Chapter 3 - Ninety Days
The specialist did not use the word dying until after he had explained the scans, the blood tests, and the dangerous progression of Mark's heart disease.
I remember a small plastic model of a heart sitting on the desk between us.
Its bright red and blue chambers looked like a toy that had wandered into the wrong room.
The doctor said the muscle had deteriorated far more quickly than anyone expected.
Treatment could ease some symptoms, but several options were no longer safe or likely to help.
An urgent evaluation by a larger specialty team confirmed the seriousness of the disease.
Even the doctors sounded bewildered by how fast he had become ill.
"How much time?" Mark asked.
The specialist hesitated.
"It could be shorter or longer, but based on the course we're seeing, perhaps three months."
I squeezed Mark's hand hard enough to make him wince.
"What if you are wrong?" I asked.
"I hope I am," the doctor said.
"We will keep caring for him, and we will keep looking for ways to relieve his symptoms."
On the drive home, Mark asked me to stop at a bakery.
I thought he had not heard the prognosis properly.
He ordered two cinnamon rolls and an orange juice, then sat on a bench outside with the paper bag balanced on his knees.
"You can scream," he told me.
"I don't need permission."
"I know."
"Then stop looking like I'm about to explode."
He took a bite of cinnamon roll and swallowed slowly.
"I'm terrified, Hannah."
The sentence was so quiet that I almost missed it.
Then he looked at my stomach and said, "But I still want today."
I put my head against his shoulder and cried in front of the bakery windows while people stepped around us.
The news changed our home without moving a single piece of furniture.
The crib became an accusation.
The yellow curtains seemed offensively bright.
Every nursery item reminded me of a future Mark might never see.
I wanted to throw things away and cling to them at the same time.
Our family reacted in different ways.
My sister, Claire, arrived with freezer meals and the practical calm she used when other people had lost theirs.
June began appearing each morning with fresh bread and stories about nothing important.
Thomas called to ask whether the doctors had considered a private clinic he had read about online.
When Mark explained the evaluation already underway, Thomas said he should be fighting harder.
"Don't let them convince you it's over," he insisted.
Mark listened, exhausted.
"I'm not giving up," he said.
"I'm choosing how to use the time I have."
Thomas did not seem to understand the difference.
He sent articles promising miraculous reversals and spoke of money as though any illness could be negotiated away.
Once, when Mark was resting upstairs, Thomas cornered me in the kitchen.
"You need to push him," he said.
"He's letting everyone talk him into acceptance."
I looked at the medical folder on the table, thick with consultations and choices already considered.
"You don't know what he's been through," I said.
Thomas's jaw tightened.
"He's my brother."
"He's my husband," I replied.
"And he has a right to decide how he wants to spend the days he still has."
I regretted the sharpness, but not the truth.
Mark began making lists.
Some were practical: bank information, the insurance policy, names of people who could repair the roof, instructions for paying property taxes.
Others were stranger: teach Lily to whistle, never force her to finish a book she hates, plant one more row of lilies.
He wrote questions he wanted to ask me, too.
"What is the first thing you remember about us?" he asked one evening.
"That you spilled coffee on my coat."
"That was an introduction strategy."
"It was a terrible one."
"It worked."
We laughed and then sat very still, because laughter had become precious enough to hurt.
Some days he was well enough to work for an hour at his desk.
He continued drawing plans for a community center he had volunteered to help renovate.
Other days, simply making it to the mailbox required a rest.
His colleagues offered to finish the drawings, but he insisted on helping when he could.
I asked him why he was spending energy on a building he might never see completed.
"Because somebody will use it," he said.
"The point was never that I'd be there to cut the ribbon."
His words would return to me later, when I learned what he had been arranging with Doctor Monroe.
As our seventh month became our eighth, the house filled with medical supplies and quiet conversations.
I learned the best way to help him sit without making him dizzy.
I learned to hear the difference between an ordinary sigh and the strained breath that meant he needed to rest.
I knew which shirts had buttons he could still manage and which ones I should fasten for him.
Mark noticed more than I wanted him to.
One afternoon I caught him watching me kneel to tie his shoes.
"This was not in the wedding vows," he said.
"It was covered by the part about loving you when you're annoying."
He smiled, then his eyes filled.
"I thought I would be the one doing this for you when you were eighty."
"So did I."
We did not pretend otherwise.
That honesty, painful as it was, kept us close.
At night I sometimes climbed into the nursery and held the little yellow cardigan, imagining a future measured in birthdays Mark would miss.
I grew frightened of the way calendars worked.
The closer Lily came to us, the farther he seemed to move away.
I asked the specialist whether our daughter would remember the sound of Mark's voice through the womb.
He said there were things about early recognition that medicine could discuss, but he could not promise what she would remember.
Mark heard about my question and began recording himself singing badly to my stomach.
"Evidence that I was an enthusiastic father," he said.
"Even if not a gifted musician."
I thought he was joking.
I had no idea those recordings were the beginning of an elaborate farewell.
A week later he returned from a private appointment with Doctor Monroe holding an empty folder.
When I asked about it, he kissed my forehead.
"I'm organizing something," he said.
"For you and Lily."
"What kind of something?"
"Something I hope you'll never need as much as I think you will."
May you like
I wanted to demand an answer.
Instead, I rested my hand over his tired heart and let him sleep.
