She said that she would wait for him.

There are two names. They are strung together like smooth notes resonating from the throat of a bright, red robin. They move together in synchrony, harmony, and when you hear their sequential rhythm, it brings you to tears.

It starts small; a speck of blood on the pillow, a bit of falling hair in the morning shower, chills. Chills chills chills. She knows what it is, but she won't utter a word for some silly fear that the truth she knows so deeply in her heart will scare him away. But he knows. He's seen the signs; sees them hanging there like limp remnants of the inhumanity of the world. They don't speak anymore, and some moments he wants to open his mouth and scream at her; scream his love and his sorrow but he doesn't, he doesn't because...because...

because.

He can't even begin to think of relearning life without her. The man on the screen tells him that he can learn how to live without cigarettes or alcohol; that he can relearn to do any task without the vices involved, and he throws a glass at the apathetic mannequin; crying out when it shatters everywhere. Yes, he shakes with the thought, Yes, you can relearn without those but tell me-tell me how to live without her!

When they step into the doctor's office, his rage overflows, erupting with the fury of a thousand jilted lovers; a thousand freshly-cut trees, a thousand daisies whose poor heads have been torn off without a second thought and now-now, in this moment, he knows how they feel. His hands are at the man's collar, and he's pushing him into the wall yelling that he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand, he doesn't-“Tell me doctor, tell me how I'll live without her. Tell me if you can live without your heart, doctor, tell me. Does it hurt very much? Tell me how it feels to live without sanity. Without oxygen. Does it feel good, doctor!?” And she's sobbing now; he crumbles with the weight and sound of it, and when he releases the man in the white coat; now, suddenly so small, the man crumples to the ground in a boneless heap of sorrow and empathy.

It is like watching a scene from a movie, only far more horrible because real life should not be this way. He goes to her, he grasps her sleeve and she pulls, she pulls, she tries to pull away but he knows she can't escape him and she knows she doesn't want to. He pulls her to him and she cries, she cries and it echoes through the hallways of the hospital; bouncing off the freshly-waxed floors, the hospital beds filled with the living dead, I'm not going to die. I'm not going to die, she tells herself, but his face is wet with tears now too, and she knows that she is, in fact, going to die, and that the cold, clinical weight of it just might kill him too.

Things get worse every day. The man looks at the ground with a resigned, She doesn't have much time left, sir. Her mother tells him that maybe he should start making plans. She tells him she wants to be cremated, and he asks her what color dress she wants to be laid out in. She laughs then, a laugh weak with such exhaustion; a laugh that makes him clench his eyes as he feels them fill up and spill over with the stormy elixir of the sea. He begins to laugh now too, tears spilling down his face as he mumbles, ”I wasn't kidding, I wasn't-” and she laughs harder now, ”I know you weren't. You just never listen to me, do you?”

She said she would wait for him. And she did.