“Please, Fox. Don’t let me fall.”
Her voice nearly broke in six words. She sounded small. Somehow younger. It was almost like I blinked. And in that fractured splitting of a second, the fearless powerhouse of a woman with whom I was so familiar had morphed into a defenseless little girl. The worst possible magic trick imaginable.
And I didn’t know what the fuck I was I supposed to do with that request.
It triggered a familiar “soldier mode.” That almost clinical shutting down of emotion. Because at that moment, she needed me to be brave. And I refused to disappoint her.
The entirety of her tribe wants her to fight. To accept the invasive treatments not guaranteeing anything beyond maybe a little more time. And that is a hell of a lot of hurt to accept in exchange for just a maybe.
I am of her tribe. One of the original members still kicking from the before times. It would be dishonest of me to say that I haven’t secretly wished that she would reconsider, too. Because there is just too much that time cannot erase.
Just like the disease currently ripping apart her body, that lingering uncertainty of maybe metastasizes into a variety of definitions. Maybe a little more time. Maybe ending up together, as we often joked about over the years. Maybe being happy, only for real this time. Maybe living in a world free of the scourge currently killing her.
I can already see the effects of it gaining ground. Quicker than I think either of us even realized was possible. And maybe that shocking transformation is what triggered the smallness of that voice sitting beside me on that flyover day.
You’ll never convince me otherwise, but I’m sure that it’s possible to smell. The familiar pheromones of tragedy I first smelled in a frigid Indiana hospital room in 1989. The perfume of an ending nature designed to trigger the gathering of last things. Resources. Arrangements. Distant family and friends. And far too often, goodbyes.
Most nights, memories of that bouquet of tragedy haunt me as I lay awake. Sleep has long been an inconvenient hurdle for me. And the majority of my insomniatic wanderings recently revolve around elaborate fantasies of her somehow winning. Of pulling that miracle out of the jumbled hypotheticals. Of sending me a magical text containing the admission of remission.
It isn’t even about us being together. Or somehow winning her heart over that tipping point. Or knowing the simple pleasure of her skin pressing softly into mine. That was always a long shot.
I just selfishly want to fucking know that she is still out there.
I want the tangible comfort of knowing that she is still creating beautiful things. Making memories. Being weird. And being that wild haired gale who first called me a fox.
What the fuck am I supposed to do without my Old Guard? I am too advanced in years to make old friends. So that makes the ones I do still have just that more precious.
At some point, everyone will keep on living.
And we both know that she won’t.
I will never be ready for that last goodbye.
“Please, Fox. Don’t let me fall.”
I won’t.
I promise.
