have to do it.
‘The other day you said we only had the present moment. But that’s just part of the truth.’
I hear his breath flowing, uneven, agitated.
‘It’s true, we only have the now.’ I can hardly believe I’m saying this. I, who just a few weeks ago spent every breath worrying only about her future. I, who was healthy but still couldn’t live. ‘But we are more than the now.’
He stays silent.
‘We are who we were and who we will be. We are what life has made of us. We are what we dream of, and we are what we fight for,’ I continue, because that is true as well. Not just for me, but for him too.
There is no reaction from Jaden, but his eyes speak of his inner turmoil.
I blink, the outlines of the city grow clearer. ‘You too have a past and a future, and no matter how much they scare you, both are part of you.’
In silence I watch the hustle and bustle in the street, see the light turn green, the brake lights go out and the line of cars start to move.
I wait. For an answer, a reaction, anything to show me that he has understood.
‘Yes, I know,’ he says minutes later, his voice husky, and I wonder whether he is only now realizing what my past could mean for him.
Silence spreads between us like fog. It grows thicker and thicker, and I feel that soon I will suffocate on it.
My fear threatens to return. It knows that exactly what I was too afraid of some time ago to let Jaden get close to me could happen. That it would break him if my cancer comes back, perhaps even more violently than it would someone else.
I can’t do that to him. But wouldn’t leaving him alone with everything that hurts him be just as wrong? Not helping him because of a small chance that I might get sick again?
Torn up inside, I turn around.
The tension has left his body, tears glimmer in his eyes. In his hand he’s holding Lilly’s bucket list.
‘Why do you have this list?’ I ask quietly.
Gently, his thumb moves over the paper. ‘Promise me that my wishes won’t be lost,’ she said when she gave it to me.’ His tone is rough.
I step up beside him. Maybe it’s wrong, but I still wrap my arm around his body. He’s trembling slightly.
‘She wanted me to experience all of this for her, everything she couldn’t anymore…’ His voice fails him, he clears his throat. ‘But I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t…’
Slowly I start to understand. Making her dreams come true would have meant confronting her death. Feeling the loss. Mourning. ‘So you locked the list away.’ Along with the memory of her.
‘I promised, and I didn’t do a single thing on the list for her.’ Deep pain vibrates in his words.
Because even the thought of it hurt too much, I get that, but I also sense that this list is what he needs to heal. ‘It’s not too late,’ I say, even though my fear is already dictating something completely different again.
It’s better if we don’t see each other anymore, Jaden.
What happened to your sister could also happen to me.
We have to end this before it destroys us both.
Still I’m standing here right next to him, still, and I’m fighting against it. Because there is something stronger than my fear: the wish for him to overcome this pain he carries inside him.
Of course I could disappear from his life, but would that really protect him from more pain? If there’s one thing I know, it’s that fate doesn’t ask for permission. It claims what has never belonged to it, and it does so again and again.
‘We’ll do it together,’ I suggest, even though there are quite a few things on this list that will be a challenge for me as well. But this isn’t about me, it’s about him. It’s about him learning to deal with what hurts.
His breath catches. ‘I don’t know …’
But I know all the more. ‘Day by day. Moment by moment, remember?’ I glance over at him.
He remembers, I’m sure of it. ‘We can stop at any time, quit, try again, push through, celebrate small victories, fail, get back up again.’ No one says it has to work right away.
No one demands more than he is willing to give.
Lost in thought, he looks at Lilly’s list. ‘A life that outlasts the moment,’ he murmurs.
I’m not exactly sure what he means. ‘A life that outlasts the moment,’ I confirm anyway.
At last he lifts his lids to look at me. ‘We’ll do it together?’ he asks.
I squeeze his hand. ‘Every single wish.’