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Oct 7, 2025

─────── WHEN IT’S COLD I’D LIKE TO DIE .ᐟ

summary: art donaldson is twenty-one and dying, and you meet him on a tuesday that tastes like antiseptic and defeat.

word count: 12.7k

cw: major character death, terminal illness (leukemia and lupus), medical settings, grief, chronic pain, emotional trauma, slow decline, hospital setting

notes: wow. okay. so. it’s much harder to write while sobbing than i thought. this ruined me. like, truly, gutturally ripped my heart out. AND I’M THE FUCKING AUTHOR??? LIKE WHAT??? WHAT ARE Y’ALL ABOUT TO PUT YOURSELVES THROUGH??????? anyways… obviously this will contain heavy angst, so if you aren’t in the right headspace to read that, i recommend you skip this one for your own well-being ♡ i also highly recommend looping this song while you read! it makes for an immersive experience. okay, i’ll shut up now. enjoy :)

The oncology wing smells like a lie. They pump it full of that industrial-strength air freshener—something floral, something synthetic, something that's supposed to mask the rot—but it doesn't work. Nothing works. You can still smell it underneath: the decay, the fear, the way bodies break down when they're not supposed to, when you're twenty-three and your joints are already grinding themselves to dust, when your immune system has decided you're the enemy.

The lupus came for you like a thief in the night, crept up on you during your senior year of college, stole your morning runs and your dance classes and your ability to open a fucking jar without your hands screaming. Now you're here, in this purgatory of beeping machines and fluorescent lights that never sleep, getting another round of bloodwork that'll probably just confirm what you already know: your body hates you.

That's when you see him. Art Donaldson, slumped in one of those horrible vinyl chairs that squeak every time you shift, the kind that stick to your skin in summer and freeze you solid in winter. He's got an IV line snaking out of his left arm, taped down with that medical tape that leaves residue, and he's staring at his phone like it's personally offended him.

Even sick—Christ, especially sick—he's devastating to look at. All sharp jawline and hollow cheeks, that particular brand of beautiful that college athletes carry like a birthright, except the leukemia has bleached him out, turned his tan to something closer to parchment. His hair is still there, though thinner than it probably used to be, that dirty blond that catches the awful fluorescent light, and when he shifts in his seat you can see the way his Stanford Tennis t-shirt hangs off him like he's borrowed it from someone three sizes bigger. He wasn't always this small, you can tell. You can see the ghost of who he used to be in the slope of his shoulders, the length of his legs, the way his fingers curl around his phone like they're remembering the grip of a racket.

You don't mean to stare, but you do, because there's something magnetic about grief, about watching someone else crumble in real-time when you're doing the same thing in slow motion.

Your nurse—Patricia, the one with the kind eyes and the no-bullshit attitude—follows your gaze and makes a small noise in the back of her throat. "That's Art," she says, quiet enough that it feels like a secret, like she's letting you in on something. "He's been here a while. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Aggressive. He was supposed to go pro, tennis. Had scouts and everything." The way she says it makes your chest hurt, that particular ache that comes from recognizing your own story in someone else's body. You were supposed to do things too—grad school, maybe law, definitely something that involved your body not betraying you before you hit twenty-five. But here you are, and there he is, and isn't that just the fucking tragedy of it all.

He looks up then, like he can feel you watching, and his eyes are this impossible shade of bluish-grey, the kind of eyes that probably got him out of trouble his whole life, that probably made girls stupid and boys jealous. They land on you and something shifts in his expression—not quite a smile, not quite recognition, but something. Acknowledgment, maybe. The kind of look that says: Oh, you too? You're one of us? Welcome to hell, population: everyone in this goddamn wing

You don't look away, even though every instinct tells you to, even though it feels too intimate, this moment of shared understanding between two people whose bodies have declared war on themselves. Patricia finishes with your IV port, gives your shoulder a squeeze that's probably supposed to be comforting, and then you're alone with your bag of fluids and your racing heart and the boy across the room who looks like he's already half-gone.

The thing about hospitals is that they strip you down to your most basic self. There's no pretense here, no carefully curated social media presence, no putting on your best face. You're sick, and everyone knows it, and there's something almost freeing in that honesty even as it's devastating. You watch Art shift in his chair, wince slightly like the movement costs him something, and then he does something you don't expect: he nods at you. Not a big gesture, nothing dramatic, just a small dip of his chin that might as well be a white flag. You nod back, your own small surrender, and just like that you've made a friend in the trenches. Or maybe not a friend—maybe something else entirely, something that doesn't have a name yet, something that only exists in places like this where everyone is too tired to lie.

An hour passes, maybe two—time moves differently here, stretches and contracts like it's as sick as the rest of you—and then he speaks. His voice is rough, underused, like he hasn't talked to anyone in days and maybe he hasn't.

"First time?" he asks, and there's something almost wry in it, some edge of dark humor that you immediately understand. You could play dumb, could ask him what he means, but you don't. You know exactly what he's asking.

"Third week," you answer, and your own voice sounds strange to your ears, too small for the fluorescent vastness of this place. "You?"

He huffs out something that might be a laugh if it didn't sound so much like sandpaper. "Month six," he says, and the weight of those words settles between you like a stone. Six months. Half a year of this. You can't even imagine it, except you can, except you're probably headed there yourself if the doctors are right, if the treatment plan they've outlined is anything to go by.

"Jesus," you breathe out, and it's not quite a prayer but it's close.

He shrugs, or tries to—the movement is aborted halfway through, like his body can't quite commit to the casual gesture anymore. "Yeah, well. Turns out leukemia doesn't give a shit about your serve speed or your college ranking." There's bitterness there, corrosive and sharp, the kind that comes from having your entire future ripped away while you were still reaching for it. You get it, God, do you get it. You'd had plans too, a whole life mapped out in your head, and then your body decided to rewrite the script without asking permission.

"Lupus," you offer, because it feels like a trade, this exchange of diagnoses like baseball cards. "The doctors keep using words like 'manageable' and 'chronic' like that's supposed to be comforting."

He actually smiles at that, small and bitter and somehow still beautiful. "Manageable," he repeats, testing the word like it's in a foreign language. "Yeah, they love that one. Also 'aggressive treatment' and 'we'll do everything we can,' which is code for 'we're throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks.'"

The honesty is brutal, refreshing, necessary. You're so fucking tired of people tiptoeing around you, of the careful optimism your parents force into their voices, of your friends who don't know what to say so they say nothing at all or worse, everything, filling the silence with meaningless platitudes about staying positive and fighting hard as if cancer gives a single fuck about your attitude.

But Art—Art doesn't do that. He looks at you like you're both standing in the wreckage of your lives and there's no point in pretending the house isn't on fire.

"You still in school?" he asks, and you notice the way his fingers keep flexing, restless, like they're looking for something to grip.

"Was," you say. "Had to take medical leave. I was doing pre-law, which feels hilarious now. Like, who the fuck was I kidding?"

