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For the first time since all of this began, I stop pretending. I stop being brave and strong and believing that if I just fight hard enough, research enough, ask enough questions, somehow I can fix this.

Because I can’t.

I press my forehead against his hand and finally let myself break.

“God…”

My voice cracks.

“I can’t do this.”

A warm hand lands on my shoulder, and when I look up, my father is standing behind me with tears streaming down his face. Across the bed, my mother is holding Damiano’s mother while she cries.

“I can’t do this, Daddy.”

My father pulls me into his arms.

And I let him.

CHAPTER 3

Eleonora

Have you ever seen a lion die?

I was fourteen when I watched Narnia for the first time, after my father had read the books to me every night as a child and I begged my parents to let me watch it.

There is this scene where Aslan is captured and helpless, his mane gone, his eyes hollow. He was a good lion, with wisdom and a heart of gold, and they were about to kill him. I remember the helpless rage I felt watching that scene, wanting to step into the TV screen and free him from his fate.

That is how I feel as I watch my husband face the biggest monster of all.

Death.

Knowing that monster has already won, but he fights it anyway.

Three days have gone by since we got the news, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Damiano isn’t eating anything, or that the color of his skin, eyes and lips is changing, I wouldn’t be able to tell he’s dying.

His best friend Jude called earlier.

I didn’t see the screen, but I could see Damiano smile, and every now and then he’d nod. They hardly spoke. They didn’t need to.

When the call ended, Damiano seemed more at peace somehow.

The doctors can’t tell us exactly how much time he has left. Days, maybe weeks. They ask Damiano where he wants to spend whatever time he has, and I leave that choice entirely to him. I don’t feel like taking away one of the few choices he has left in life.

I secretly hope he’ll choose to stay at home, but for some reason he wants to stay in the hospital.

So every day between two and five, people come to say goodbye. Family, friends, neighbors, people whose lives he touched without even trying.

Our close family and I are allowed to stay with him twenty-four hours a day.

It is nine in the evening and his parents have just left. The nurses wheeled in another bed for me and somehow managed to put us close to each other.

I’m lying on my side, Damiano’s hand in mine as I study his handsome face. No matter the pallor or the dry lips, to me he’ll always be the most handsome man on this planet.

His eyes open, as if he senses me nearby, and a small smile fills his lips.

“Vita mia.”