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I walk toward it, but the bat feels heavier now, my arms shaking as I lift it.

I swing anyway.

Once.

Again.

Harder.

I hit those cells until the canvas tears and the letters split, until my shoulders burn and my hands ache and sweat runs down my back.

I hit it for every needle and every bag of blood. Every fever. Every night I sat beside his bed pretending I wasn't scared. Every doctor who couldn't give me an answer and every time I told him we'd beat it.

And then something inside me breaks open.

A scream tears out of me.

It's low and raw and horrible, something dragged up from a place so deep inside me I didn't know it existed.

Something almost animal.

I don't stop swinging.

I can't.

The bat comes down again.

And again.

And again.

The horrible, loud sound keeps pouring out of me while I hit what’s left of those fucking cells, until I can't tell where one scream ends and the next begins.

My arms shake.

My lungs burn.

Tears blur everything in front of me.

Fourteen months of keeping the ugliest parts of this locked inside me, and suddenly there is nothing holding them back.

The hospital room.

His fear.

So much fear.

The days I wanted to scream but couldn't because he was the one dying and I was supposed to be strong.

The funeral.

The urn.

The empty bed.

The fucking silence.

All of it comes out of me in a sound that doesn't belong to the woman I used to be.