He nods slowly, understanding written all over his gaunt face. "I was supposed to graduate this year. Already had my spot lined up—was going to defer going pro for a year, get my degree, make my parents happy. Then my blood work came back fucked, and suddenly none of that mattered."

There's a long pause where neither of you speaks, where the only sound is the steady drip of your IVs and the distant beeping of someone else's monitor, someone else's crisis. You watch the way the light catches on the fluid running into his arm, clear and clinical and keeping him alive in the most mechanical sense.

"Do you miss it?" you ask finally, even though you already know the answer. "Tennis?"

His jaw tightens, and for a second you think you've overstepped, pushed too hard too fast, but then he exhales slowly. "Every fucking day. It's like—it's like losing a limb, except the limb was your entire identity. I've been playing since I was seven. My mom used to drive me to practice at five in the morning before school. I had this serve, this thing I'd been perfecting for years, and now I can barely make it to the bathroom without getting winded." The rawness in his voice splits you open, makes your own throat tight.

"I used to run," you tell him, and it feels like a confession. "Nothing serious, not like you, but I loved it. That feeling of your body doing exactly what you asked it to do, you know? And now I wake up and my joints are so stiff I can't make a fist for the first hour. It's like being trapped in someone else's body, someone old and broken."

"Yeah," he says quietly, and that single word holds so much weight it could sink ships. "Yeah, exactly like that."

His eyes meet yours again, and this time there's something different in them, something that looks almost like relief. Like he's been drowning and you just threw him a rope, even though you're drowning too, even though neither of you can save the other. But maybe that's not the point. Maybe the point is just not drowning alone.

"I'm Art, by the way," he says, and it's so absurdly formal given the circumstances that you almost laugh.

"I know," you admit. "Patricia told me. The nurse."

He raises an eyebrow, and there's a ghost of his former charm in the expression, that cocky athlete charisma that probably had people falling all over themselves. "Talking about me, huh? Should I be flattered or concerned?"

You do laugh then, a small huff of air that feels foreign in your chest. "Flattered, probably. She said you were supposed to go pro. Said you had scouts."

Something in his face shutters at that, the brief moment of levity evaporating like steam. "Had," he emphasizes, and the past tense is a knife. "Now I've got a port in my chest and a countdown clock I can't see but can definitely feel."

The words hang between you, brutal and true, and you don't try to soften them because what would be the point? "I'm sorry," you say, and you mean it, even though sorry is the most useless word in the English language, even though it can't change anything or fix anything or bring back what he's lost.

He waves it off with those restless fingers. "Don't be. Not your fault my bone marrow decided to stage a coup." Then, after a beat: "What's your name? Figure if we're gonna be miserable together we should at least know what to call each other."

You tell him, and he repeats it slowly, like he's testing how it sounds, how it fits in his mouth. "Okay," he says, nodding to himself. "Okay, good. Nice to meet you, I guess, even though this is literally the worst possible place to meet anyone."

"Agreed," you say, and you find yourself almost smiling despite everything, despite the IV in your arm and the ache in your bones and the boy across from you who looks like he's being erased in slow motion. "But I guess we work with what we've got."

He snorts, shakes his head, and for just a second—just one brief, shining second—he looks young again, looks like the college kid he's supposed to be instead of someone's terminal diagnosis. "Work with what we've got," he echoes. "Jesus Christ, is that what we're calling this nightmare now?"

You shrug, or try to, mimicking his earlier aborted gesture. "Beats the alternative. Which is, what, sitting here in silence pretending we're not both falling apart?"

He considers this, his head tilting slightly, and then he grins. It's not a happy grin—there's too much darkness in it, too much knowledge of what's coming—but it's real. "Fair point," he concedes. "Alright then. Let's be miserable together. At least that way it's not quite so fucking lonely."

And just like that, without ceremony or fanfare, you've made a pact. Two people whose bodies are betraying them, who've had their futures stolen, who understand that sometimes the only thing you can do is hold on and hope the fall doesn't kill you before you hit the ground. You settle back in your chair, feeling the vinyl stick to your skin through your thin hospital gown, and watch as Art does the same. The silence that falls now is different—not empty, but full, heavy with understanding and shared misery and something that might, in another life, have been the beginning of something good. But this isn't another life. This is this life, and it's brutal and unfair and probably won't end well for either of you. Still, when Art catches your eye again and offers that small, broken smile, you find yourself smiling back. Because what else is there to do? You're here, he's here, and for now—for right now—that has to be enough.

⸻

The first time you see Art's room, it's because he's too weak to make it to the infusion center and they've brought his chemo to him instead. Patricia mentions it in passing—"Art's having a rough day, they've got him on the heavy stuff"—and something in your chest tightens at the casual way she says it, like this is normal, like everyone's worst day is just another Tuesday in the oncology wing.

You've been here two months now, long enough that the nurses know your name without checking their charts, long enough that you've memorized the pattern of stains on the ceiling tiles above your usual chair. Long enough that seeing Art has become the only thing that makes these visits bearable, his dark humor and his bitter honesty and the way he looks at you like you're both in on the same terrible joke.

You shouldn't go to his room. You know this. There are protocols, boundaries, the invisible lines that separate patients from each other even as you're all drowning in the same pool.

But your infusion finishes and your hands won't stop shaking—not from the lupus, not today, but from something else, something that feels dangerously close to caring about whether Art is okay or not. So you find yourself in the hallway, following the room numbers like breadcrumbs, until you're standing outside 304 with your heart doing something complicated and painful in your chest. The door is half-open, and you can hear the steady beep of monitors, the low murmur of a nurse's voice, and underneath it all, nothing. No response from Art, no witty comeback, no rough laugh. Just silence, and somehow that's worse than anything else could be.

You knock anyway, soft enough that it's barely a sound, and push the door open wider. The room is exactly like every other room in this wing—institutional beige walls, linoleum floors that squeak under your shoes, that same horrible fluorescent lighting that makes everyone look half-dead even when they're not. But Art is in the bed, and Christ, he looks small. Smaller than he did in the infusion center, smaller than someone his height should ever look, swallowed up by white sheets and white blankets and the white hospital gown that ties at his too-thin neck.

There's an IV pole next to him with multiple bags hanging like a goddamn Christmas tree of poison, each one pumping something different into his body, and you can see the port in his chest where his gown has shifted, the skin around it red and angry. His eyes are closed, his face turned toward the window even though the blinds are drawn, and for one terrible moment you think you've made a mistake coming here, that you're intruding on something private, something meant to be suffered alone.

But then he speaks without opening his eyes, his voice barely more than a whisper. "If you're here to tell me to stay positive, you can fuck right off." The words should be harsh but they come out exhausted, worn down to nothing, and you feel something crack in your chest.

"Good thing I'm not, then," you say, and his eyes open slowly, like even that small movement costs him everything. When he focuses on you, there's surprise there first, then something that might be relief, then something else entirely—something vulnerable and raw that makes you want to look away except you can't, you won't.

"You came," he says, and it's not quite a question.

