I Gave Him Everything but My Last Three Months

Nora's POV

It had been raining all week.

I sat in the hallway of the community hospital with a single thin sheet of paper in my hands.

Pancreatic cancer. Stage four.

Without chemo, the doctor told me, I had about three months.

"Nora, you need to tell your family." Dr. Lindstrom looked at me the way people look at someone they feel sorry for. "You're going to need someone to take care of you."

I thanked him, folded the paper with my name printed on it into a small square, and pushed it into my coat pocket.

On my way out, the pain in my stomach came back. I leaned against a pillar in the parking garage and dry-heaved a few times. My throat filled with the taste of rust.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. There was a red streak across it.

I got into the car and took out my phone. The screen was clean. Not a single message.

It was our tenth wedding anniversary.

Ten years ago, Graham Ashby put a two-hundred-dollar secondhand ring on my finger. We were living in a basement in Brooklyn back then, and he swore he'd make me the happiest woman in the world.

Ten years later we had a house in Seattle with a lawn, two cars, a decent life.

He hadn't come home in three days.

I found his name and called.

The line rang. I called once, twice, three times. On the fifth try, he finally picked up.

"Nora, I told you I'm busy." He sounded like he could barely stand to talk to me. Behind him I could hear soft music and the clink of knives and forks.

"Where are you?" My voice came out steady. Steadier than I expected.

"With an important client. The firm's in the middle of a bid, it's a critical week. Can you stop acting like some paranoid wife checking up on me?"

The pain hit me again. I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.

"Today is—"

"Graham, this blueberry scone is amazing. Do you want a bite?"

A woman's voice, soft, a little amused.

That was Whitney Doyle. Graham's girlfriend from college. She'd walked out of a bad marriage a month ago and moved back to Seattle with her kid. As an old friend, Graham had naturally taken it upon himself to find her an apartment, fix her plumbing, and talk her through her bad days.

My fingers went white on the steering wheel.

An important client. So that was the work he couldn't get out of.

"Nora, I'll call you later. Don't start." He lowered his voice, and there was a warning in it.

I didn't say anything. I just listened.

"Don't bother," I said quietly.

"What?"

"I said don't bother calling me back."

I hung up and blocked his number.

I started the car and drove without any real destination, down streets slick with rain. The wipers went back and forth.

I stopped at a light outside a French place downtown, and through the window I saw them.

Graham was sitting by the glass with his expensive coat off, carefully cutting the steak on the plate in front of the woman across from him. Whitney had her chin in her hand, watching him, smiling the whole time.

There was a patience on his face I hadn't seen in a long time.

He used to give me that. On the nights I cried because a client had turned my work down. Back when he ran around three blocks in the cold looking for a birthday cake for me.

The light turned green. The car behind me honked.

I looked away and hit the gas. My stomach twisted so hard I could barely hold the wheel, but I didn't stop.

It was fully dark by the time I got back to that empty house. I didn't turn on any lights.

I dropped onto the couch. The diagnosis in my pocket pressed against my leg.

I don't know how long I sat there. At some point I felt my way into the bathroom and turned on the tap.

The cold water ran over my hands. I looked at the woman in the mirror, pale, with hollows under her eyes, and something about it struck me as funny.

Ten years. What I had to show for it was a husband who didn't come home and a body that wouldn't last three more months.

That sweet, metallic taste rose in my throat again. I bent over the sink, coughing hard. Blood ran down with the water and disappeared into the drain.

I rinsed the sink until there was nothing left to see.

Not long after, Graham came in, carrying the cold outside on him and a faint smell of perfume. He turned on the living room light, saw me on the couch, and immediately frowned.

"Why are you sitting in the dark? Are you trying to scare someone to death?" He pulled off his tie and tossed his keys onto the hall table.

I stayed where I was, in the shadow, looking at the man I'd loved for ten years.

"Where were you?" I asked.

He paused for half a second, and his eyes slid away from mine. "I told you on the phone. With a client."

"Is the client named Whitney?"

His face went hard. He crossed the room and stood over me.

"Nora, how long are you going to keep this up? She just moved back, her life is a mess, and I helped her out as a friend. What's wrong with that? Do you have to be this suspicious? This unreasonable?"

He was loud enough that my ears rang.

I looked into his angry eyes and felt tired. Just very, very tired.

I stood up. I didn't argue with him, and I didn't grill him the way I would have before. I just looked at him.

"Okay," I said.

That stopped him. He'd expected a fight, like the last few times, so he could slam the door on his way out and feel he had every right to.

"Okay what?" He frowned.

"Nothing."

I walked past him toward the bedroom.

"Nora, what is that supposed to mean?" he called after me.

I didn't turn around. I went into the bedroom and shut the door behind me.

Outside I heard him swearing, and then the front door slammed. He was gone. Off to wherever he could be without a paranoid wife waiting for him.

I leaned back against the door and slid down to the floor. Then I closed my eyes and let the pain take me under.