Page 19 of Fierce-Michael

“I went away to college about an hour away. He didn’t go to college but rather got a job with the highway department flagging or something. He didn’t care for school much.”

“It’s not for everyone,” he said. “I went but struggled to finish it. Halfway through I told myself it’d be stupid to walk away. I’m glad I didn’t. Not that I’m using my business degree all that much.”

“I’d say you are,” she said.

“We are getting off track. You and Brian?”

“We kept in touch. As I said, we were friends. Then I get a text he’s sick and he’s scared. They were running tests and thought he had cancer.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Yeah. Leukemia. He’d been sick or not feeling good for a while and thought he had the flu. He didn’t. The next day they started chemo and he was in the hospital. He’d be there for about a month, then go home for a few weeks, and then go back for more chemo. It wasn’t a good prognosis.”

“That had to be hard to hear.”

“Very. I was crying and came home. He wanted me to see him before he started chemo. I said I’d be there and skipped classes the next day. His parents left the room and let us talk. He said he was afraid he’d never get married or have kids. Nothing.”

“Did you say you’d marry him?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I told him he’d be fine. He was strong and he’d get through. He was a fighter. I stayed for a few days and then went back to college as he got weaker. He wanted me to go back, but we talked daily.”

“That is a big burden for you at that age.”

“It was, but I didn’t feel that way. If I could have come home to finish the semester somewhere else I would have, but it was too late into the semester. He was getting the care he needed athome. His parents knew me well. Brian and I had been friends for years so I’d text his mother at times to check in on him.”

“I’m sure they appreciated that.”

“They did.”

But they didn’t appreciate things afterward.

“I’m going to assume he didn’t get better?” he asked.

“When he’d been home for a break on the chemo, I’d been visiting him. It was Christmas break and I had a month off. On one of our visits, he asked me to marry him. Said that he didn’t know what was going to happen and wanted to say he had a wife.”

She saw the sympathy in his eyes. “You said yes?”

“I did. I loved him. He was like a best friend. We had so many memories and he needed me.”

“You were nineteen,” he said. “That’s a huge responsibility to take on caring for someone and you’d be in college.”

“I transferred back home for the next semester. My parents were pissed, but they knew there was no changing my mind. I just had to do it. I said we’d figure out the rest later on.”

“I can’t imagine my parents would be that understanding.”

“Mine weren’t. I’m sugarcoating it. But I was at an age they couldn’t tell me no. The same with Brian. His parents were livid over the whole idea of it, but we did it anyway. They were gone one day and I was sitting with him and we had a judge come to the house. When everyone found out, it was an all-out war, but since Brian was going back in for chemo, everyone bit their tongue. We just had to be positive for him.”

“Makes sense,” he said.

“He went into the hospital. His parents stayed as his medical proxy. That was the big fight, that I would step in and do things and I swore to them I absolutely would not do it. That wouldn’t be right. I went to appointments because Brian asked me to be there, not because his parents wanted to include me.”

“Did you just sit and listen?”

“I did. I held his hand. We had simple sterling silver rings that I bought us and we wore them. No one questioned me being there or his parents handling the medical stuff. We were young.”

“I’d think that is pretty common,” he said.

“We’ll fast forward. After the second month, he went through his treatment, I was in college locally and then went to see him a few times a week. Mostly on the weekends. It gave his parents a break too and Brian said they did appreciate that as they didn’t want him alone.”