"Patricia said you were having a bad day," you tell him, staying near the door because you're not sure if you're welcome further in, not sure what the rules are for this. "Figured you could use some company. Or not. I can go if—"

"Stay," he interrupts, and the word comes out too fast, too desperate, before he can coat it in casual indifference. "Please. It's just been me and the fucking ceiling tiles for six hours and I'm losing my mind."

So you stay. You drag the visitor's chair closer to his bed—it's the same vinyl as the ones in the infusion center, because apparently hospitals only have one supplier and they chose the most uncomfortable option possible—and settle in, your own body protesting the movement with sharp jabs of pain that you've learned to breathe through. Art watches you with those blue eyes, tracking the way you move, and you know he's cataloging your pain the same way you're cataloging his. It's what you do now, you and him, this constant assessment of who's worse off on any given day, though you'd never say it out loud.

"What flavor are they pumping into you today?" you ask, nodding toward the IV bags, and he huffs out something that's almost a laugh.

"The fun kind. Cytarabine and daunorubicin, in case you were wondering. They're tag-teaming my bone marrow, real aggressive-like. My oncologist keeps using the word 'consolidation' like I'm a fucking corporate merger."

You wince in sympathy, and he sees it, appreciates it. "Sounds absolutely terrible," you offer, and he nods slowly.

"It is. I threw up twice already and we're only three hours in. Got another five to go on this bag, then they'll switch to the next one, and somewhere around hour eight I'll probably forget my own name."

The honesty is brutal, but that's what you've built between you—this foundation of brutal honesty, of not sugar-coating the nightmare because what would be the point. You sit in silence for a while, listening to the machines beep and whir, watching the way the afternoon light tries to sneak through the gaps in the blinds and fails. Art's hand is on top of the blanket, pale and skeletal, his fingers still doing that restless thing they do, and without thinking about it too hard you reach over and cover his hand with yours. He goes still immediately, like you've startled him, and you almost pull back—but then his fingers curl around yours, gripping tight enough that you can feel the bones of his hand, the tendons standing out in sharp relief.

"Tell me something," he says after a long moment, his eyes fixed on where your hands are joined. "Tell me something that has nothing to do with hospitals or treatments or blood counts. Tell me about before."

Before. The word sits between you like a ghost, like a photograph of people you used to be, people who had bodies that worked and futures that stretched out like highways. "Before," you repeat, tasting the word, trying to remember what that even means. "I used to go to this coffee shop near campus every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Had the same order every time—iced vanilla latte with oat milk. The barista knew my name, had it written on my cup before I even got to the counter. I'd sit in this corner booth and do my reading for class, and I was always so stressed about grades, about internships, about building the perfect resume." You laugh, but it's hollow. "I'd give anything to have those problems again. I'd give anything to be stressed about a fucking midterm instead of whether my kidneys are going to fail." Art's grip on your hand tightens, and when you look at him his eyes are closed again but there's something in his expression—understanding, solidarity, shared grief for the people you used to be.

"I had this rival," he says suddenly, his voice soft and far away, like he's talking from the bottom of a well. "David Chen. We came up through juniors together, played each other a hundred times, pushed each other to be better. He was—fuck, he was good. Better than me some days, worse than me on others, but always there, always this constant presence. We were supposed to play each other in the NCAA finals this year. I had this whole speech planned in my head for after I beat him, something about how he made me better, how the rivalry was the best thing that ever happened to my game." He opens his eyes, and they're wet, shining in the terrible fluorescent light. "He came to visit me once, right after my diagnosis. Couldn't even look me in the eye. Just stood there by the door making these awful platitudes about how I'd beat this, how I was a fighter, all that bullshit. Then he left and I haven't heard from him since." The pain in his voice is physical, a living thing, and you squeeze his hand harder.

"People don't know what to do with us," you say quietly, and it's the truth you've been living with for months now. "We're too real, too uncomfortable. We remind them that bad things happen to young people, that you can do everything right and still lose. It's easier for them to just... not deal with it."

Art nods, a single tear escaping down his temple, disappearing into his hair. "Yeah," he whispers. "Yeah, that's exactly it. My parents come every week, and I love them, but I can see how hard it is for them. My mom brings me food I can't eat because the chemo makes everything taste like metal, and my dad talks about what I'll do when I'm better like there's any guarantee I'm going to be better. They mean well, but it's like they're talking to a version of me that doesn't exist anymore."

You don't say anything to that because what is there to say? Instead you just sit there, holding his hand, being present in the way that no one else seems to be able to manage. Being willing to look directly at the horror of it instead of trying to dress it up in hope and positivity and other lies.

Eventually Art's breathing evens out into something that might be sleep, though it's fitful, his face twitching with discomfort even in unconsciousness. You should leave, should go home and rest your own battered body, but you don't. You stay in that uncomfortable vinyl chair, your hand in his, watching the poison drip into his veins and trying not to think about what comes next. A nurse comes in once to check his vitals, sees you there and just nods, doesn't ask you to leave, doesn't question why you're holding the hand of a boy you barely know. Maybe she understands, or maybe she's just seen too much death to care about hospital protocol. Either way, you're grateful for the silent permission to stay.

The afternoon bleeds into evening, the light through the blinds going from gray to darker gray, and still you sit. Still you hold on. Still you bear witness to Art's suffering because someone should, because he shouldn't have to do this alone. After all, you understand in a way that no one else in his life can.

When visiting hours officially end, Patricia pokes her head in and catches your eye. She gives you a look that's half reproach, half understanding, and mouths "ten more minutes" before disappearing again. Art stirs at the sound, his eyes cracking open, unfocused and glassy from whatever pain medication they've added to his cocktail.

"You're still here," he mumbles, and there's wonder in it, like he can't quite believe it.

"Yeah," you tell him simply. "I'm still here." He tries to smile, but it comes out more like a grimace.

"Doesn't make sense. You've got your own shit to deal with. You don't need to sit here watching me fall apart."

You shake your head, and your own eyes are burning now, hot and tight with tears you refuse to let fall. "Maybe I need to," you say. "Maybe it helps, knowing I'm not the only one. Maybe we're helping each other." He considers this through his haze of pain and medication, his thumb moving absently across your knuckles.

"Maybe," he concedes. "Or maybe we're just two disasters finding comfort in shared misery." You smile despite everything, despite the horror of where you are and what you're facing. "That too," you agree.

When you finally leave, your hand feels cold without his, empty in a way that has nothing to do with the lupus eating away at your joints. You walk through the hospital corridors in a daze, past the other patients in their rooms, past the nurses' station where Patricia gives you a knowing look, past the elevator that smells like bleach and broken dreams. And when you get to your car, you sit in the driver's seat for a long time, your hands on the steering wheel, and let yourself cry. Not for yourself this time, but for Art. For the tennis player who will never play again, for the college kid who might not make it to graduation, for the boy with beautiful blue eyes who's being erased one chemo session at a time. You cry until you're empty, until there's nothing left, and then you drive home in silence, the radio off, the world dark and indifferent around you.

