Pulmonary nodules. The chest x-ray revealed findings consistent with pulmonary nodules. The growths are small and scattered, and they weren’t present four months ago. The nodules are “concerning for metastatic disease.” She gets off the phone with her oncologist and asks you questions. Your eyes have never strayed from her inevitable destination from the day of her diagnosis. But she held hope, believing in the miracle of remission. But now-- now everything has shifted. The frontier has changed, and borders no longer mean anything. Everything is now vulnerable to attack, and she’s asking you questions you’re too afraid to answer. You don’t know what to say. And you, in your calmer moments, still find it baffling that this is her life, your life, two lives together, bonded by love and now, united by tragedy.
It’s been days since the phone call, and now she sleeps all the time. You’ve pondered why. Is it the depression, spreading like the malignancy? Or is it the progression of the disease? Perhaps it’s both, and all of this is just the nature of things, a slow progression towards the eventual and inescapable outcome. So you sit here, staring through a window and into a thicket of trees and shrubbery. Various shades of green sway in no discernible direction. The trees and the blossoms and the flowers and us-- it’s all just fodder for the cosmos.