The tears that held on for so long slid down his face. “Oh, Lukas, that’s the whole problem. You can’t help me—no one can.”
“Sam.” I lifted the hand he wasn’t grasping and cupped his face. “Don’t underestimate me.”
His laughter was heavily drenched in sadness. “Let me tell you a story.”
I’d sit there all day and listen to anything Sam wanted to tell me, any scrap of information that would explain to me what was going on. I held on to his hand and gave him my undivided attention.
“I was always a sickly kid. It didn’t happen right away, though. I got through my toddler years and was almost eight when I started getting sick a lot. My doctors all thought it was me needing to build up my immune system at first. They did blood work after I wasn’t getting better, and that was when my life changed forever.” He swallowed loudly. “That’s how old I was when the doctors first told me I had cancer.”
I clenched my jaw, anger filling my veins. Not at Sam but for him because I knew how this story was going to end.
He lifted his shirt slightly, exposing some of his small scars. “I went through surgeries, chemo, radiation, pills, and injections. You name it, I did it. It kept things at bay, but Iwas never one hundred percent. I was living a fifty percent life at best. A bone marrow transplant was my best bet. I had four matches, but every time we were set to do it, my body was too weak. It wasn’t feasible is what they told me.” He chuckled darkly. “I thought I was going to die. I came to terms with it. Then five years ago, I got a miracle. My body strengthened. The cancer was still there, but I wasn’t feverish, I was hanging in there. Enough that they did the transplant.”
Bubbles jumped on the couch and curled in Sam’s lap as if she knew he was tearing off a scab and exposing the raw wound.
“The first year was hard—lots to watch for, fear of rejection, blah blah. I was inching toward the second year, feeling better than I ever had when my parents died…fate is a bitch.”
Jesus, he couldn’t catch a break.
“Everyone rallied, came to my aid, and while I miss them like a piece of me has been ripped out, I knew they’d want nothing more than for me to live this life I was given. I vowed to. Made a bucket list and everything.”
That explained why he had one of those.
“Life was good; then there was you, and it felt perfect.”
“Sam…”
He held up his hand. “Please, Lukas. I need to finish.”
“Okay.”
“Every month I get blood work, and once a year they do scans. Every year the scans looked great and nothing was off about my blood, until recently. My M Proteins were off, so I had them redrawn just in case it was an error…it wasn’t. So, my doctor ordered me to get scans done.”
He blinked a few times, absently pet Bubbles.
“In the year that has passed, a tumor formed on my spine close to my brain, they found masses on some of my organs, and lesions on my bones.” He lifted his head, his lips quivering. “Doctors want to do chemo. They can’t remove the tumor whereit’s located, and they’ll likely biopsy the masses, though I’m sure it’s pointless. They will do radiation, but again it won’t matter.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Lukas, I’ve been here before. It’s never been this bad this quickly, I’m a realist. I will do everything they ask of me, but…”
“But what, what is it, Sam?”
“Lukas, you need to understand something. Every moment since I had my bone marrow transplant, it has been as if I were living on borrowed time. The reality of it all is that I was born on the edge of goodbye. My story has an ending as—all of ours does—and mine is here. Lukas, I’m dying.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Sam
I completely infodumped on Lukas in devastating fashion, and he wasn’t even blinking…he wasn’t doing much of anything, actually. He simply stared at me. I realized he was probably processing everything I’d said; it was a lot to take in. I’d thought I was going to die most of my life, and then I’d had hope, and wasn’t that the greatest killer of them all?
“I’m sorry, Lukas.”
That seemed to jolt him out of his stupor. “Are you apologizing to me?”
“I shouldn’t have thrown all this at you. On the other hand, maybe I should have told you as soon as I suspected something was going on.”
Lukas moved closer to me, as if that were even possible. “You have no reason to apologize to me, Sam, or to anyone. If anything, I should apologize to you for pushing you even in the slightest about telling me what was wrong. You were processing, and I didn’t need to be another stressor for you.”