⸻

The thing about dying slowly is that it gives you time to get used to the idea. Not that you ever really get used to it—how could you, when your body is literally consuming itself, when every day brings some new fresh hell—but there's a kind of numb acceptance that settles in after a while. You stop being shocked by the bad news, stop being surprised when things get worse instead of better, stop hoping for miracles because hope is just another word for setting yourself up for disappointment. Art is already there, has been there since long before you met him, and you're learning the territory from him, following the map he's drawn with his bitter humor and his brutal honesty.

It's week three of knowing him when you start spending more time in his room than in the infusion center. Your treatment schedule doesn't always line up with his anymore—they've changed his protocol twice now, throwing different combinations of drugs at the leukemia like they're playing chemical roulette—but you come anyway, bringing your own IV pole like a fucked-up security blanket, parking yourself in that vinyl chair that's started to feel like yours.

The nurses don't comment on it anymore, have stopped questioning why you're always in 304 instead of where you're supposed to be. Maybe they understand that sometimes the best medicine isn't in a bag hanging from a pole, or maybe they just don't have the energy to enforce rules that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Either way, you're grateful for the silent permission to exist in Art's space, to be the witness he needs even when he pretends he doesn't.

He talks more now, when the chemo isn't completely wrecking him, and you learn things about him in fragments, in pieces scattered between bouts of nausea and pain. He tells you about growing up in New Rochelle, about his grandmother who taught him to play chess, about the first time he picked up a tennis racket at seven years old and felt something click into place in his chest like recognition. "It was like I'd been looking for something my whole life and suddenly there it was," he says one afternoon, his voice dreamy with painkillers but still sharp with memory. "This perfect thing that made sense when nothing else did. My parents were fighting all the time back then, and school was boring, and I didn't really fit in with the other kids. But on the court? On the court I knew exactly who I was." His eyes are distant, fixed on something you can't see, some ghost of his former self. "I was good at it too, like scary good. Started winning tournaments by the time I was nine, had coaches telling my parents I could be special if I worked hard enough."

You listen, curled up in your chair with your knees pulled to your chest—a position that makes your joints scream but feels necessary somehow, like you need to make yourself smaller to fit into his memories with him. "Did you?" you ask. "Work hard enough?"

He laughs, but it turns into a cough halfway through, wet and rattling, and you have to watch him struggle through it, watch him spit into the plastic basin they keep on his bedside table. When he catches his breath, his face is flushed and his eyes are watering, but he's smiling anyway, that broken beautiful smile that kills you every time. "Fuck yes, I worked hard," he says when he can speak again. "I lived on the court. Four, five hours a day minimum, more during summers and school breaks. I gave up everything for tennis—parties, relationships, anything that might distract me from the goal. I was going to be the best, you know? That was the plan. Professional tennis player by twenty-two, Grand Slam champion by twenty-five. I had it all mapped out."

The past tense is a violence, and you both feel it hanging in the air between you like smoke. "I'm sorry," you say, because what else is there? Sorry is useless, sorry can't give him back his serve or his strength or his future, but it's all you have.

He waves it off, that restless hand moving through the air like he's swatting at invisible flies. "Don't be sorry. Be pissed off. That's what I am—just fucking furious all the time that this is what I get. Twenty-one years old and my body just decides to stage a rebellion, starts making all these fucked-up white blood cells that don't work, and suddenly everything I built is just... gone." His voice cracks on the last word, and you watch him struggle to hold it together, watch him blink rapidly against tears that he won't let fall. "I should be at practice right now," he continues, quieter now, more to himself than to you. "Should be working on my backhand, running drills, preparing for the season. Instead I'm here, pissing into a bedpan because I'm too weak to walk to the bathroom, letting poison drip into my veins and hoping it kills the cancer before it kills me."

The rawness of it steals your breath, makes your own eyes burn with sympathy tears you have no right to cry. "Tell me about your best match," you say suddenly, desperately needing to take him somewhere else, somewhere better, even if it's just in memory. "Your favorite one. The one that felt like everything you'd worked for was worth it."

Art's expression shifts at that, something softening in his face, and he settles back against his pillows with a small sigh. "Junior year," he says immediately. "NCAA tournament, semifinal round. I was playing this kid from Duke, tall guy with a killer serve, everyone said he was going to destroy me. And for the first set, he did—I couldn't return anything, kept getting aced left and right, lost it six-two. But then something clicked." His eyes are far away again, but there's light in them now, animation that makes him look almost healthy for a moment. "I figured out his pattern, the way he telegraphed where the serve was going with his toss. Once I had that, I had him. Came back and took the next three sets, and by the end he was so frustrated he was double-faulting every other point."

You can see it as he describes it—Art on the court, healthy and strong and perfect, doing what he was born to do. The image hurts, but it's a good hurt, the kind of pain that comes from being allowed to touch something beautiful. "The crowd was losing their minds," he continues, and there's wonder in his voice now, pure and undiluted. "I could hear people chanting my name, could feel the energy of it, and when I hit the winning shot—this perfect cross-court forehand that he couldn't even touch—I just... I felt invincible. Like nothing could stop me, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to do." He turns his head to look at you then, and his eyes are wet but he's smiling, really smiling, and it transforms his whole face. "That's what I miss the most," he admits. "Not the winning, not the glory or whatever. Just that feeling of being exactly who you're meant to be, of your body doing exactly what you ask it to do. Of being whole."

The word lands between you like a grenade, and suddenly you're both crying, quiet tears that slip down your faces without permission. Because you know that feeling too, the feeling of being whole, and you know what it's like to lose it, to have your body become a stranger, an enemy, a prison. You reach for his hand again—it's become your habit, this touching, this constant physical connection that grounds you both—and he grips it like a lifeline.

"I know," you whisper, your voice thick with tears. "I know exactly what you mean."

And you do, God help you, you do. You remember what it felt like to run, to feel your legs eating up the pavement, to feel your heart pounding in that good way, the way that meant you were alive and strong and capable. You remember dancing in your apartment, drunk on cheap wine and good music, spinning in circles until you were dizzy with joy. You remember your body as a source of pleasure instead of pain, as something that worked with you instead of against you.

"Tell me yours," Art says, squeezing your hand. "Tell me your best moment, your invincible moment."

You have to think about it, have to dig through the rubble of your before-life to find something worth sharing. "Freshman year of college," you finally say. "There was this party—typical stupid college party, too many people crammed into too small a space, music too loud, drinks too strong. And everyone was dancing, just completely unselfconscious, and I remember thinking how usually I'd be standing on the sidelines watching because I was too anxious, too worried about looking stupid." Art's thumb traces patterns on your knuckles, encouraging you to continue. "But that night I just... went for it. Just threw myself into the crowd and danced like an idiot, and it was amazing. I felt so free, so completely myself, and there was this moment where the song changed to something everyone knew and the whole room started singing along, and I was part of it, part of this collective joy."

Your voice breaks on the last word, and Art pulls your joined hands up to rest against his chest, right over his heart. You can feel it beating, steady but too fast, his body working overtime just to keep him alive.

"I miss that," you confess. "I miss being able to just exist in my body without constantly monitoring it, without wondering if this is going to be the day everything gets worse. I miss being young and stupid and thinking I had forever."

