Page 94 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

“What?”

“Your tumor was never going to go away on its own. You were going to have to take medication forever,” he said. “Now…now you just have to wait. Eventually, your motor skills will be back to what they were. You’ll eventually get weaned off of your medication. All you have to do is be patient and wait—adjust to cope with the difficulties until that happens. That’s all that you fucking need to do. Because there’s finally an end in sight. I don’t think that’s too much for one person to cope with, Enzo.”

He was right.

“Being angry because things aren’t perfect—”

“That’s not why I’m angry!” I demanded.

As soon as I found myself shouting back, I shut my mouth and lowered my head. I didn’t want to scream at Alex. I didn’t want to scream at anyone. But if I was going to scream, I didn’t want Alex to be the target.

Alex had been at my bedside in recovery at the hospital. At least, he was there when my memory picked back up. He was there when Dr. Berger had come in to let me know that he considered the surgery a complete success and that my tumor had been cut out using a scope they had sent up to my brain through my nose. Then it had been extracted. Completely. They believed that no cells had been left behind that would cause it to grow back. Absolute certainty can never be had in a situation like mine, but Dr. Berger said he was as hopeful as he’d ever been after a surgery such as mine.

All I had to do was wait for my jostled brain to start shooting off the proper signals at the proper times so that my motor skills were as they had been before.

A night of observation in the hospital after the surgery was all that was needed. Then Alex drove me back to my apartment in Minneapolis. It had all been…nothing.

I no longer had a tumor.

Eventually, I would no longer need to take the medication I had been dependent on for my entire life.

I would soon be normal. Whatever I wanted “normal” to be.

That choice had been given back to me.

“Why are you angry?” Alex asked, speaking through gritted teeth, doing his best to control his frustration with me.

“Because,” I said, choking back tears, “nine days ago I couldn’t even hold a pen for more than a few seconds. Now I am chopping vegetables.”

“Poorly,” Alex said softly.

I chuckled wetly and nodded. “Poorly. But I am doing it. In a few days, maybe I won’t slip at all. Maybe it will be a few weeks—but it will happen. I will chop carrots. I will be fine.”

“And?”

I looked over at him. “Why me?”

He frowned, his head tilting to the side.

“Why not my brother? My sister? Anyone in my family? Why are they not here chopping vegetables—poorly—and I’m dead? Why am I special?”

Alex’s expression softened.

“What did I do to deserve this?” I asked, sniffling. “Leukemia. Embolisms. Cancer. Why is a brain tumor the easiest to fix?”

“Was this easy?” he asked. “The last few decades? Your life?”

“Well, no,” I said. “Nothing ever was. For any of us. But I am here. They are not. Why?”

Alex said nothing as he scooted across the floor and turned so that he was sitting beside me under the sink, our sides touching. He took my hand in his, our fingers intertwining, and rested them upon his knee. He squeezed my hand firmly and leaned into me, pushing our shoulders together. And he stayed silent.

“What?” I asked, chuckling wetly as tears dripped down my face softly. “You aren’t going to tell me what to do? How to get through this?”

He laid his head on my shoulder and squeezed my hand again.

“Life isn’t fair. In fact, it sucks,” he said.

“But?”