About Time
"The raft was not as seaworthy as I had hoped."
Laura lifts her hand from Bill's just long enough to turn the page.
They've each read Searider Falcon many times by now, of course, first her, and then him…but Bill wanted to hear the words in her voice.
She would read to him forever if he would just stay with her to hear it.
She knows, even without looking, that his blue eyes are focused on her face, her hair, her hands holding the book, ignoring the blank walls, the white sheets, the beeping machines of the hospital room around them.
She knows that no matter how tired he is, no matter how strong the tides pulling at him, he will fight to stay awake, to stay with her, as long as he can.
She knows he's been refusing painkillers, to be able to stay present, to hold onto these moments with her.
She loves him for it, even as she argues with him over it.
She knows the time is coming when it won't be a choice any longer.
"What do you want to do when you retire?" he asks one night, one hand propping up his head, the other hand running through her hair, fingers winding around red waves.
Laura ignores the flash of pain she feels at his reference to the future, a future that they both know will not include him.
She smiles and nestles closer to him in the bed. "You'll laugh."
"Try me."
"A cabin," she says. "I always pictured myself in a little cabin up in the mountains. Next to a little lake…with water so clear it's like looking through glass."
She laughs a little, herself, hearing the words out loud. "I know. Ridiculous, isn't it?"
Bill doesn't laugh.
Laura feels her phone buzzing in her pocket, the third time in an hour.
She ignores it.
"The waves repeatedly threatened to swamp it," she continues.
"What time are you going to be done with work today?" Bill asks a few days later, over breakfast. "I thought we could go for a drive later."
Two weeks ago, Laura wouldn't have known how to answer; she was never really "done with work," after all.
Now, looking at Bill, seeing the barely restrained excitement in his eyes, knowing how little time he has left, how little time they have left, it's easy.
"Baltar can cover my rounds," she says. "I'll take the day off."
She drives, with Bill giving directions. He doesn't tell her where they're going, but he leads them up north, out of the city, into the mountains.
A twisty, badly-paved little road brings them up to a plateau, overlooking a valley.
Laura gasps. From here, she can see everything: rolling hills, fruit-laden trees, the distant lights of the city. A herd of deer frolic far below.
She stops the car and they both get out, look out over the valley. She reaches for Bill's hand. "It's beautiful."
Bill smiles. "Turn around."
Perched on the hill is a cabin, the wood rough, the construction obviously done by hand. It's big enough to live in, but it's not large; perfect for one person…or two.
It is exactly what she'd pictured.
"I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of the emptiness that I felt inside."
"It's yours."
Her breath catches.
Bill's eyes are intense. "I was afraid you'd never get around to it." He holds out the keys, sunlight glinting off the metal. "Promise me that you'll really live here, that you won't put it off?"
Laura can't speak. She nods.
There is a terrible yearning in his eyes. "I wish I could be here with you," he says. "But it would really help me to know that you finally got your cabin."
"I love you," she says.
There's no use fighting it, pretending otherwise. Not anymore.
He kisses the tears from her eyes, even as his own trail down the creases in his face. "About time."
"I couldn't feel anything. And that's what scared me."
They haven't left the cabin in days.
They stock up on groceries at the nearest town their first night, and then they hole up, eating a succession of salads and scrambled eggs. They watch each sunrise, each sunset. They listen to the birds, gathering at a feeder just outside the kitchen window. Laura reads aloud, Bill's head resting in her lap.
Neither of them wants to miss a moment.
"When I finished, I looked at what I had done. I did not see a garden. I saw a scar."
"Bill?"
Usually, Laura can tell where Bill is; the cabin's isn't big, after all, and there's a warmth, an energy, that denotes his presence.
Today, the rooms suddenly feel cold, empty.
Laura shivers and pushes open their bedroom door.
She is unaccountably relieved not to find him there.
Then she sees him on the floor.
"This island had saved my life, and I had done it no service."
Bill presses her fingers. "I'm sorry, Laura," he whispers.
She knows what he means, and he's wrong. She squeezes his hand. "I'm not," she says, swallowing past the ache in her throat. "These past few weeks, with you…it's been like coming home. I'm so grateful for that."