Art makes a noise in the back of his throat, agreement and grief all mixed together. "We should've had forever," he says fiercely. "We should've had decades of being young and stupid, of making mistakes and fixing them, of growing up and growing old. This is bullshit. This whole thing is complete and utter bullshit."

You can't argue with that because he's right—it is bullshit, it's cosmically unfair, it's wrong in every possible way. So instead you just nod, and you lie there together in his hospital bed because at some point during the conversation you ended up next to him instead of in the chair, and you hold each other while the machines beep and the poison drips and the world keeps turning outside like none of this matters.

The sun sets beyond the closed blinds, the room growing darker except for the glow from the monitors and the hallway light seeping under the door. A nurse will come eventually, will probably scold you for being in the bed with him, will cite infection risk and protocol and all the rules designed to keep sick people alive. But for now, for this moment, it's just you and Art and the shared understanding that you're both drowning and the only thing keeping you afloat is each other.

"Thank you," he whispers into the darkness, his breath warm against your temple.

"For what?" you ask, even though you know.

"For seeing me," he says simply. "For not treating me like I'm already dead. For letting me talk about tennis without trying to tell me I'll play again someday. For just... being here. Being real." You turn your face into his shoulder, breathing in the smell of hospital soap and sickness and underneath it all, something that's just Art.

"Thank you for the same thing," you tell him. "For not bullshitting me. For understanding. For making this bearable."

He kisses the top of your head then, soft and chaste and devastating, and you both pretend it doesn't mean anything even though it means everything. You pretend you're just two friends offering comfort, not two people falling in love in the worst possible circumstances, not two people who found each other in the wreckage and decided to hold on even though you both know how this ends. Because what else can you do? You're here, he's here, and the time you have is running out faster than either of you wants to acknowledge. So you hold each other in the dark, and you don't talk about tomorrow or next week or next month. You just exist in this moment, this pocket of peace in the middle of the nightmare, and you let it be enough.

⸻

The decline, when it comes, is both sudden and inevitable. You know it's coming—you've known since the day you met him that Art is on borrowed time, that the leukemia is aggressive and unforgiving and probably going to win—but knowing doesn't prepare you for the reality of watching it happen. It starts small, so small you almost miss it: he's a little more tired than usual, sleeps through more of your visits, needs help sitting up when before he could manage it on his own. His appetite, already shit because of the chemo, disappears entirely. The nurses start bringing him meal trays that go back to the kitchen untouched, and you watch him get thinner, watch his collarbones jut out like accusation, watch his face hollow out until he's all eyes and cheekbones and translucent skin.

His oncologist—Dr. Morrison, a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and the exhausted demeanor of someone who's watched too many young people die—starts using different words. Words like "palliative" and "comfort measures" and "quality of life," words that are code for "we're giving up."

Art takes the news with that same bitter acceptance he applies to everything, just nods once and says, "Okay, so how long?"

Dr. Morrison hesitates, and you can see her weighing how honest to be, how much hope to leave him. "It's hard to say," she starts, but Art cuts her off with a rough laugh that turns into a cough.

"Bullshit," he says when he can breathe again. "You know. You've done this before. Just tell me."

She looks at you then, like she's asking permission, and you nod because Art deserves the truth even if it's going to destroy you both. "Weeks," she says quietly. "Maybe a month, if we're lucky. Your blast count is too high, and the chemo isn't bringing it down anymore. Your body can't take another round, Art. I'm sorry."

The silence after she leaves is enormous, suffocating, filled with everything neither of you can say. Art stares at the ceiling, his jaw working like he's trying to swallow something too big, and you sit frozen in your chair, your hand still wrapped around his, trying to process the fact that you just got an expiration date on the person who's become the most important part of your fucked-up life.

"Weeks," Art finally says, testing the word like it's in a foreign language. "Jesus Christ, weeks. That's it? That's all I get?" His voice cracks, and you watch him fight against the breakdown, watch him try to hold it together the way he's been holding it together for months. But this time he can't, this time the reality is too big to swallow, and he turns his face into the pillow and sobs. Deep, wrenching sounds that come from somewhere in his chest, somewhere primal and terrified, and all you can do is climb into the bed next to him and wrap yourself around him and let him fall apart.

You cry too, helpless tears that soak into his hospital gown, your own grief mixing with his until you can't tell where his pain ends and yours begins. "It's not fair," you keep saying, over and over like a prayer or a curse. "It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fucking fair."

And it's not—it's not fair that he's twenty-one with a killer serve and a future that should have been full of trophies and endorsements and Grand Slam titles. It's not fair that his body turned on him, that medicine failed him, that he has to die in this awful room with its awful lights and its awful machines. It's not fair that you found him, that you fell for him, that you're going to have to live with the hole he leaves behind. But fair doesn't matter, fair has never mattered, and the universe doesn't give a shit about what you deserve or what Art deserves or what anyone deserves.

Eventually you both run out of tears, run out of energy, run out of everything except the raw fact of what's coming. Art pulls back enough to look at you, and his face is blotchy and swollen and still the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

"I don't wanna die," he whispers, and it's the first time he's said it out loud, the first time he's let himself be that vulnerable. "I know I've been all tough and accepting and whatever, but I don't want to die. I'm... I'm scared." The admission breaks something open in your chest, and you cup his face in your hands, your thumbs wiping away tears that just keep coming.

"I know," you tell him, and your voice is steady even though you're shattering inside. "I know you're scared. I'm scared too. I'm fucking terrified of losing you."

He closes his eyes, leaning into your touch like it's the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. "Will you stay?" he asks. "When... it happens? Will you be here?"

You don't even have to think about it. "Yes," you promise. "I'll be here. You won't be alone, Art. I swear to God, you won't be alone."

The days after that conversation blur together in a haze of morphine and monitoring and making the most of whatever time is left. Art's parents come more often now, his mother red-eyed and trembling, his father silent and gray-faced, and you fade into the background during their visits, giving them space to say goodbye to their son. But you're always there in the margins, waiting in the hallway or the cafeteria, and when they leave—exhausted and grief-stricken and barely holding it together—you slip back into his room and take up your post in that vinyl chair that's molded to the shape of you by now. Sometimes Art is awake enough to talk, and those conversations are precious, final, weighted with the knowledge that everything you say might be the last thing you say. Other times he sleeps, his breathing labored and uneven, and you just watch him, memorizing every detail, storing up images for the long empty after.

He tells you things in those last days, confessions and secrets and truths he's never spoken out loud. He tells you about the first boy he kissed—a doubles partner when he was sixteen, fumbling and awkward and perfect. He tells you about the time he almost quit tennis, burned out and exhausted at nineteen, and how his grandmother talked him back into it with stories about regret and unfinished business. He tells you he's glad he met you, that even though everything about this situation is terrible, having you here makes it bearable.

"You're the best thing that's happened to me in this nightmare," he says one night, his words slurred with painkillers but sincere. "I mean that. If I had to be sick, I'm glad I got to be sick with you."

