Chapter 198 Why hadn't I...

Chapter 198 Why hadn't I...
MICHAEL'S POV
Six weeks later, you would be hospitalized again.
Six long weeks. Six impossibly short weeks. Six weeks of good mornings and terrible afternoons. Six weeks where we laughed more than I thought we had any right to. Six weeks where you ate enough to make me hopeful, and six weeks where you couldn't manage more than a few bites. Six weeks of ordinary days pretending they were ordinary. Six weeks of photographs, arguments, naps, books, your moms' cooking, Ember sleeping in impossible positions, and you telling me that I worried too much.
Six weeks where, somehow, you were still here.
Then the infection came back.
You would be treated and monitored aggressively, because by then there was nothing casual about an infection in your body. Your blood counts were dangerously low. Your immune system had already been battered by everything we'd put it through trying to save you. Every nurse who walked into the room too quickly made my heart climb into my throat.
And eventually, you would tell me you didn't want to stay anymore. It wasn't stubbornness, I knew the difference by then.
You were lying in that hospital bed, looking so small beneath the blankets, your skin pale enough that the veins in your hands seemed almost blue. You reached for me and closed your fingers around mine.
"Michael, please." Your voice was barely there. There was something in the way you said it that made my chest hurt. "Get me out of here."
Normally, I wouldn't have even entertained it. Normally, I would have told you absolutely not. I would have reminded you that you had an infection, that you needed the antibiotics and the monitoring and every possible thing they could give you. But by then, ‘normally’ didn't exist anymore. So I went to Parsons, and I pleaded.
He pushed back hard. He told me exactly what I already knew. Infection and the possibility of rapid deterioration. The fact that if we took you home, something that might have been treatable in the hospital could become something we couldn't stop.
Your parents were completely against it too. Your mum sat beside you and held your hand with both of hers.
"Please, Ryan." Her voice cracked. "Just stay. Let them help you."
You looked at her for a long time, then simply said, “I'm sorry.” She shook her head immediately. You closed your eyes for a moment and when you opened them again, you looked tired.
"I'm not trying to be difficult. I know you're trying to help me. But I just need to leave."
Your mum looked away. Your dad was the one who moved first. He gently took her by the arm and guided her a few steps away from the bed. I couldn't hear what he said, I only saw the way her face changed. Whatever he'd whispered to her seemed to take the last bit of fight out of her. Her shoulders folded, she covered her mouth.
And then she cried into his chest. I looked away. There were some things I didn't think I had the right to witness.
Eventually, Parsons came back and sat with us. He explained exactly what going home meant. Home support, medication schedules, emergency instructions. What symptoms meant we couldn't wait. What we could manage ourselves and what required immediate medical attention. How to keep you comfortable. What to do if things changed quickly.
It was a conversation about dying without anyone using the word very often. The paperwork called it leaving against medical advice. We didn't care.
That evening, we sat in our park. The same park where we'd once been strangers who felt familiar. You were wrapped in a jacket despite the mild weather, your shoulder resting against mine.
"My dad hates when I apologize," you said and I glanced at you. "I wish I'd known that sooner. I could've gotten away with so much."
I laughed. It came out small, but it was real. You smiled too. Then I let my eyes wander across the park because they hurt. I'd cried so much lately that sometimes even looking at the world felt like rubbing salt into something raw.
I'd let you read the chapter I'd written on my phone. You had criticized it, of course you had. You pointed out a sentence that didn't work. Told me one character was becoming predictable. Praised a paragraph I hadn't even been particularly proud of. You'd done it exactly like you always had. Like you were still my most irritatingly honest editor. And it filled me with an urgency I didn't know what to do with.
Why hadn't I taken writing more seriously? Why hadn't I pushed myself harder? Why hadn't I already finished the book? Why hadn't I been more willing to consider every clinical trial, every possibility, every desperate little door?
Why hadn't I....
I knew there was no point. I knew regret couldn't reverse anything. We'd spent months telling ourselves “No regrets.” You'd made me promise it. And still, I regretted everything.
That night, your mum cooked and we sat around the kitchen table. There were dishes in the sink. A half-empty glass of water beside my elbow. Your dad complaining about the temperature. Your mum telling him to stop complaining. Ember tearing around the apartment like she'd been personally assigned the task of destroying every piece of furniture.
You laughed, then you pointed at me.
"Go play with her." I'd asked why me and you'd said, "Because she likes you."
"She likes you more," I countered.
All you did was smile and say, "Exactly. So go distract her."