Bill lifts her hand to his lips. His fingers are trembling. "Me, too," he whispers.
Then his eyes slip shut.
From the readings on the monitors, Laura knows she may never see them open again.
"Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?"
Laura closes her eyes in annoyance at the voice over her shoulder, coming from the doorway. Gaius Baltar is not going to take Bill's last hours away from her, even if she has to kill Baltar herself to get rid of him.
Working with Baltar as long as she has, the thought has occurred to her a time or two, anyway.
"I've been calling you all week, Laura," Baltar says, coming to stand on the other side of Bill's bed, where Bill is still silent, still unresponsive.
Laura resents the intrusion bitterly.
"It's one thing not to return my calls, I suppose," Baltar continues. "But you have responsibilities, Laura. You can't just take off whenever you feel like it."
She sighs. "Gaius, what do you want?"
Baltar rolls his eyes. "Oh, nothing," he says, the irony so thick she's surprised he doesn't choke on it. "Just a major scientific breakthrough, that's all."
Laura doesn't ask.
He keeps talking anyway.
"While you've been off doing God knows what, I—well, it may have been Caprica's idea, but the actual lab work was mine—have developed a targeted gene therapy that works on advanced tumor growth."
Laura rubs her eyes. She can't remember the last time she slept. "You what?"
"We combined your stem cell infusion with a new strain of anti-retroviral," Baltar says, hands waving in excitement. "It not only halted the production of new cancer cells in our tests, but it actually destroyed the ones that were already present."
Slowly, Laura sits up. "Say that again."
"The lab results were astonishing," Baltar says, running a hand through his hair. "The cancer in the lab rats was gone, and it was gone in a matter of hours."
The fine hairs on the back of Laura's neck stand up. "Are you saying—"
He sighs. "Of course, even if it works, practical results will be years away…beta tests, FDA approval, clinical trials…"
Laura doesn't breathe. "Will it work on Bill?"
"Well, it's untried, and therefore, extremely dangerous…but we could use a willing test subject, and as Caprica pointed out, given the advancement of the patient's cancer, he does technically qualify for experimental treatment under the 'compassionate use' guidelines." Baltar lowers his voice, but just barely. "And given the patient's condition, I'm not sure what he has to lose."
It has to be the most callous, unfeeling thing she's ever heard in her life.
She's so grateful she could cry.
Her heart is pounding, but she doesn't doubt her decision.
"Do it," she says.
Laura has about as little faith in Baltar as a human being as it is possible to have. But she has a great deal of faith in his abilities as a scientist, and that's what she's counting on.
So she signs the consent forms, and she holds Bill's hand as she watches Baltar inject the clear fluid into his IV.
And then she waits, and prays.
It doesn't even occur to her that she is not, in fact, Bill's next of kin, that the decision isn't rightfully hers.
Not until Bill's actual next of kin makes an appearance, two hours later.
Laura has never met Bill's son, Lee, never even seen a snapshot; still, on sight, she recognizes him immediately: his neat suit, his close-cropped blonde hair, Bill's blue eyes.
She knows what it would mean to Bill to know that his son came, at long last, even as she knows that odds are, Bill won't live to find out.
"What the hell is going on here?"
Laura realizes how this must look—two doctors he's never met, hovering over his dying father, performing a completely untested treatment. She opens her mouth to explain—
-and that's when Bill goes into seizures.
Bill's body spasms on the bed, his limbs locking, his head falling back.
She's seen this a thousand times before, as a doctor…but never like this, never on someone she loved.
In this moment, she is as terrified as she's ever been.
Baltar yells out for a nurse. Laura grips Bill's hand as tightly as she can. If this is it—if this is really it—she needs him to know, as long as he can, that he is not alone, that she is there.
"I'm right here, Bill," she says, holding back her tears, keeping her voice soothing. "Right here. Everything's going to be okay. I promise."
Just as suddenly as they began, the spasms stop—and the spiking lines on the monitors even out, return to normal.
Laura collapses onto the edge of the bed in relief, her eyes closed, Bill's hand pressed to her lips. If he can just survive this—if he can give the treatment a chance to work—
"Is he—" Lee clears his throat. "Is he okay?"
"For the moment," Laura manages.
