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It wasn’t a chance he would normally take, but he wasn’t thinking straight. He growled in frustration and annoyance as he withdrew. “Where are the damn things?”
“Here.” I opened the drawer of my nightstand and fished one out. He impatiently sheathed himself and pushed me down again, shoving himself between my legs with one hand to guide him. I spread my thighs around him and gripped his waist with my knees as he pounded into me.
“Oh fuck, oh yes!” I shouted, slapping my palm against his back to urge him on. This was exactly what we’d needed, I thought as my legs squeezed around him. The headboard banged against the wall, and his breath puffed from his chest like he was at the end of a run. Then, everything went south. He pulled out and flopped onto his back, squinting his eyes shut tight.
“I may have...” he swallowed and half choked, and I sat up, jarred out of my momentary spike of desire to turn on the light. He was pale and sweaty, gasping for air. “Overdone it.”
“Neil!” I jumped from the bed, pushing down my nightgown. I had the phone in my hand, and he waved impatiently at me.
“For Christ’s sake, I’m not dying, I just...” he closed his eyes. “I just tired out very quickly.”
“Oh.” I set the cordless phone back in its cradle and cautiously pulled the blankets back to climb in beside him. “Sorry.”
“Everyone is treating me like I’m going to just snuff out at any time.” He pulled off the condom and tossed it into the trash bin, and jerked his pajama bottoms up with some difficulty.
“Sorry, you just didn’t look well.” I didn’t know how to respond to this kind of anger, especially since I had caused it. But what did he expect me to do, when he seemed to be in genuine distress?
“This is ridiculous.” He wiped his hand down his forehead and covered his eyes. “I can’t even fuck my girlfriend. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I’m tired all the time and too fatigued to even watch television. And in three more days, I have to start this bloody process all over again.”
“That sucks.” It was all I could think of that wouldn’t be interpreted as patronizing.
“Yes,” he agreed grimly. “It does suck. I feel like my life is wasting away a day at a time. It’s a wonder more people don’t commit suicide going through this.”
The s-word set off a powerful alarm. “Neil... have you been considering—”
“No!” He sat up and pushed back the blankets as though he would storm off in anger, but he was too tired. He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “I don’t want to die. I want to be dead. There’s a difference.”
“Not much of one.”
“Look, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, aren’t I?” he snapped. “I’m doing the fucking chemotherapy. I’m being a brave little soldier ‘fighting’ against cancer.” He made quotes in the air around the word. “Isn’t that enough?”
I didn’t answer him right away. In his mood, nothing I could say would help. But he wanted a response. I put myself in the role of the counselor I’d seen briefly in high school, and turned it around on him. “Is it enough for you?”
The anger went out of him then. That was almost worse than seeing him angry. “No. What would be enough would be having the strength to give up. To be able to look at you and tell you that I was quitting this stupid treatment. I want to be selfish enough to look my daughter in the face and tell her that I won’t be at her wedding, because I’m going to die instead.”
I walked around the bed, feeling like I had been slapped, forcing myself to act like we were talking about the water bill and not his mortality. He resented me for keeping him tethered to his life. That was a bitter pill to swallow. At least he was confessing all of this to me, and not Emma. I didn’t want her to have to hear it.
For a while, I just sat beside him, not saying anything, while he stared down at his feet.
I was out of my depth. “I want you to see someone. A counselor or a psychiatrist. Some kind of mental health professional.”
He made a bitter noise.
“No.” I was going to stand firm on this. “You’re hurting, Neil. More than I can help you with, and more than you need to hurt. I love you. I can take the resentment, the crabbiness, I really can. But I can’t stand watching you suffer and isolate yourself.”
“And if I don’t?” He looked up, testing me.
“If you don’t, I’ll tell Dr. Grant what you just told me.” I knew that Dr. Grant would likely tell Neil exactly what I’d advised: to seek mental health help. But in his despondent state, maybe Neil didn’t know that. Maybe he would take it as the threat I meant it as; that if he didn’t seek help on his own, I would try to have him hospitalized for it.
