Chapter 117 Fear
Fear multiplies when you love someone.
Because loving someone means realizing, all at once, how much there is to lose. And most of the time, all you have to hold against that realization is hope.
But hope isn’t always natural.
Sometimes it’s something people force themselves to practice. Like a muscle they keep using even when it aches, even when it trembles, even when it feels like it might give out entirely. And I hate that it’s usually described as something beautiful. Because most of the time, it is. But hope has a cruel side. Hope convinces people that tomorrow will be different. That something will shift or improve.
And sometimes it does. Sometimes tomorrow is better.
But sometimes, tomorrow is just another day where the battle continues. And hope stands there anyway, quiet and insistent, asking you to keep going.
I’m seated at the desk in Ryan’s room. The overhead light is off, the only illumination comes from the lamp by the bed. Ryan's asleep, or something close to it. The kind of sleep that isn’t rest so much as temporary escape. His breathing is uneven, his body too still.
It’s the third day of infusion. And this regimen, it’s brutal. There’s no other word for it. I can see it in everything...the way his body reacts, the way it fights, the way it gives in. It’s relentless. And I understand now, viscerally, why some people quit treatment. Why they choose to just...stop.
Why they decide that letting the illness take its course might be easier. Rather than endure the "cure." I wonder if they lie in beds like this one, staring at the ceiling, wondering if the cancer itself could possibly feel this violent.
Because how can they not wonder?
If this is what the treatment feels like, if this is what fighting looks like, would the illness itself really be worse? There's a staggering, bitter irony in the fact that the treatment is often just as or harsher than the disease it’s hunting.
Especially for someone like Ryan. Someone who's already been failed by treatment once. It’s why we’re here. Why this version of hope even exists.
Before illness, the world feels wide. Endless, almost. Time stretches out in front of you in ways you don’t even think to question. Days blur together not because they’re hard, but because there’s always another one waiting.
After illness, the world begins to shrink. It contracts until it’s the size of a hospital wing, then a bedroom, then a single day. Eventually, it pulls in so tight it’s just the space between one breath and the next.
I’m struck by the casual arrogance of the healthy, the way we act like we have an iron-clad contract with time. We use these little phrases, “We’ll circle back to it next Tuesday.” “Let’s talk about it tomorrow.” I did it myself in the hospital, telling Ryan to give the meds a few hours.
As if I had any authority to promise what those hours would hold. As if time listens. As if it bends to intention or expectation.
What gave me that confidence? What makes any of us believe we have that kind of control?
I’m typing when I hear his voice, smaller than it should be.
“You’re scowling at the screen again,” he murmurs, “Is your gardener being difficult?”
I turn immediately. Ryan’s facing me, eyes barely open, but focused enough to find me in the dim light. Watching. I blink, the shift from thought to him abrupt, disorienting in the way it always is.
Then I stand. There’s a banana on the desk, one I’d grabbed from the kitchen earlier, intending to give it to him when he woke up.
I pick it up and walk over, then sit on the edge of the bed and start peeling it. He looks at it with a profound disinterest, but he forces himself to shift upward, bracing his back against the headboard.
"Eat," I say. "Allegedly, bananas can make a person happy. They contain tryptophan, which the body converts into serotonin."
He takes a small bite, his jaw moving slowly. Then turns his head toward me, eyes half-lidded, voice low. "What makes you assume I’m unhappy, Michael?"
The question lands softer than it should. He sighs before I can answer, the sound thin.
“I’m just tired,” he says. “I’m trying to remember what it feels like to not be tired, and I can’t.”
Something in my chest tightens.
“Two more days,” I say automatically. The words feel like ash in my mouth. And even as I say them, they don’t carry anything with them. No comfort, no real promise. Because I know. The days after the infusion are often worse. The ones where the toxicity truly settles into the bone.
Ryan doesn’t respond. He just hands the banana back to me after that one small bite. I take it, carefully folding the peel back over it, preserving it in a way that feels almost pointless. I set it down on the bedside table.
A discarded offering.
“Your mum called,” I say after a moment. “She asked how things were going.”
He doesn't answer. Instead, he slides back down into the pillows, shifting until he finds my lap. He rests his head there, his hair soft against my thighs. I wait a beat, expecting the usual follow-up...the curiosity about what I told her.
But the question never comes. I glance down, and the rhythm of his breathing has already changed. He’s gone again, pulled back into that dark, grey sleep where I can’t follow him.
I stay perfectly still, my hand hovering just above his shoulder, and a sharp, cold pang of fear engulfs me. It’s the first time I’ve felt it this deeply. This terrifying realization that he's slowly slipping away.
I hate how inevitable it tries to make itself.
I glance back toward the desk, where my laptop screen is still glowing, the cursor pulsing like a heartbeat. I think about the draft I’ve been wrestling with. The story feels redundant now.
A man with a glass heart.
Why bother writing about a fictional fragility when the man in my lap is made of the same delicate, shattering material?
And somehow, he’s the one holding my heart. And I don’t know what happens if he breaks.