Chapter 2

The harsh fluorescent lights of the hospice hallway felt like an attack after the soft darkness of the night. I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath, the metallic taste of blood still in my mouth.

The door at the end of the hall opened. Dr. Sarah Chen stood there, arms crossed, her expression a familiar mix of anger and worry.

"Midnight. A new record, Ethan," she said, her voice sharp. She didn't need to ask where I'd been. The concert was all over the news.

"I had to," I rasped, my voice raw.

"You didn't have to do anything except rest," she shot back, her professional calm cracking. She stepped closer, her eyes scanning my face, taking in the pale skin, the faint sheen of sweat. "You look terrible. Did you take your medication?"

I just looked at her, the exhaustion too deep for excuses.

She sighed, the anger in her eyes softening into something that looked a lot like pity. "Come on. Let's get you to your room."

She helped me down the hall, her hand a steady presence on my back. My room was small, clean, and smelled of antiseptic. It was the only home I had now.

As she checked my vitals, her movements efficient and practiced, the silence stretched between us.

"They're engaged," I finally said, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat.

Sarah stopped what she was doing. She didn't look at me. "I saw."

I remember when she first met me, three years ago. I was newly diagnosed, terrified, and Olivia had just vanished. Sarah was my oncologist, brilliant and no-nonsense. She heard my story about my girlfriend disappearing and her face hardened.

I'd tried to defend Olivia. "She wouldn't just leave me. Something must have happened."

Sarah had given me a look then, one I came to know well. It was a look that said she' d seen too much of the world to believe in fairy tales. "Ethan," she' d said, her tone clinical, "a terminal diagnosis is a heavy burden. Not everyone is strong enough to share it."

She thought Olivia had run. That she'd gotten scared and abandoned me. For weeks, every time I mentioned Olivia, I saw that flicker of judgment in her eyes. I was just another sad case, a fool clinging to a fantasy.

"She loves me," I insisted one day, my voice weak from the first round of chemo. "She would never."

"People change," Sarah had replied, not unkindly, but with a finality that shut me down.

Then, a month later, Olivia showed up.

She didn't come to my room. I was asleep. She went straight to the billing office. Sarah found her there, arguing with a clerk. She looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, and her clothes were worn. She was holding a thick envelope stuffed with cash.

She was paying my medical bills.

Sarah told me about it later, her voice softer than I'd ever heard it. "She looked like she hadn't slept in a week," she said. "She just kept saying, 'Take it. It's for Ethan Miller. Make sure he gets the best treatment.'"

The money was a mix of small bills, crumpled and worn. It was busking money. Gig money. Money earned the hard way, an hour at a time. Olivia had been working every waking moment, not for herself, but for me.

Sarah's opinion of Olivia changed that day. Her skepticism was replaced by a grudging respect. "Alright," she'd said to me, a small, tight smile on her face. "Maybe you're not a fool. We're going to fight this. For her."

The fight got harder. The costs piled up. One day, Sarah came into my room with a file in her hand and a strange look on her face.

"I need to talk to you about Olivia," she said.

She had noticed Olivia's name on a list. A list for a high-risk clinical trial for a new drug. The payout was substantial, but the side effects were dangerous. Olivia had signed up for it. And it wasn't the first time. She'd been selling her health to pay for mine.

Sarah confronted her. She told me Olivia had tried to deny it, but Sarah saw the track marks on her arm from the blood draws. She saw the exhaustion that went beyond simple lack of sleep.

"You can't kill yourself to save him," Sarah had told her, her voice ringing with an authority Olivia couldn't ignore. "He needs you here. With him."

Sarah brought her to my room. Seeing her, really seeing her for the first time in weeks, broke my heart. She was so thin. But when she saw me, her face lit up with that smile, the one that had always been reserved just for me.

We held each other and cried. We didn't talk about where she'd been or what she'd done. We didn't have to. We were together.

That was the last good day.

A week later, she was gone again. This time for good. The police report said she'd been driving her beat-up car, probably exhausted, and crashed. The amnesia story started there. Liam Carter found her in the hospital, a Jane Doe with the voice of an angel.

Now, in the sterile quiet of my room, Sarah finished taking my blood pressure. She finally looked me in the eye.

"I was wrong about her back then," she said softly. "She was a good person, Ethan. She loved you. More than anyone I've ever seen."

She paused, her gaze unwavering. "You were the lucky one."

I knew she was right. And that was the cruelest part of all. I was the lucky one. And I had lost it all.