Chapter 30 Three Days Only
The words stayed suspended in the air between them, fragile as glass.
“Three days,” her mother said again, as if repeating it might help it settle into Clara’s bones more gently. “Not six.”
Clara didn’t respond right away.
She sat on the edge of the bed, fingers curled into the blanket, staring at nothing in particular. The oxygen hummed softly beside her, steady and constant, an ever-present reminder that even joy had to move carefully around her now.
Three days.
It wasn’t what she had imagined when Amsterdam first became more than a city on a page. Back then, six days had felt small already, barely enough time to breathe the air, to walk the streets the author once walked, to exist somewhere beyond hospital rooms and cautious glances.
But now…
Three days felt like a miracle.
Her chest tightened, not with disappointment, but with something heavier and warmer. Gratitude. Relief. The sudden, overwhelming awareness of how close she had come to losing this entirely.
She bowed her head, and the tears came quietly at first. They slipped down her cheeks without sound, gathering at her chin before falling onto her hands.
“Oh, Clara,” her mother whispered.
She moved closer immediately, sitting beside her daughter, arms wrapping around her with instinctive care. Clara leaned into her, shoulders trembling as the tears deepened, not sharp sobs, not despair, but the kind of crying that came when hope survived something it shouldn’t have.
“I thought it was gone,” Clara said, her voice muffled against her mother’s shoulder. “I really thought it was gone.”
Her mother’s grip tightened. “So did I,” she admitted softly. “Every time we were told no, every time the doctors hesitated… I thought that door had closed forever.”
Clara pulled back just enough to look at her. Her mother’s eyes were red now, the composure she wore so often finally slipping.
“This isn’t me being cruel,” her mother continued, voice unsteady. “Limiting it. I need you to understand that. Three days is what we can do safely. It’s what your body might allow without paying too high a price.”
“I know,” Clara said quickly. “I know. I’m not upset.”
Her mother searched her face, as if unsure whether to believe her.
Clara smiled through tears. “I swear. This… this is more than I thought I’d get.”
She pressed her forehead against her mother’s shoulder again, breathing her in, the familiar scent of home, of safety. The woman who had held her through diagnoses and IV drips and nights when breathing felt like work.
“Thank you,” Clara whispered. “For not giving up on this. Or on me.”
Her mother kissed her hair, lingering there. “I never could,” she said simply.
They stayed like that for a long moment, the world narrowing to the quiet rhythm of shared breath.
Eventually, her mother pulled back slightly, brushing Clara’s tears away with her thumb. “There are rules,” she said gently. “You already know that. Rest. Monitoring. No pushing yourself to prove anything.”
“I won’t,” Clara promised.
“And,” her mother added, her voice softening into something almost tender, “Peter needs to be the first person you tell.”
Clara’s heart skipped.
“I was going to,” she said. “I mean… I already teased him a little.”
Her mother gave a small, knowing smile. “Good. He’s earned that much.”
Clara hesitated. “You’re… okay with him?”
Her mother sighed, not in frustration, but in surrender. “I’m scared,” she admitted. “Of him, of this, of how much you care. But I’ve watched how he looks at you. How does he show up? And I know he loves you in the best way he knows how without guarantees.”
Clara swallowed hard.
“That doesn’t make the fear disappear,” her mother continued. “But it makes it… meaningful.”
Clara reached for her phone then, fingers still unsteady but sure. This moment, this fragile permission felt too important to sit with alone.
She typed slowly, deliberately.
It’s three days, she wrote. Not six. But it’s real.
The reply came almost immediately, as if he’d been waiting, phone already in his hand.
Three days is everything, Peter sent back. I’m not going anywhere.
Her breath hitched. A smile spread across her face, soft and radiant, the kind that came from being seen and chosen even within limits.
Her mother watched her quietly, seeing the light return to her daughter’s eyes.
“Go on,” she said softly. “Tell him.”
Clara nodded, fingers hovering over the screen, heart full and fragile all at once.
Permission did not erase fear.
But it honoured love. She imagined the journey once again, spending time with Peter in Amsterdam would be really great, she thought to herself.
And as Clara pressed send, she felt it clearly for the first time in a long while, hope wasn’t just surviving.
It was moving forward.
Carefully.
Three days imagined.