Some of the color comes back into Lee's face. "Look, I don't know what you think you're doing here, but this stops right now. I'm pulling my father from your care immediately, and this treatment ends, now, before it kills him and I sue you for malpractice—"
"Don't talk to my wife that way," Bill croaks.
Laura is bent over him in an instant. "You okay?" she murmurs, her fingers brushing his cheek.
Lee looks utterly perplexed. "Your wife?"
Bill's eyes are sunken, hooded, his skin clammy and pale. A sheen of sweat has broken out on his forehead, pain and exhaustion cutting deep grooves in his face.
But the mischievous smirk he casts Laura gives her a bright flicker of hope.
"My wife," he repeats, a little louder, his voice hoarse. "Lee, meet your new stepmother, Laura Roslin."
Lee looks between them uncertainly. "My new stepmother," he repeats. "But…" He trails off, shaking his head. "How long?" he asks, finally.
Laura gazes at Bill, her fingers brushing, very gently, through his hair. "A very long time."
Forty-eight hours later, Bill is sitting up in bed, his scans are coming back completely clean, and Laura is curled up beside him, floating, almost, beyond relief, beyond joy, her eyes red from grateful tears.
"That wasn't how I wanted to ask you, you know," Bill says over breakfast, the first meal he's eaten in days. "I wanted it to be romantic, not a loophole to keep my son from suing you."
Laura giggles. "But look on the bright side," she teases. "How can I say no, when the alternative is a lawsuit?"
Bill glares at her over his scrambled eggs. "Just for that, I might not ask you."
Laura kisses the top of his head. "Doesn't matter," she says. "I'm marrying you anyway."
Bill's face softens. "Yes. You are."
Laura shifts on the small bed, resting her head on his shoulder. "We should probably do it fairly soon," she continues, her voice muffled. "Before your son catches on and lawyers up."
Bill's lips brush her forehead. "I hate to break it to you, but Lee is a lawyer."
Laura doesn't pause. "Then in that case we should probably do it today."
The day Bill is released from the hospital, before they head off to the cabin, they stop by the courthouse.
It's barely a wedding, just the two of them and a Justice of the Peace, and the groom can barely stand, and the bride's been wearing the same clothes for a week…but when Bill slips the ring on her finger, the room disappears for an instant, and is replaced by a hot sun, a herd of antelope, flamingoes frolicking on an unfamiliar shore.
Her cabin, Laura knows.
Except she's never seen that place before in her life.
Then Bill is kissing her, and she can't remember any more.
They spend the next week at their cabin, just the two of them, talking, laughing, enjoying each other for the first time without the weight of impending grief, of postponed pain.
They can't seem to get enough.
Laura has to go back to work, of course. How could she possibly quit now, with Bill alive beside her because of it? Baltar wasn't wrong…practical results are years away, and there is so much work to be done…
Laura wants to be a part of it.
They've decided to keep her apartment in the city, at least for the time being. They'll probably spend a few nights a week there, when emergencies and late calls keep her at the office. She offers to let Bill stay at the cabin without her, to join him when she can, but Bill absolutely refuses, and Laura is privately relieved.
They've spent enough time apart.
She knows Bill will have to figure out what to do with the time he's been granted, the new life he now has.
Maybe he'll spend it reconnecting with Lee, who's been staying in town, at least for now, at least while Bill is still recovering.
Maybe he'll take up fishing in their lake.
Maybe he'll finally finish that model ship.
"Look at this," Bill says, passing her the binoculars.
Laura puts her glasses on, to get a better look. They're sitting on the porch, looking out over the valley. They spend hours here, drinking coffee, talking, reading aloud, watching the wildlife below them, so rich in these mountains.
She peers through the lenses to where Bill is pointing, to the herd of deer scampering across the meadow, their black tails rippling in the wind.
Laura doesn't have the words for the quiet, profound joy this brings her.
The sun is just peeking out over the mountains, spreading pink shadows down over the ridge.
Laura reaches for Bill's hand, shaking her head in wonder: at the sunrise, at the deer, at Bill, strong and healthy beside her.
"It's almost heavenly," she says.
Bill presses her hand to his lips. "It reminds me of you."