Chapter 197 I'll manage

Chapter 197 I'll manage
RYAN'S POV
Peter Lawson, seventy-one, is the last patient in ‘A Body Made of Quiet Things.’
He's someone who doesn't want to die, but has completely accepted that he will. He has end-stage liver disease, and somehow, remarkably, he is peaceful about it. He's been married to the same woman for forty-eight years. She still comes every afternoon and sits beside his bed, even when he is already asleep by the time she arrives. They never had children. It was a choice, Peter tells Angel.
Not for them.
They keep photographs of their siblings and nieces and nephews in a little blue album, though Peter doesn't particularly like looking at the newer ones.
"Everyone looks older than I remember," he says.
While Angel is documenting him, Peter asks if she likes poetry. She says yes. He asks what her favorite poem is and she tells him.
Peter frowns. "That's a terrible choice."
A week later, he has forgotten Angel's name. But he still remembers that he doesn't like her favorite poem.
He tells Angel that he married his wife when they were young and stupid. Then he looks toward the woman sitting beside his bed.
"Will you be alright without me?"
She doesn't hesitate.
"No. But I'll manage."
Peter chuckles. "That's what I was afraid you'd say."
There's something almost unbearable about the way they love each other. They don't need to ask what the other wants. They don't need to finish sentences because, after forty-eight years, they have learned to live inside each other's pauses. His wife knows when he's hurting by the way his fingers curl into the blanket. Peter knows when she's frightened because she starts straightening things that don't need straightening. They have spent so long knowing each other that sometimes it seems less like marriage and more like a language neither of them remembers learning.
Peter has spent his entire life fixing things. Cars. Plumbing. Broken appliances. People's fences. Near the end, he can't walk anymore. One morning, he notices the broken clock on the wall and asks Angel to get him a screwdriver.
She tells him, gently, that he can't fix it.
Peter looks offended.
"Not with that attitude," he says.
He dies three days later.
The clock remains broken.
His wife keeps managing.
She is healthy. At least, as healthy as anyone can reasonably be after losing someone they've spent almost five decades beside. A month later, she has a heart attack. The doctors call it “broken-heart syndrome.” I don't know if that makes it better or worse.
I think about Peter sometimes. Mostly because lately, I understand him too well. I'm losing myself. I can feel it happening in small, almost imperceptible ways. A little less of me every morning. A thought that doesn't quite finish. A memory that slips away before I can hold onto it. A book I used to love becoming a collection of words I recognize without remembering why they mattered. And the worst part is that I'm watching Michael quietly fade alongside me.
He still laughs. He still makes coffee. He still tells me when Ember has done something ridiculous. He still asks what I want for dinner even when we both know I probably won't eat it. But there are pieces of him disappearing too.
And I hate that. I hate that I'm taking him with me.
One evening, we're lying on the couch watching the two final episodes of Survivor. I'm barely following the game anymore, but I know Michael is. Or at least, he's pretending to.
I turn toward him.
"Will you watch the next season?"
He looks at me for a long moment, then he nods. "Yeah."
"Will you finish your book?"
His eyes flick away, another nod. "Yeah."
I swallow. "Will you keep living?"
That one hurts him, I see it. His face changes before he can stop it, and he forces the cry back down somewhere behind his ribs. Then he nods again
I watch him for a moment.
"Promise?"
His lips part.
"Promise."
I'm not sure I believe him. I know Michael. I know the way he says promise when he means it, and the way he says it when he's trying to give me something to hold onto. I don't want to resort to emotional blackmail. But I'm losing my ability to care about the rules.
"Promise you'll do it for me," I say.
It's unfair, I know it is. But I also know I'm his weakness, and some small, selfish part of me hopes I can use that to my advantage before it becomes his greatest disadvantage.
Michael closes his eyes. He sniffles, swallowing whatever wants to come out.
"Ryan."
Just my name, painful and barely there. He doesn't promise. Instead, he leans closer until our foreheads almost touch.
"I love you."
And somehow, that hurts more. He kisses me softly, then he settles back against the couch, still looking at me. "I'll watch the next season," he says. "Even though it's usually frustrating and exhausting and half the people make me want to throw something at the screen."
I smile. "Good."
Neither of us tries to make this hopeful. Neither of us says we'll be okay. Neither of us reaches for one of those little sentences we've used so many times that they've almost become rituals. I was fresh out of the hospital, I don't even remember which admission it was anymore.
The fifth? The sixth? I'd stopped counting.
Parsons had apologized before I left. For not being able to do more. For the transplant registry not coming through. For delays and complications and all the things that weren't actually his fault but somehow still sounded like apologies when he said them. There were only so many ways to tell someone you were running out of options without saying the words ‘running out of options.’
And I think Michael understands that too. So we don't pretend, we just sit there. The TV keeps playing, Michael's hand finds mine. And for once, neither of us asks what happens next. I eventually turn back toward the screen.
The person I wanted to win doesn't survive the episode.
I'm disproportionately disappointed.
For a few minutes, that's all I think about. And maybe that's enough. Maybe, for now, it's enough to be disappointed by something as small and meaningless as a TV show.