I know, she said.
That was the night we stopped trying to be the better versions of ourselves and started trying to be honest ones instead.
Treatment ended in the first week of spring.
The final imaging results came three weeks after that. We sat in the clinic parking lot afterward, side by side in the car, neither of us speaking because we had used up our voices on the drive over and could not afford to spend whatever was left on the wrong thing before we knew.
When the oncologist came into the room she was smiling before she said a word. Elena’s grip on my hand became briefly painful.
Remission.
Not a promise. Not a guarantee against fear for the rest of our lives. Not a conclusion but a threshold.
Remission.
