“So it’s not working. That’s what you’re saying, right? It was for nothing.”

“Not for nothing.” Dr. Gull temples his hands on his desktop, his signature move. Every doctor I’ve seen the last three years has one: Dr. Gunnar licked his lips. Dr. Webb cracked his thumbs inside his fists. Dr. Gull temples.

“Now we know we can eliminate that entire class of drugs as viable treatment options,” he explains, like that’s a good thing. I think about the night Mel and I puked all over the side of his carport, almost eight years ago. He has no idea I even knew his sons, let alone drank moonshine in his basement and slept it off under an afghan some beloved grandma probably made for them.

I look again at the chest X-ray on his desk: my angiosarcomas, virtually unchanged since their return last spring, after two months in remission. “What’s next?”

“They responded well to radiation,” he says, flipping through my file. “Not great, but enough where I’d consider surgical removal again.”

This catches my attention. “Dr. Webb said surgery at anything larger than 30% was too risky.”

“It is risky,” he says, “but I’m a high-risk surgeon. I’ve removed worse.” He slaps the file shut and stands, so I do, too. “Besides, it’s riskier to wait through another chemo course. We’re lucky the cancer hasn’t spread yet. Most patients in your shoes would’ve been dead by now.”

When I first got diagnosed, hearing a doctor say something like this would’ve kept me up all night with existential dread. By now, I’ve come to appreciate people who can shoot it straight.

“When do we start?” I ask, following him to the door.

“Tomorrow, if that works for you. I don’t want to wait on this.” He pauses and clears his throat, what doctors tend to do when they’re about to tell you something death-related. “The surgery isn’t fool-proof, of course. It just seems like the best course of action, given the circumstances.”

“A last-ditch effort,” I clarify. Dr. Gull nods.

He claps a hand on my back, a fatherly move of his that I’ve grown to like. I wonder if his sons think he’s a good dad.

“I don’t like promising things I can’t guarantee,” he says. “I’m a good surgeon, but this is serious. So...stay hopeful, but practical.”

“I know. I’ve got my will drafted, all that.” Actually, I had a will made up just a week after my diagnosis. It was surprisingly easy—my entire estate, left to my son when he turns eighteen. Just like Dad.

“Good.” He claps my back again, then takes his hand away. “Although you should know, I’ve got a good success rate going. I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you wake up on that operating table, cancer-free.”

I smile. I believe him—not that I’ll come out of this okay, but that he’ll do his best. “See you Monday, then.”

“You told him no? What’s wrong with you?”

I look at Emma, Josh’s girlfriend, over the rim of my cereal bowl as I finish the milk. We’re doing a pantry week, something Emma saw on Pinterest to save money, which means dinner was between sugar-crusted cornflakes, or plain black beans and no rice.

“Calvin’s a nice guy,” I tell her, “but he liked me a lot more than I liked him. It wouldn’t have been right to take a trip with him—”

“But it’s Aspen!”

“—and his entire family,” I finish, giving her another look. “It was a huge step and...I’m just not that into him. I don’t want that kind of commitment, that’s all.”

Emma sits back and stirs her cereal, clinking the spoon against the bowl. “It seems like you’re never into the guys you date as much as they’re into you. You never want commitment. Don’t you think there’s a reason?”

My ego gets defensive, but I just take a breath instead of responding. I know Josh has told Emma all about Blake, and that they share the opinion I’m not over him. She seems to think it’s her job to probe my personal life like I’m one of her patients.

Josh met Emma when, during his second year of med school, he had a week of stress dreams and anxiety attacks. She was his therapist for just one month before they started dating. Living with them in Emma’s townhouse is fun, overall. But times like now, I wish I had my own place.

“Just haven’t met the right guy, I guess,” I mutter, as I take my bowl to the sink. Emma, wisely, offers no more advice.

I see him, sometimes. He still works at the ad agency, but moved out of Pike’s Landing. I’ve got no interest in learning where he lives now.

Or, more specifically, who he’s living with.

He’s usually got his son by his side, a little brown-haired boy who looks just like the one that ran up to my mom that day in the mall. Every time I see them, I think about walking over, saying hi. Because the guy holding that small hand, showing him the world: that’s the Blake I know. The one that would’ve stayed.

But then, always, I realize how pale he looks. Rail-thin. Sick.

I wonder how many bottles he puts away every night, without me there to hound him. I’m sure he’s also never seen a therapist, or gotten a handle on his grief. If he had, I’d see a very different man. I’d notice the change, even at a distance.

So I don’t go up and say hello. I just stay where I am, and watch.

“Your mom called again, by the way,” Emma says, right as I’m heading upstairs to my room. “Something about this guy at her church, newly divorced. She said he’s your type.”

Of course she did. My mother has set me up on ten blind dates this year alone, each more boring and predictable than the last. Not that the few dates I’ve arranged for myself have gone any better. Maybe, unlike the other three years Blake and I didn’t talk, I’ve got standards.

Or maybe Josh and Emma are right, which is the worst possibility of them all.

“Catch it, Daddy!”

I smile when Banner grabs the baseball from the grass and pitches: more of a flail than a throw, and the ball veers out towards the ditch, but still.

“Nice job, bud,” I call, running after it. I loft it back into his waiting mitt, and his face lights up like Christmas.

This, right here, is what I think of when I picture fatherhood. It’s nice to have memories of a good dad now, even if they’re about myself instead of my own.

And I am a good dad. I mean, I try to be. It’s hard, with Banner splitting his time between my little rented house outside the city, and Cait’s parents’ mansion. They spoil him rotten and let him break every rule in the book, which means I spend about two days of each visit reestablishing manners.

He’s a good kid, though. I can tell he prefers this—spending time with me, doing whatever, rules and all—to that house where everyone’s too busy, too far apart.

Banner pitches back and I dive for the ball again, exaggerating my motions to make him laugh. When that giggle peals across me and he falls into my arms, I forget about everything else.

“Risky. This is serious.”

“Stay hopeful, but practical.”

Dr. Gull’s words from this morning fracture the moment. I sit up and hug Banner until the knot in my stomach untwists, and I’m okay again.

“Daddy?” he asks. He’s got grass stains on his cheeks.

I wet my thumb and wipe the smudges off as best I can, while he laughs and wiggles away. “Yeah?”

“Why are your nails purple?” He takes my hand, holding it up for us both to see.

“What?” Sure enough, my nail beds are dark, like I’ve dipped my fingertips in ink. The dizziness hits when I try to stand, then sink to my knees again.

My heart’s struggling, I can feel it. It races, but every beat chugs along, incomplete.

God, please, I think, or maybe pray, not now.

“Uh...hey, let’s go inside,” I tell him, forcing a smile. My voice is hoarse. It scares him. “Lemonade,” I manage.

Banner watches me stumble to my feet, the baseball clutched in his grip. He follows me across the lawn.

“Hi, Mrs. Shoemaker!” he calls, waving to my neighbor while she takes her dogs, three fat Jack Russells, on their afternoon walk.

“Well, hi there, Banner!” she coos. Mrs. Shoemaker has the habit of treating Banner like a baby, which I guess he still kind of is, at three and some change. I see him as more of a kid-in-training.

Not that I’m thinking about that right now; I’m just trying to make it inside. Just get inside, I coach myself, then turn it into a mantra, even as my vision blurs at the edges. Every step blacks out a little more.

Banner tears away from my hand and runs for the dogs. I try to tell him to stop, but when I turn, my heart can’t keep up.

The last thing I remember is the grass on my face, sharp and cool, and the baseball right in front of my face, where Banner dropped it.