“I should be so lucky.”
That basically froze them both.
Jenna said, “That came out totally wrong.”
“Was that an apology?”
Jenna searched for a vein that was not already bruised with previous puncture marks. “Definitely not.”
“Because if it was, I’d class that as the totally lamest apology ever.”
Jenna pressed the syringe home. “You are purely awful.”
“Bad syntax. Again.” Millie sighed a welcome to the relief. “So what you’re saying is, next time I should go ahead and kick the old bucket.”
“Don’t you dare.” She extracted the needle. Disposed of it in the plastic hazardous-waste pail. “Who am I supposed to be angry with after you’re gone?” She stripped off her gloves. Swallowed hard. Added, “Who am I supposed to love?”
But Millie was already asleep.
* * *
Their final ten days together, Millie grew too weak and fragile to leave her bed. This final admission of defeat cost them both more than either expected, despite how Jenna had spent months preparing for this day. Knowing Millie would hate it worse than anything. Fight it hard as she could. And be defeated just the same.
When it was time, Jenna prepared just another dose of the ever-stronger pain meds. When Millie finally stopped her bitter venting and fell asleep, Jenna went to work.
Thankfully, Millie’s sleep had grown far deeper and longer. No surprise, given the current dosage of her meds. Which was good in a way, because Jenna made ten kinds of racket.
She swung the hospital bed around, creasing the bedroom’s floorboards in the process. Then she repositioned all the room’s other furniture. This was followed by dragging in a stepladder, which she then fell off. Twice.
Her plan was simple enough. She was going to bring the one most precious fragment of the world, the part Millie found hardest to give up, inside Millie’s room.
When Millie finally woke, all the preparations were completed. Jenna was seated in her customary position, between the bed and the door leading to the other rooms. Not actually preening, but close.
“Sit me up.”
Jenna used the controls to raise Millie’s head. The bed now fronted the sliding glass doors. Beyond the balcony railing, a massive cruise ship trundled out of port. Heading into the deep Atlantic waters. Caribbean islands, the Keys, the Gulf, Mexico, South America, all the places Millie would never visit. Except for the photographs that now rimmed her perch. Dozens and dozens of pictures. Boats and islands and mystically beautiful harbors. All of them plastered to her walls and the ceiling overhead.
Millie waited until the white cruise ship had vanished from view, then said, “I knew it would never happen. Not to me. Not in this life.”
Jenna found no need to pretend or object. “I envy you that. Having big dreams.”
“You never wanted the impossible?”
“Not like you. I never had a dream so potent I was consumed with the desire. Growing up, I considered moving from day to day and staying intact accomplishment enough.” She watched as Millie focused on the two-page catalog directly overhead, her all-time favorite yacht, a seventy-two-foot live-in Bertrand. “Listening to you talk about your boats, seeing how you loved them, it makes my life seem small.”
“My dreams of cruising the open waters have seen me through some bad times.” Millie went quiet, then, “I always saw it as the other me. The healthy me. The one who could make the dreams real.”
“The other you. I like that.”
Millie turned her head without lifting it from the pillow. “How much?”
“How much what?”
“Pay attention, sport. This is important. How much do you like the idea?”
“A lot, until you started getting snippy,” Jenna replied. “Now, not so much.”
This time, Millie did not come back with a semi-acrid retort. Instead, she offered Jenna the same tight and frantically electric look she had last revealed during their first-ever Zoom.