You kiss his forehead, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, and you tell him the same thing back because it's true—he's the best thing too, this dying boy who saw you, who understood you, who loved you in the only way he had left.

Your own health takes a backseat during this time. You miss appointments, skip infusions, ignore the way your joints are swelling and your fatigue is getting worse. Patricia scolds you when she catches you, tells you that you can't take care of Art if you don't take care of yourself, but you can't bring yourself to leave him, not now, not when every hour might be the last one. So you stay, and your body screams at you for it, and you decide that future-you can deal with the consequences because present-you has more important things to worry about. Like the way Art's breathing is getting shallower, the way his skin is taking on a grayish tint, the way the spaces between his moments of lucidity are getting longer. Like the fact that you're watching someone you love die in real-time and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

The nursing staff bends the rules for you in ways they probably shouldn't. They let you stay past visiting hours, let you sleep in the chair next to his bed, bring you food and coffee and extra blankets when you're shivering. They've seen this before—the vigil, the desperate clinging to borrowed time—and they understand that sometimes the protocol matters less than the human connection. Patricia, especially, becomes an ally, checking on you as often as she checks on Art, making sure you're eating something, reminding you to stretch your legs, giving you privacy when you need to fall apart.

"You're a good friend," she tells you one morning, and you don't correct her, don't tell her that friend doesn't begin to cover what Art is to you. That he's become your whole world in the space of three months, that you can't imagine your life without him in it even though you're going to have to.

There's a night—you think it's a Tuesday, though time has lost all meaning—when Art is more awake than he's been in days. The morphine has reached some perfect balance where he's not in agony but also not completely lost, and his eyes are clear when they find yours in the dim room.

"Hey," he says, and his voice is barely a whisper but it's him, it's really him.

"Hey yourself," you answer, moving from the chair to the bed, fitting yourself carefully against his side. He's so fragile now, all sharp edges and brittle bones, and you're terrified of hurting him but he makes a small sound of contentment when you settle in.

"I've been thinking," he says slowly, like each word costs him. "About what happens after. If there even is an after."

You go still against him, your heart contracting painfully. "Yeah?"

He nods slightly, his head moving against yours. "I think—I think I'd want to come back as something that moves. Something fast. Like a bird, or maybe the wind. Something that's not trapped in one place."

The image of it makes you smile despite the tears that are already forming. "That's perfect," you tell him. "You'd make a beautiful bird. Or a beautiful wind. You could blow through tennis courts and fuck up everyone's serves."

He laughs, just a breath of sound, but it's genuine. "Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah, I like that. Haunting tennis courts, being a pain in the ass even when I'm dead." Then, softer: "What about you? What would you come back as?

You consider it, really think about it, because if this is one of your last conversations, you want to give him a real answer. "Water," you finally say. "I think I'd want to be water. Rain or ocean or even just a stream. Something that flows, that adapts, that can be soft or powerful depending on what's needed. Something that touches everything and everyone."

"Water," he repeats thoughtfully. "I like that for you. It fits."

He's quiet for a moment, and you can hear the machines, the distant sounds of the hospital at night, the labored rhythm of his breathing. "Promise me something," he says eventually. "Promise me you'll keep going. After. Promise me you won't give up."

You want to protest, want to tell him that you can't imagine a world where you keep going without him in it, but the earnestness in his voice stops you. "Art—"

"Please," he interrupts, and there's urgency there now, desperation. "I need to know that this meant something, that knowing you meant something. If you give up, if you let the lupus win, then what was the point? Promise me you'll fight. Promise me you'll live."

The words are a knife to your chest, but you understand what he's asking. He needs to know that his death won't take you down too, that there will be someone left who remembers him, who carries him forward. "I promise," you whisper, and you mean it even though it feels impossible. "I'll keep fighting. I'll live. For both of us."

He relaxes at that, some tension leaving his body, and his hand finds yours under the blanket, threading your fingers together one more time. "Good," he breathes. "That's good. Thank you."

You lie there together as the night deepens, as the hospital settles into its twilight rhythm, and you try to memorize everything—the weight of him against you, the sound of his breathing, the way his thumb still does that absent stroking thing across your knuckles. The way he smells like hospital and sickness but also like himself, some essential Art-ness that no amount of disease can erase. The way his heart beats against your palm when you press your hand to his chest, steady and strong and lying because it won't be steady or strong for much longer. You catalog it all, store it away in the vault of your memory, knowing that soon this will be all you have left.

⸻

The end comes on a Thursday. You'll remember that later, how it was Thursday and the weather was beautiful—unseasonably warm for October, the kind of day that makes people walk around in t-shirts and plan picnics, the kind of day that has no business being the day someone dies. You've been at the hospital for thirty-six hours straight, ignoring Patricia's pleas for you to go home and rest, because you can feel it in the air, this awful certainty that time is running out. Art has been mostly unconscious for the past two days, his body finally giving up the fight, shutting down system by system in a cascade of failures that Dr. Morrison explained in clinical terms that didn't make it any less horrifying. His kidneys are failing, his liver is struggling, his blood pressure keeps dropping despite the medications they're pumping into him. He's drowning from the inside, fluid filling his lungs, and even with the oxygen mask they can't seem to get enough air into him.

You haven't left his side except to use the bathroom, and even then you practically run back, terrified that you'll miss it, that he'll slip away while you're gone and you'll break your promise to be there. His parents were here earlier, his mother sobbing so hard she had to be sedated, his father standing stone-faced and silent until he finally broke and had to leave the room. They said their goodbyes—you gave them privacy for that, waited in the hallway with your heart in your throat while they told their son they loved him one last time. When they emerged, his father pulled you aside, this man you barely know, and gripped your shoulder with a hand that was shaking.

"Thank you," he said, his voice wrecked. "Thank you for being here for him. For making him less alone." You couldn't speak, could only nod, and then they were gone, unable to watch the final act, and you understood because how could anyone watch their child die?

So it's just you now, you and Art and the machines that are still beeping out their steady rhythms even though the body they're monitoring is already half-gone. You're lying next to him in the bed—fuck the rules, fuck the protocol, you're not leaving him now—with your head on his chest, listening to his heart struggle through each beat. It's slower than it should be, irregular, skipping beats like it's forgetting how to work, and every time it stutters you freeze, thinking this is it, this is the moment. But then it catches again, keeps going, stubborn and determined even as the rest of him fails. His breathing is terrible, wet and labored, each inhale a fight he's losing, and you can hear the death rattle that the nurses warned you about, that horrible gurgling sound that means the end is close.

"I'm here," you keep whispering, your lips against his gown, your hand wrapped around his. "I'm right here, Art. You're not alone. I've got you."

You don't know if he can hear you—he hasn't responded to anything in hours, hasn't opened his eyes or squeezed your hand or shown any sign that he knows you're there. But you keep talking anyway, keep telling him it's okay to let go, that you'll be okay, that he doesn't have to fight anymore. You tell him about the sun outside, how it's a perfect October day, how if he could see it he'd probably want to be on a court somewhere hitting serves. You tell him you love him, finally say the words you've been swallowing for weeks, because what does it matter now? What does anything matter except making sure he knows, making sure he leaves this world knowing he was loved?

