We’ll make all the right decisions.
But then I hear the clock on the wall. The tick tick ticking of the second hand, bringing us closer and closer to December 15.
I take the dress off. I pay for it.
On my walk home, Aaron calls me. “We got the test results back from the last round,” he says. “It’s not good.”
I should feel surprised, shouldn’t I? I should feel like I’m stopped dead in my tracks. The world now, in light of this news, should slow down, stop spinning. The taxis should sputter still, the music on the street should stretch until silent.
But I’m not. I’ve been waiting.
“Ask her if she wants me there,” I tell him.
He pauses. I hear a lapse in breathing, the white noise sounds of apartment motion, somewhere a few rooms over. I wait. After about two minutes — an eternity — he comes back to the phone.
“She says yes.”
I run.
Chapter Thirty-Two
To my relief, and also grief, she looks like she did three weeks ago. No worse, no better. She still has her hair, and her eyes still have that sunken, hollow quality.
She isn’t crying. She isn’t smiling. Her face looks blank, and it is this that terrifies me the most. Seeing her cry is not, out of context, a cause for alarm. She has always worn her emotions inside out, the soft, nubile vicissitudes subject to every change in wind. But her stoicism, her unreadability, I am not used to. I’ve always been able to look at Bella and read it all there, see exactly what she needed. Now, I cannot.
“Bella—” I start. “I heard—”
She shakes her head. “Let’s deal with us first.”
I nod. I come to stand next to the bed, but I do not sit on it.
“I’m scared,” she says.
“I know,” I say, gently.
“No,” she says. Her voice gets stronger. “I’m scared of leaving you with this.”
I don’t say anything. Because all at once I’m twelve. I’m standing in the doorway of my room as my mother screams. I’m listening to my father — my strong, brave, good father trying to make sense, asking the questions: “But who was driving?” “But he was going the speed limit?” As if it mattered, as if reason could bring him back.
I’ve always been waiting, haven’t I? For tragedy to show up once again on my doorstep. Evil that blindsides. And what is cancer if not that? If not the manifestation of everything I’ve spent my life trying to ward off. But Bella. It should have been me. If this is my story, then it should have been mine.
“Don’t talk like that,” I say. But if I know Bella’s tells, she, of course, knows mine. She is no less equipped than I am at reading the impressions of my moods and thoughts as they saunter and sprint across my face.
It works both ways.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I tell her. “We’re going to fight this just as we always have.”
And in that moment it’s true. It’s true because it has to be. It’s true because there are no other options. Despite that chemo hasn’t kept it at bay. Despite that it’s spread to her abdomen. Despite. Despite. Despite.
“Look,” she says. She holds up her hand. On it is an engagement ring, perched daintily on her finger.
“You’re getting married?” I ask her.
“When I’m better,” she says.
I get in bed next to her. “You got engaged and you didn’t call me?”
“It happened at home last night,” she tells me. “He was bringing me dinner.”
“What?”
She looks at me, her eyebrows knit. “Pasta from Wild.”
I make a face. “I still can’t believe you like it there.”
“It’s gluten free,” she says. “Not poison. They have good spaghetti.”
“So anyway.”
“So anyway,” she says. “He brought me the pasta, and on top of the Parmesan was the ring.”
“What did he say?”
She looks at me and she’s right there — Bella, my Bella. Her face bright and her eyes lit. “You’ll think it’s corny.”
“I won’t,” I whisper. “I promise.”
“He told me that he’s been looking for me forever and, even though the situation is less than ideal, he knows that I’m his soul mate, and that he was always fated to end up with me.” She blushes pink.
Fated.
I swallow. “He’s right,” I say. “You always wanted someone who would just know it was you. You always wanted your soul mate. And you found him.”
Bella turns to me. She takes her hand and places it on the duvet between us.
“I’m going to ask you something,” she says. “And if I’m wrong, you don’t have to answer.”
I feel my heart rate accelerate. What if…? She couldn’t…
“I know you think we’re really different, and we are, I get that. I’ll never be someone who checks my weather app before I go outside or knows the number of days eggs can last in the fridge. I haven’t strategically built my life the way you have. But you’re wrong in thinking…” She wets her lips. “I think you’re capable of this kind of love, too. And I don’t think you have it.”
I let that sit between us for a moment. “What’s making you say that?” I ask her.
“Don’t you think there’s a reason you never got married? Don’t you think there’s a reason you’ve been engaged for almost five years? A five-year engagement was never in your plan.”
“We’re getting married now,” I say.
“Because,” Bella says. Her voice gets small. She seems to fold into herself next to me. “You think you’re on a clock.”
December 15.
“That’s not true. I love David.”
“I know you do,” she says. “But you’re not in love with him. You may have been at first, but if you were I never really saw it, and I don’t have the luxury of pretending anymore. And what I realized is that you don’t, either. If there’s a clock ticking toward anything, it should be your happiness.”
“Bella…” I feel something rise in my chest. And then it’s tumbling out onto the duvet between us. “I’m not sure I’m capable of it,” I tell her. “Not the kind you mean.”
“But you are,” she says. “I wish you knew that. I wish you understood that you could have love beyond your wildest dreams. Stuff movies are made of. You’re meant for that, too.”
“I don’t think I am.”
“You are. You know how I know?”
I shake my head.
“Because that’s the way you love me.”
“Bella,” I say. “Listen to me. You’re going to be fine. People do this all the time. They defy the odds. Every damn day.”
She holds her arms out to me. I give her a careful hug.
“Who would have thought?” she says.
“I know.”
I feel her shake her head against me. “No,” she says. “That you’d end up being someone who believed.”
And that’s the thing I know more than anything, as I hold Bella’s shrunken form in my arms. She is extraordinary. For once in my life, the numbers don’t apply.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Intraperitoneal chemotherapy and gardenias bring us into late November. The former is a more invasive form of chemo, where a port through which drugs are administrated is essentially sewn into the abdominal cavity. It’s more direct than previous rounds, and it requires Bella to lie flat on her back during the procedure. She’s nauseous constantly, and throws up violently. The gardenias have somehow become our wedding flower — even though their life span is approximately five and a half minutes.