“I ran out of time.”
I stopped. Then I read it again.
“He knew,” I whispered.
The words hit the windshield and came back wrong. I dropped the letter onto my lap and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
“No, Anthony. No.”
A man crossing the parking lot glanced over. I didn’t care. I snatched the pages back up.
“He knew.”
“You would have turned your whole life into my illness, Ember.
I know you. You would have slept in hospital chairs, smiled at me with cracked lips, and called it fine. You would have stopped planning for yourself.
I wanted, selfishly, a little longer where you still looked at me like I was going to make it to our anniversary.”
“I did,” I said, my voice breaking. “You let me sit there and talk about next month like you still belonged to it. You were my next spring, Anthony.”
“You would have turned your whole life into my illness.”
The last paragraph blurred, but I forced myself through it.
“The surgery was never as hopeful as I let you believe.
I’m sorry. Be angry with me, Ember. You should be.”
And there it was, the exact thing I felt: love, fury, and shock.
“I love you,” I whispered. “And I am so angry with you right now.”
Then I looked down at his handwriting again and said, “And you knew I would be.”
“The surgery was never as hopeful.”
I dug out my phone and called the hospital before I lost my nerve.
The call was answered on the second ring. “Nurse Becca, Fourth floor ICU.”
“It’s Ember,” I said. My voice sounded scraped raw. “Did he ask all of you to lie to me?”
There was a pause.
Then, quietly. “No, honey. Only the attending and the hospital lawyer knew. He signed papers blocking disclosure unless he lost capacity. I only knew there was something he was keeping for you, the pillow.”
“Did he ask all of you to lie to me?”
I let out one sharp laugh. “Comforting.”
“I’m sorry.”
I pressed my hand over my eyes and looked at the papers in my lap. “Did he think I couldn’t bear it?”
“I think,” she said carefully, “he thought you would bear too much. Whenever your name came up, he said the same thing.”
“I think,” she said carefully, “he thought you would bear too much.”
