Chapter 4 The body remembers

The days were quieter now but quiet didn't mean uneventful.

Amara had returned from the gala the night before without saying much. She sat on the balcony for an hour, watching the waves, sipping tea. Dylan had sensed the shift. She didn't cry. She didn't rage. But something inside her had closed - not out of anger... but finality.

In the morning, Dylan wasn't feeling like himself.

He waved it off at first - maybe it was food poisoning, or stress. But the headaches persisted. Then came the fatigue. Then came the trembling.

Amara noticed it first during breakfast.

"Your hand," she said softly. "It's shaking."

Dylan looked down. It was. Just barely. But enough.

"I'm fine," he said quickly.

"You haven't been fine in weeks."

"I said I'm-" he stopped, catching her look. Not anger. Not worry. Something more like quiet recognition.

The truth was, Dylan had been ignoring signs for a while. Dizziness. Sweating at night. Episodes of nausea. He had chalked it up to stress or fatherhood or getting older. But now, the symptoms were beginning to speak louder.

Amara made the appointment herself. She didn't argue.

Just scheduled it.

A week later, the diagnosis came.

The doctor's face was too calm to mean good news.

Neurological complications. Early nerve damage. A suspected viral infection left untreated. The source? Possibly contracted from unprotected sex years ago.

Lillian.

The name hung between them like a curse.

"Your condition is progressing," the doctor said, gently. "If you had come in sooner..."

Dylan didn't hear the rest.

All he saw was Amara, sitting beside him. Not crying. Not angry.

Just... still.

The ride home was silent.

He broke it first.

"I ruined everything."

Amara didn't answer.

Because she knew - he wasn't talking about his health.

He was finally acknowledging the deeper illness: pride. Betrayal. Regret.

Dylan's decline wasn't dramatic.

It was slow. Unforgiving. Relentless.

The man who once moved with so much pride and ego now struggled to button his shirts. Some days he couldn't grip his fork. Other days he forgot where he placed his shoes.

But worse than the physical was the look he saw in the mirror.

Weakness.

Shame.

A man unrecognizable to himself.

Amara never mocked him. Never brought up the past.

She cared for him like a nurse, like a woman who had once loved him fully and maybe still did, in a quiet way.

But something had shifted.

She slept in another room now. Not in anger - in acceptance.

She cooked for him. Sat with him. Took him to therapy.

But her love? It no longer burned.

It only glowed. Faintly.

Months passed.

Monroe Africa opened two new hubs - one in Ghana, the other in New York.

Amara was now on the cover of Time.

Her daughter, Nia, began to walk.

MJ started school.

The world moved on.

But Dylan did not.

His body ached more. Some days he didn't speak at all. He stopped reading. He stopped laughing.

Until one night, he woke up gasping - sweating, confused, eyes wild.

Amara ran in and held him.

He clutched her hand like a lifeline. "I don't want to die," he said, eyes wide. "Not yet. Not like this."

"I know," she whispered. "But some things we plant... they grow roots."

He sobbed into her chest.

Not because of the illness.

Because of everything he had lost before the sickness even began.

The final scene fades with Dylan in his wheelchair, watching Amara speak at a global conference on resilience and rebirth.

She mentions him once.

"My past taught me pain. But it also taught me that survival isn't always about fighting. Sometimes, it's about letting go."

The camera pans to Dylan, clapping slowly.

Not for her - but for the woman he never deserved.