“Who are you here to see?”
“My grandson.” He curses under his breath and shakes his head. “Sorry. My granddaughter.”
“She’s trans?”
He nods. “I keep fucking it up though. I didn’t get it for a long time, and I don’t think I was the nicest to her, but then she got testicular cancer and…”
“You realize you just want her to be happy and healthy, whatever that looks like.”
He dips his chin, dashing away a rogue tear. “Almost lost her.”
“But she’s going to be okay?”
His hand goes to his mouth, his eyes red and filling with tears faster than he can hide them. “She is. Thank God in heaven, she is. And I’m here to help her get checked out and take her home.”
“Then you are very lucky.”
“I am. Thank you.”
He squeezes my hand, this elderly stranger, and we both kinda sit here, crying mostly silent tears. Grief and relief are strange bedfellows.
After a few moments, he squeezes my hand again and then stands. “It’s not the same, but in their own way, they must love you. For them to keep you near them this whole time, they must love you very much.”
I nod, standing with him. “They love me like family.”
He gives me a quick, bracing hug, and we part ways. I watch him walk down the hall festooned with balloons and flower bouquets before turning to head to the section of the hospital that’s quiet, save for the machines.
* * *
Renée
“H-Hey Wick. How’re…you doing?” I ask, frustrated from needing to breathe every few words.
“I’m okay.”
Hm. My brain might be foggier these days, but I can tell that the last thing he is isokay.
“You’ve lost…um.” Fuck, what’s the word? “Pounds.”
Close enough.
More than just the weight loss, he looks ghostly. His handsome face is pale and hollowed out and he’s gone dark around the eyes. They’re puffy and red, like maybe he was crying just before he walked in.
“I'm grand, milady,” he says with a vulnerability that just wrecks me.
I'm so used to seeing the tiny creases around his eyes tilted up with smiles. Seeing them angled down in grief is just awful. He's taking my death particularly hard, and I wish I could make it better.
I’ve been told it’s unreasonable to expect that the people who will survive me won’t be sad. I’d love to be able to wave a magic wand and help them to feel the peace and acceptance that I do. I wish they could know this is where I was always meant to get off and they were meant to continue.
And that I’m okay with it. Mostly.
I do get to be pissed, however, about missing out on Trip getting married and becoming a father.
“Wick, your…puppy dog eyes are…killing me.”
His look settles on me, and we hold each other's gaze for several moments. Finally, now at the end, I can acknowledge to myself something I’ve ignored for years.
Francis McGovern Warwick is in love with me and has been from nearly the beginning. I have no clue where to store that particular truth, so I just tuck it away in my heart with all of the other sea-glass memories that’ve made my life so beautiful.