The morning stretches into afternoon, time moving like molasses, like you're trapped in amber. Patricia checks in periodically, her face grave, adjusting Art's medications, checking his vitals even though you all know the numbers don't matter anymore. She brings you water, makes you drink it, touches your shoulder with a gentleness that makes you want to scream. The other nurses stop by too, these women who've been taking care of Art for months, who've watched this vibrant boy deteriorate into this shell, and you can see the grief in their faces too. Death is supposed to be routine in a place like this, but it never really is, especially not when it's someone young, someone who should have had decades left.

Around three in the afternoon, something changes. You feel it before you understand it—the way Art's body shifts against yours, the way his breathing pattern changes, becomes even more irregular, more desperate. His heart is racing now, too fast, like it's trying to outrun what's coming, and you sit up, your own heart hammering, knowing that this is it.

"Art," you say, louder now, urgent, your hand cupping his face. "Art, I'm here. I'm right here with you." His eyes flutter open—just barely, just for a second—and you see him in there, see recognition and fear and something that might be relief. His lips move like he's trying to say something, but no sound comes out, just a thin wheeze that breaks your heart into a thousand pieces. You lean down, pressing your forehead to his, breathing the same air, trying to give him whatever strength you have left even though you know it's not enough, it's never enough.

"It's okay," you tell him, and you're crying now, tears falling onto his face, mixing with the sweat and the sickness. "It's okay to go. You don't have to be scared. I love you, Art. I love you so fucking much. You made this bearable. You made me less alone. Thank you for that. Thank you for seeing me, for letting me see you. Thank you for every conversation, every moment, every time you made me laugh when I thought I'd forgotten how."

His breathing is slowing now, the spaces between breaths getting longer, and you can feel his heartbeat stuttering under your palm, failing.

"You're gonna be free now," you whisper through your tears. "No more hospitals, no more treatments, no more pain. You're going to run and play tennis and be everything you were supposed to be. And I'm going to remember you. I'm going to carry you with me. You're not going to be forgotten, Art. I promise you won't be forgotten."

His next breath rattles in his chest, wet and wrong, and then there's a pause. A long pause. You wait, holding your own breath, waiting for the next inhale that you know isn't coming. The monitors are screaming now, alarms going off, but you barely hear them. You're focused on Art, on his face that's gone slack, on the way the tension has left his body, on the absolute stillness of his chest.

"No," you hear yourself saying, even though you knew this was coming, even though you've been preparing for this. "No, no, no, Art, please. Please don't go. Please."

But he's already gone. You can feel the absence of him, the way his body is just a body now, no longer inhabited by the person you love. His heart has stopped—you know this even before the monitor flatlines, can feel the silence in his chest where there used to be a beat.

The nurses rush in, Patricia first, and she takes one look at the monitor, at Art's still face, at you collapsed over his body, and she knows there's no point in trying to resuscitate. This was always coming, and Art had signed the DNR weeks ago, made the choice to go peacefully when his time came. She silences the alarms with efficient movements, and suddenly the room is too quiet, horribly quiet, just the sound of your ragged breathing and your sobs filling the space.

"I'm so sorry," Patricia says, and she sounds like she means it, like this death matters to her too. "He's gone, honey. He's at peace now." Peace. The word is obscene, meaningless, a platitude that makes you want to rage at her even though you know she's trying to help. How can he be at peace when he's dead at twenty-one? How can any of this be peaceful?

You don't know how long you stay there, draped over Art's body, clinging to him like if you just hold on tight enough you can keep him here, keep him with you. Your hands are in his hair, on his face, feeling the warmth slowly leaking out of him as his body cools, as the machines are disconnected one by one and the room becomes even more silent. Patricia lets you have this time, doesn't rush you, doesn't tell you that you need to leave so they can prepare the body. She just stands nearby, a quiet presence, and when you finally pull back—your face swollen, your throat raw from crying—she helps you stand on shaking legs.

"Do you want to call anyone?" she asks gently, and you shake your head because there's no one to call, no one who would understand what you've lost.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, that's okay. Why don't we get you cleaned up, get you home. You've been here a long time."

But you can't leave, not yet, not when Art is still here, still exists in this room even if he's gone from his body. You move back to the bed, taking his hand one more time, and it's still warm, still feels like him, and that somehow makes it worse. "I'll keep my promise," you tell him, even though he can't hear you anymore, even though it's just you talking to a corpse in a hospital room. "I'll keep fighting. I'll live for both of us. But fuck, Art, I don't know how to do this without you. I don't know how to be in a world where you don't exist."

The words break on a sob, and you lean down, pressing one last kiss to his forehead, feeling the coolness of his skin against your lips. "I love you," you whisper one more time. "I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm sorry you didn't get more time. I'm sorry for everything."

Patricia eventually coaxes you out of the room, her arm around your waist, supporting you because your legs don't seem to remember how to work. You look back once, seeing Art's body on the bed, seeing how small he looks without the force of his personality animating him, and then you're in the hallway and the door is closing and that's it. He's gone. The boy with the blue eyes and the beautiful serve and the bitter humor that cut through your defenses like a knife—he's gone. And you're still here, still breathing, still alive in a body that won't stop betraying you, and the unfairness of it threatens to bring you to your knees right there in the corridor.

You make it to your car somehow, though you don't remember walking through the hospital, don't remember the elevator or the parking garage or finding your keys. You sit behind the wheel and stare at nothing, at the concrete wall in front of you, and try to understand that you will never see Art again. Never hear his voice, never feel his hand in yours, never watch him struggle to smile through the pain. All those conversations, all those shared moments, all that intimacy born from shared suffering—it's over. Finished. Done. He existed and now he doesn't, and you're supposed to just accept that, supposed to just move on, supposed to keep living like your world hasn't ended.

The grief hits you in waves, drowning you, pulling you under until you can't breathe. You scream in your car, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard your knuckles go white, screaming until your throat is raw and your voice is gone. You scream for Art, for his stolen future, for the life he should have had. You scream for yourself, for the hole he's left in your chest, for the loneliness that's already settling over you like a blanket. You scream at the universe, at God if there is one, at the cosmic unfairness of twenty-one-year-olds dying of leukemia while terrible people live to old age. And when you're done screaming, when you've exhausted yourself, you put your head on the steering wheel and cry. Deep, wrenching sobs that come from somewhere primal, somewhere that understands loss in a way your conscious mind can't process yet.

The sun is setting when you finally drive home, the sky painted in oranges and pinks that seem offensive in their beauty. How dare the world be beautiful when Art is dead? How dare the sun set and rise again like nothing has changed? You pull into your apartment complex and sit in your parking spot, watching the light fade, and think about Art's promise to come back as something that moves. A bird, the wind, something free. You wonder if he's out there somewhere, if some essential part of him continues, or if he's just gone, extinguished like a candle. You want to believe in an afterlife, in something after, but right now all you feel is the absence, the Art-shaped hole in the world that nothing will ever fill.

