Chapter 9 - The Cancer Came Back
Fourteen years after remission, Phedra's cancer returned.
I thought the world had ended.
She didn't.
She looked at the doctor.
“What are the options?”
Treatment.
Different this time.
New medications.
Better therapies than fourteen years earlier.
Still frightening.
At home, I broke down.
Phedra held me.
“Hey.”
“I can't do this again.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I almost lost you.”
“But you didn't.”
“What if—”
She stopped me.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“I spent eleven months being treated like I was already dead.”
Her voice was firm.
“I will never do that to myself.”
That changed me.
We lived while treating.
Dinner.
Work.
Birthdays.
Travel.
Hospital.
Normal life woven around medicine.
Selina learned about the recurrence through Godfrey.
She sent no letter.
No request.
Just flowers through the hospital with a card:
No response needed. Wishing you strength.
Phedra kept them.
That surprised me.
“She finally learned.”
“What?”
“How to give something without attaching herself to it.”
Treatment worked again.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
Phedra lived.
Years.
Then more.
We grew old enough to complain about young people.
A major achievement.
Godfrey married.
Had a daughter.
He named her Grace.
Phedra became her godmother.
I didn't understand that decision.
Phedra did.
Grace had done nothing wrong.
She grew up knowing Uncle Damian and Aunt Phedra.
When she was old enough, Godfrey told her what he had done.
Not every detail.
Enough.
Grace asked Phedra:
“Why do you still talk to my dad?”
Phedra smiled.
“Because he changed enough for me to choose to.”
Again.
Choice.
Always.
Selina died at seventy-nine.
I was there.
Phedra wasn't.
Her decision.
Mom's last clear words to me were:
“Take care of your wife.”
I almost laughed at the cruelty of timing.
Instead, I said:
“I always will.”
Then corrected myself.
“No.”
Mom looked at me.
“We'll take care of each other.”
She smiled.
Good.
That was the final thing between us.
Not absolution.
May you like
Not hatred.
A correction.
