A story in two parts and a bit of a departure. (I'm still working on my stories-in-progress, and will update soon.) Until then:
I. Before
There's no way around it. That's what Amelia says when she looks at slides of the mass and it's what Derek confirms. He flies out to L.A. and embraces her with ceremonial solemnity: that's how she knows it's bad.
"There can be apparent changes in personality with this type of tumor," Derek says carefully. "Sometimes quite striking ones." He leaves the question unasked, and she doesn't answer it, grateful for the small kindnesses people offer when they know you're embarking on something like widowhood.
There's no way around her guilt, either.
They're not married, of course. They're not even living together. Up until the diagnosis she wasn't even sure if they would make it. But a death sentence puts a damper on a breakup like nothing she's ever felt. Time slows down when there's so little of it left.
But it's fast.
It's as if he was waiting for the diagnosis; once it's been confirmed, the deterioration is speedy and brutal.
At first he always recognizes her. She curls up next to him when he reaches for her - there are no bars on the beds in hospice; they know it may be the last chance for tactile contact.
He's confused - just sometimes, at first. Then more and more. He asks for Naomi. She's there. Then he stops recognizing her too.
He's most alive when Olivia visits. She's a bold and smiling child who burrows, pudgy and dimpled, into her grandfather's chest. He cuddles her against him, smells her hair. He calls her Maya.
He calls Maya "nurse."
When they huddle in the family room Maya cries enough for all of them.
"I wish he recognized me," she sobs. "I want him to remember."
"He does recognize you," Violet says gently. She sits with them a lot. "In his way, he does. He knows he loves you. A part of him can remember nurturing you. And he sees Olivia and remembers holding you when you were small."
Addison turns her head away, wanting to give them privacy but too embarrassed to leave. It's awkward. Dying is awkward: this ugly fact she's mostly spared as a doctor. Mutely, she watches Naomi comfort her daughter. In a way Addison's always been an intruder into this family. She's not the wife. She's borne none of his children. There's no word for what she is.
"You really didn't notice anything?" Naomi asks one night. They're eating takeout in the family room - no hospital fare here, this is supposed to be a comfortable space. Like dying at home, except - not.
Addison swallows, takes her time chewing rubbery noodles. They're dry and tasteless. She doesn't answer.
"Did he seem different?" Naomi asks and Addison takes a long draw of water.
What answer would satisfy Naomi? Could any answer satisfy herself? Yes, she could say. I noticed that he was kind of an asshole sometimes. More than sometimes. But I'm sometimes an asshole too so I didn't say anything and I didn't do anything.
"Not really different," she mumbles.
He stood there just watching me while I was sick. He stopped touching me. I still think something happened between the two of you but he wouldn't admit it. Yelled when I brought it up. Raged. And then he was indifferent and, well, if you were me would you think that meant something was wrong? Or just an inevitability?
Naomi reaches for her hand and Addison lets her. Her knuckles are vaguely chapped. So much hand washing. Like the NICU, except it's the end of life instead of the beginning.
He gets weaker. He stops responding to her at all. He doesn't know what's happening to him, and the nurses tell them to be grateful for that.
Addison decides, as she holds his hand - big, warm, unresponsive - that she would want to know. She doesn't like when things slip away. She would want the chance to hang on.
She admits it to herself late one night, lights dimmed in the room that smells faintly of sandalwood - a scent he's always liked - and the cocoa butter they rub into his skin: she didn't really want to marry him. And maybe she wouldn't have. But she's never been good at dodging bullets; they just lodge somewhere else and fester.
Pete's there when it happens. She finds out later that they'd been taking it in turns to sit with her, Cooper and Pete, starting doing so after the measurement of time turns from weeks to days.
She's sitting on the soft chair by his bed, holding his hand, not talking to him because there's nothing left to say, when the life slips out of him like water.
She expected it and knew it was coming and was prepared but somehow all that flies out of the window and she grasps at him, tries to pull back whatever it is that disappeared when he drew his last breath. Pete gathers her away from him, holds her when the doctors come in, and she scratches at him, disliking her own grief, embarrassed at her display. She fights hard and he contains her in familiar arms against the hard expanse of his chest. Naomi comes in and hugs her and the guilt and shame pour out of her like tears into the other woman's hair.
It starts again now that it is over, the end of a life just the beginning of the work it takes to go on.