Waiting in the hallway
I leaned against the cool vinyl of the hospital corridor, the fluorescent lights humming above my head.
Every breath felt like a whisper of the summer when Maya first walked into my life, hair a wild tumble of curls, eyes bright enough to chase the sunrise.
She was a freelance photographer, always with a camera slung over her shoulder, snapping the world like it were a story waiting to be told.
We met at a downtown coffee shop, our tables colliding over a spilled latte.
“Sorry,” she laughed, and her smile lit up the cramped space.
We talked about traveling to the coast, about opening a gallery together, about the future we could build before the rent notices even arrived.
It felt reckless, intoxicating, like two teenagers who had just found a secret map.
Two months in, she started complaining of headaches, a vague fatigue that lingered like a bad aftertaste.
She brushed it off, saying it was “just stress from the shoot deadlines.”
The doctor gave a quick glance, wrote “stress” on the chart, and sent us on our way.
But I noticed the way she’d pause at the scent of antiseptic, the way her hands trembled when she lifted her camera.
Those small signs lingered in my mind, a quiet warning I chose to ignore.
Chemotherapy and stubborn refusals
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