Your apartment is exactly how you left it—dishes in the sink, unmade bed, mail piled on the counter—and it feels surreal that everything here is the same when you're completely different. You were a person who had Art when you left. Now you're a person who doesn't, who never will again. You move through your space like a ghost, mechanically showering off the hospital smell, changing into clean clothes, trying to eat something and giving up after two bites. Everything feels wrong, off-kilter, like you're moving through a reality that doesn't quite fit anymore. Your phone has messages—your parents, your friends, people checking in—but you can't bring yourself to respond, can't find the words to tell them that Art died, that the boy they didn't know existed took a piece of you with him.

You end up on your couch, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the wall as night falls completely. Your body aches—your joints are swollen, your fever is back, your own illness reminding you that you're still sick, still fighting your own battle. But you don't care. You don't care about anything except the fact that Art is gone and you're still here and you promised him you'd keep living. It seems like the cruelest promise you've ever made, the most impossible task. How do you keep living when the person who made life bearable is dead? How do you wake up tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, knowing he'll never wake up again?

You must fall asleep eventually because you wake with a start hours later, disoriented and aching, your face crusty with dried tears. For a brief, beautiful moment, you forget. And then you remember—Art is dead—and the grief crashes over you again, fresh and devastating like it's happening for the first time. You wonder if this is what the rest of your life will be: waking up and remembering, over and over, that he's gone. The thought is unbearable, but you bear it anyway because what choice do you have? You get up, you move through your apartment, you exist in this new reality where Art Donaldson is past tense, where he's a memory instead of a person.

The days that follow are a blur of numb grief and administrative nightmares. You have to call the hospital, have to get information about Art's funeral because his parents asked Patricia to tell you, because apparently Art told them about you, told them you mattered. The service is small, held at a church in New Rochelle that Art probably never attended, filled with people who knew him before—tennis teammates and college friends and family members who cry in that performative way of people who didn't watch him die, who didn't sit with him in his worst moments.

You sit in the back, feeling like an intruder, feeling like your grief is too big and too private for this public display. They talk about his tennis career, his potential, his bright future, and they get it all wrong because they're talking about the Art who existed before the leukemia, the Art who was whole and healthy and had dreams. They didn't know the Art you knew—the one who made dark jokes about his blood counts, who cried in your arms about being scared, who found beauty even in the nightmare of dying.

You don't speak at the service. You can't. What would you even say? That you fell in love with him in a hospital? That he made your own suffering bearable just by understanding it? That three months with him meant more than years with anyone else? It all feels too intimate, too raw, too precious to share with these strangers who are crying for someone they've already romanticized into a tragedy instead of remembering him as a person. So you sit in silence, and when they lower his casket into the ground you think about his body in there, the body you held, the body that fought so hard to stay alive, and you have to leave before the first shovel of dirt falls because you can't watch them bury him, can't accept the finality of it.

You drive to the beach after, some instinct pulling you toward water, toward the thing you said you'd want to come back as. You walk along the shore as the sun sets, watching the waves roll in and out with their eternal rhythm, and you talk to Art like he can hear you. You tell him about the service, about how they got him wrong, about how you wanted to stand up and scream at them that they didn't know him, not really, not the way you did. You tell him you miss him so much it feels like dying, like your body is trying to follow his into death. You tell him you're trying to keep your promise, trying to keep fighting, but it's so fucking hard when the person who made it worth fighting is gone.

The wind picks up, whipping your hair around your face, and you want to believe it's him, want to believe he's found his freedom and come back to tell you he's okay. But you're not sure you believe in that kind of thing, and even if you did, the wind is just wind, indifferent and impersonal. Art is gone, and you're alone with your grief and your illness and your promise to live. So you stand there on the beach, watching the sun disappear into the ocean, and you make a choice. You choose to honor him by surviving. By fighting the lupus, by showing up to your appointments, by doing the work of staying alive even when it feels impossible. Not because you want to, but because you promised him you would, and promises to the dead are the most sacred kind.

You'll carry him with you—in your memories, in your heart, in the way you understand suffering now in a way you never did before. Art Donaldson lived for twenty-one years, and for three months of that life, he was yours and you were his, and nothing can take that away. Not death, not time, not the cruel unfairness of a universe that takes the beautiful things too soon. He existed, he mattered, and you loved him. And that has to be enough, even though it's not, even though it will never be enough.

You return to the hospital the following week for your own treatment, and walking through those doors feels like wading through water, like every step requires more strength than you have.

Patricia sees you and her face crumples, and she pulls you into a hug that you sink into, letting her hold you up for a moment. "How are you doing?" she asks when she pulls back, and it's such an inadequate question that you almost laugh.

How are you doing? You're destroyed. You're gutted. You're a person-shaped hole walking around pretending to be whole. But you say, "I'm here. That's something." And she nods like she understands, because maybe she does, maybe she's seen this enough times to recognize the particular species of grief that comes from losing someone in this place.

You sit in your usual chair in the infusion center, the one you always sat in before you started spending all your time in Art's room, and it feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. The chair across from you is empty, will always be empty now, and you stare at it while the familiar burn of medication enters your veins. You think about Art sitting there that first day, slouched and beautiful and dying, asking you if it was your first time. You think about how you nodded back at him, that silent acknowledgment, and how that single moment changed everything. You found each other in hell, and he made the burning bearable, and now he's gone and you're still burning.

But you're here. You showed up. You're fighting, just like you promised. And maybe that's all you can do—keep showing up, keep fighting, keep living in a world that doesn't have Art in it anymore. Some days that will feel impossible. Most days, probably. But you'll do it anyway, because love doesn't end when someone dies, and neither do promises. You'll carry him with you through every treatment, every bad day, every moment when your body tries to quit. You'll remember what he taught you about finding connection in suffering, about honesty in the face of death, about holding on to beauty even when everything is terrible.

Art Donaldson died on a Thursday in October, and the world kept turning like it didn't matter, like losing him wasn't the end of everything. But it mattered to you. He mattered to you. And you'll spend the rest of your life—however long that is—making sure that his mattering meant something. Making sure that the three months you had together weren't just a tragic footnote but a testament to the fact that even in the worst circumstances, even in the shadow of death, love is possible. Connection is possible. Meaning is possible.

You'll live for him. For his stolen serves and his blue eyes and his bitter humor. For the way he held your hand and let you see him scared. For every moment of honesty, every shared grief, every time you made each other less alone. You'll live because he can't, and because somewhere in the space between dying and dead, he asked you to. And that's a debt you'll spend your whole life trying to repay.

The IV drips into your arm, and you close your eyes, and you breathe. In and out. In and out. Still alive, still fighting, still here. It's not enough, but it's what you have. And for now—for today—that has to be enough.

#read this last night before falling asleep cried my eyes out #crashed out and woke up with a horrible migraine but it was worth it!!!!#this is so beautifully tragic #like i’m so serious this deserves awards after awards after awards #my heart still hurts actually #this will forever be in my mind ❤️‍🩹

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