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“She could’ve fought harder,” I sob. “She promised she would try. But she didn’t. She just gave up. The doctors said the chemo and radiation could’ve given her another year, but she didn’t take it. We could’ve had another year with her! But she said she didn’t want to spend it sick. Didn’t want our last memories of her to be sad ones. But they were all tainted anyway, because every memory I have of her in those last few months was made with a timer. I spent every day of the last six months thinking today could be her last day. I spent every day terrified.”
I take a breath, and sit in the chair, face in my hands.
“What else?” Dr. Allen prods gently.
“She was in the hospital that last week. Dad, Willa, and I alternated being there with her. Dad and Willa were with her the night she died. She asked me . . . she wanted a milkshake. It was the first thing she’d wanted to eat in weeks and I thought that meant she was getting better. I told her I’d get her one, and I joked about her not going anywhere while I was gone. She’d laughed and promised she’d be there when I got back.”
“What happened, Wyatt?”
I choke out a sob and shake my head. “I barely made it to my truck before I just had this gut feeling. Willa was calling me seconds later, begging me to come back inside. Nurses were running past me, and when I got to the door of her room I heard my sister sobbing and my dad begging someone to do something, anything, to save his wife. And I just stood in the doorway, watching both of them fall apart while the doctors unhooked the machines and called time of death.”
“I’m so sorry, son.”
“I left her for five minutes. Five minutes. That’s how fast my world ended. And I lied to Lucy. I told her that I had been there when Mom died.”
“Why?”
“Because I should’ve been. And I’m ashamed that I wasn’t. I’ve spent five years regretting it.”
“There’s nothing you could’ve done, Wyatt.”
“I could’ve held her hand. I could’ve held Willa. I could’ve just been there. But I wasn’t, because of a stupid milkshake. I left, and she died.”
“And you think that’s your fault? That she died?”
“No. But what if it’s my fault she didn’t try harder?”
“What do you mean?”
“She turned down the chemo and radiation.”
“She didn’t want to spend her last few months like that, Wyatt. That didn’t have anything to do with you.”
“Yes it did. We weren’t enough to make her want to stay. I wasn’t enough to make her fight harder. What if I’m just . . . just not enough to fight for?” I ask, my voice broken.
Dr. Allen leans forward, resting his hand on my knee.
“Look at me, Wyatt.”
I lift my head wearily.
“You are enough. Your mother made the decision to stop treatment because she wanted to actually enjoy the time she had left with you and your family. She was fighting for you, just not in the way you felt she should. She wasn’t fighting for more time, because she knew that was pointless. She was fighting to make the time she had left worth it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because my wife made the same decision before she died of ovarian cancer three years ago.”
“And you were okay with it?”
“Not at first, but I came around eventually. Because in those last three months of her life, she had more good days than bad, and I choose to hold onto the good days.”
I take a shaky breath. “I don’t think I like this.”
“Like what?”
“This whole feeling thing. I think I liked it better when I pretended I didn’t have any.”
Dr. Allen laughs and I crack a smile.
