Page 122 of What Should Have Been Ours

Comfortable.

That’s doctor-speak for letting you die slowly.

I feel like my whole world is shattering around me.

The doctor keeps talking, but I don’t hear a word. This isn’t real. This can’t be real. I’m ready to wake up now.

Please wake up now Gabrielle.

After talking with his parents a little while longer, the doctor walks out, and the silence left in his place is deafening.

I sit there, staring at nothing, my vision blurred by the tears I can’t hold back, my pulse hammering in my ears.

The grief is too big, too heavy, too sudden.

Then Cam finally moves, turning his body in the bed. “Mom—” His voice cracks, and that’s all it takes before she’s out of her chair, wrapping her arms around him.

Cam starts apologizing. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, shaking his head, voice trembling. “I’m so—”

I snap out of my daze instantly.

“Stop,” I choke out, whipping my head toward him.

Cam blinks at me, stunned, but I can’t—I won’t let him say those words.

I shove forward, grabbing his face, forcing him to look at me. “Do not—do not—do that.”

His lips part, but I shake my head, my thumbs brushing over his cheekbones as his mom holds onto him still.

“You don’t get to apologize for something that isn’t your fault.” My voice is raw. “You don’t.”

His eyes are filled with so many emotions—guilt, devastation, and a lot of other things I don’t have the strength to name.

I feel my body wanting to give out, but I steel myself, shoving down every ounce of the grief that’s threatening to drown me because he is the one who needs me right now.

I press my forehead to his, my voice barely above a whisper. “You’re still here, Cam.”

His hands come up, wrapping around my wrists, his grip weak but warm. “Gabrielle—”

“No.” I shake my head against his, closing my eyes. “No, we are not doing this. We are not breaking. Not yet.”

Not when I need to hold onto him for as long as I can.

Not when he needs me to be his strength.

52

Cameron

I never thought I’d be leaving this hospital for the last time like this. Not with a countdown hanging over my head.

It’s been a couple of days since the doctors told me there was nothing else they could do, a couple of days since I sat in stunned silence while Gabrielle and my mother fell apart in front of me. A couple of days since I was given a very real expiration date.

Six months to a year.

Best case scenario.

I’ve had a little time to process it, but it still doesn’t feel real. It’s cruel, you know, the way life works. That after everything I’ve been through, after fighting my entire life to beat this disease, it still came back to take me. After finally getting Gabrielle back, I don’t get to stay here with her.