5:56 a.m.

He went back to sleep for a few hours and woke up with the first rays of daylight streaming in through the large window in Renee's room. When he was falling back asleep at 2 a.m., he had been so determined that this was supposed to happen. Somehow, though, the morning was now both literally and figuratively shedding light on the situation.

Sure, avoiding love is a stupid reason to be miserable. But there is something keeping Jack miserable that he has no control over. He had weighed the pros and cons of coming to Renee's apartment earlier the previous evening. He wasn't feeling his best. And by "feel his best" he means he doesn't really know how much time he has left. Could be a few weeks, a few months, a few years. Physically, he's becoming more and more miserable. Why not just let his personal life remain in that state?

The answer has a lot to do with the smell of her hair. Somehow being in the middle of a national crisis doesn't quite lend itself to the observation of these little details. But now he's still just lying here, taking in everything he could not allow himself to be aware of or distracted by in the middle of the action over the past couple of days. She is sleeping with her arms curled in front of her chest, facing him—slightly leaning into his chest. Her breathing is steady and rhythmic, his a bit more strained. She has freckles, he has wrinkles. She has a shirt on, he does not. Her hand, while not delicate, is smooth, his incredibly calloused. She's healthy, he's not. That's the one that most concerns him.

All he knows is that he feels like crap but this is helping. When you put it like that, it sounds incredibly selfish of him to be here. Still, Renee knows the situation and clearly has no problems with his presence, so he has decided to do what he can to treat the misery himself. That means pursuing this relationship for however long he can. More immediately, it means he's going to need some breakfast. He slowly raises himself from the mattress, realizing in that moment how sore he really is. As he moves he gently guides Renee onto her stomach. She subconsciously situates herself, readjusting her head on the pillow. When she does, a piece of hair falls over her face and covers her features. He's not sure it's his place, but after he stands, Jack reaches to tuck that hair behind her ear. In her slumber, a small smile creeps across her face. While he appreciates the way the sunlight is finding the perfect way to highlight the red in her hair, Jack knows that the brightening morning will eventually irritate her out of her precious sleep. He takes the liberty of closing the blinds on his way out of the room.

He's not trying to be nosy. But when he takes the couple of steps down into the living room, the bookshelf on his right catches his glance. There are books he knows must be left over from college—Introduction to Psychology, The Uncivil Wars: the American 1960's, Heart of Darkness, Biological Concepts. There are big picture books of Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy and a collection of Time magazines. There are also photo albums, but he knows he has to leave those alone—at least if he wants to stick to the whole "I wasn't trying to be nosy" story. There are, however, a few framed pictures that are on display for him to analyze guilt free. There's a picture of Renee and Larry in a silver frame that he assumes is from a couple of years ago. This is not a far off guess considering their nine year history. They're dressed up, he in a typical black suit, she in a black dress, smiling. Larry's arm is around her but something still seems so official about them. Jack certainly isn't going to write off what must have been between the two of them as insignificant, but from what he has seen in Renee over the past 48 hours, official just doesn't seem her type. At least not when it comes to her private relationships. His theory seems to be confirmed by a different picture, this one in a wood frame, at Renee's high school graduation. She's beaming as her family creates a group hug around her, with her dad proudly displaying her diploma and her brother posing as if he's stealing her cap. Jack smiles to himself upon realizing that he just spent the night with a woman who still proudly regards these normal moments. I mean, she's obviously got a kick to her but she also has this sense of normalcy that has sorely been lacking from his life and the lives of the people close to him for years. She escaped early adulthood rather unscathed and lives to display that evidence in a well-kept, cute apartment.

There's another picture of the family on the shelf that makes Jack think he may have spoken too soon. She and her parents are gathered around a hospital bed where the man he assumes to be her brother is donning a goofy hat and holding a fork loaded with birthday cake up to his mouth. She is blowing a party instrument as her dad holds up a gift and her mom holds on to her son's hand. The picture is similar to the graduation photo in its exuberance, though the smiles here are a little more worn. Whereas in the first picture her brother seems the stereotypical muscular, built, protective older type, in the second he looks frail with a shaved head, his cheer coming mostly from the presence and support of the people around him. He may be the same jokester as before, but his energy looks shot. Renee looks as if she's trying to maintain it for him, and she's doing a convincing job.

Jack realizes he's within sight of where he left Renee in the bed a few minutes before and suddenly feels guilty for invading her privacy and her past. He is welcome in her apartment and he wants to know more about her, but he knows information like what is going on in that picture or what history there is between her and Larry should come from her, not from his own analysis of her personal things. He makes the short walk to the kitchen where a picture on the fridge captures his attention. It's at some sort of special event, obviously personal like a wedding, where Renee and her parents stand in a shoulder to shoulder embrace. They're dressed in pastels with smiles on, but there is an obvious change in mood between the shelf pictures and this one. It could just be that her brother was gone, unable to make it, just not in this picture. But the sinking in his stomach as well as what he knows about Renee thus far leads him to the understanding that her brother is gone.

She still has this good life and the good she knows still far outweighs the bad, but Renee is not unfamiliar with the sadness. She knows personal hurt and she is not disenchanted with life. It can't be easy for her then, to be coming to this realization that her job isn't everything she thought it was. Larry is dead and she has encountered plenty of professional hurt over the past couple of days. His words must have stung her to the core—"you'll learn to live with it."

"But what if I don't want to live with it?"

"Then quit."

When he said them he hadn't taken into consideration that she might be right. That maybe there was a way to have a home full of memories, scarring as some may be, as well as a job that requires a person to take lives. His own experience told him it was impossible. Meeting Jack told Renee exactly how much some people end up giving for the job. But Renee's experience gave Jack hope that maybe there was a way to reconcile the two.

A shake came over him at that moment, leading to a struggle for breath that instinctively drove him to find his jacket with the anti-seizure medication. He rested himself against the couch as this episode served as a reminder of his situation. He couldn't help but think what an extremely unlikely time this was to finally be getting the balance he was learning about from Renee for his own life.

But maybe this is what dying is like—finally getting all the pieces, putting them together and learning to really live with it.