I show up at the hospital soaking wet.

A storm erupts just as I get out of my car. I run through it with my head down and my pulse thrashing against my eardrums like the thunder. My shoes are slick on the lobby floor; I almost careen into the elevator.

Outside his room in the ICU, I start to really panic. Three years. Again.

This time, it feels like it’s been even longer. This time, when one of us walked away, it felt permanent.

When I open his door and see him, I don’t recognize the voice that says his name. It’s mine, but terrified and broken and small, because this isn’t the Blake I know, either.

He’s thin, which I knew from faraway glances, but in the hospital bed it’s even more pronounced. His hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat, and his eyes look sunken. They flutter, but don’t open.

I take his hand in mine. It’s like a sick bird: thin skin, every bone visible.

“Blake,” I say, and swallow hard, trying to sound brave. “Blake, I’m here...can you hear me?”

He doesn’t answer or open his eyes, but after a minute—the longest one of my life—I feel his fingers close tighter around mine.

“Hey.”

Mel starts when she hears my voice; she was looking out the window at the rain. “Hi,” she says, smiling and exhaling at the same time, hand pressed to her chest.

We stare at each other a while. A machine beeps in the silence. I notice the blanket on the chair, her wrinkled clothes. She slept here.

She waited.

“So,” she says, and wets her lips as she takes the seat by my head, “you let Caitlin-Anne name the kid after all, huh?”

“What?” I try to sit up, held down by wires and the weight of my own exhaustion. “No, I named him.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Bruce Banner?” I prompt. “Oh, come on.”

“No, I get the reference. But Banner Foster,” she deadpans, “sounds like a dessert.”

Her laugh hits me like a shot of adrenaline. I feel the full force of just how much I’ve missed her, a feeling I know well but try to push down, every single day.

“I’m so happy to see you,” I whisper.

She smiles, but it fades when she looks up and down the bed, taking in the view. “Cancer,” she says, her eyes welling up. “They said you have, like...tumors, in your heart?”

I nod.

“How long have they been there?”

“They think since I was seventeen, but they didn’t turn cancerous until later.” I cough. “It’s really rare, apparently. Just my luck, right?”

My joke seems to make her crying worse instead of better.

“And, uh...how long have you known?”

I force myself to look her in the eye. She deserves that much. “Since the day I told you to leave.”

A sob works out. She tries to stifle it, but can’t. “Fucking hell, Blake,” she whimpers, and puts her head on my arm, weeping.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I press my face into the blanket, the smell of cotton and detergent so sharp it makes my sinuses hurt. I turn my head and look at him. “You got sober, you changed…. We could have stayed together. Why did you leave?”

He blinks and opens his mouth with a false start, fumbling. I notice a tear on his cheek. “I didn’t want you to see me die,” he says, finally.

And now I’m seeing it anyway, I think, but the thought that he might actually be.... I bury my face again and cry some more. I can’t think about it.

By lunchtime, I stop crying. Not because I’m done; there’s plenty more sadness, just not enough water to get it out. I lift my head and grab some tissues, right when a nurse comes in to check his vitals.

“Dr. Gull’s coming in around two,” she says. The blood pressure cuff looks huge on his arm. “He’s got some options to discuss with you. For your treatment course.”

“He said radiation again, then surgery.” Blake feels for the adjustment button on his railing, making himself sit up. The effort makes him cough; the nurse gets him his rescue inhaler and pumps it once, then twice.

“Well, I have a feeling he’ll move that plan into the fast lane,” she says, smiling, which I take as a good sign. At least, as good as it can be.

When she leaves, I ask, “Dr. Gull? The guy whose house we got wasted at and puked all over his carport?”

Blake laughs, and even though it’s just this weak burst of air, barely a laugh at all, I feel the ache that’s been in my stomach since last night lessen. “The very same.”

“Does he know? I mean, that we—you—knew his sons?”

“Nah, it felt weird to bring it up.” He laughs again, then gets quiet, serious. “How’d you know I was here, anyway?”

“Caitlin-Anne came into the dispatch and told me.”

“That’s right, you work for a paper now. Movie reviewer.” His hand finds mine on the blanket. “Just like we talked about.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrug and tuck my hair behind my ear. “You gave me some good advice.”

He starts to speak again but coughs, sending me into a panicked dive for his inhaler. “I’m fine,” he sputters, laughing. “Thanks, though.”

“Sorry. I freaked out.” I sit back down. “Is, uh...is that related, by the way? The asthma and the....” The word tastes like dirt, gritty and dark. “The cancer?”

“Coincidence. Makes the asthma worse, but they’re unrelated.” He clears his throat. “The cancer’s probably genetic, though. It’s the same kind my mom had, just in a different place.” His voice softens. “I’m lucky, though. It didn’t spread. At least, it hasn’t yet.”

My eyes sting again. I can’t take anymore crying.

Instead, I rest my head back on his arm and breathe. In, out, measured and careful, until I hear his do the same.

“I really hate you for not telling me.”

The tape on my IV pinches my skin every time I reach up to stroke her hair, but I don’t stop. “I didn’t tell anyone. The only reason Cait knows is because the doctors told her, after I fainted in front of Banner.” I pause, debating. If there was ever a time to be totally honest with her, give her that open communication she always wanted, now is it. “I almost left, the day I found out.”

“Left? Like....”

“Yeah. Pack of cigarettes, never come back. Just drop off the face of the earth until I….” I bite my lip. Three years have numbed the shock, but I still remember.

It was two days after Banner was born. The day I told Mel to leave.

Dr. Gunnar shut the door to his office, sat down behind his desk, and ran his tongue over his teeth with his mouth shut. Instantly, I knew.

“Sarcomas…possible embolisms….” His voice rattled through the labels and complications, but all I heard was the one word he hadn’t even said. Cancer. This thing killing me from the inside out.

I threw up in his trash can. He didn’t mind.

“I’m young, but I’ve handled some cases like this before,” he said, when I calmed down and we started outlining my first treatment. “And it won’t just be me—you’ll have a team behind you, the whole way. Specialists, surgeons, everything you need. I want you to know there are options.”

He meant in medicine and surgeries. The only options I was thinking of were the places I could pack up and fly to, right then. New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, Canada. It didn’t matter where.

I went back to Caitlin-Anne’s room. Caught Mel just before she knocked. Told her to leave, then made the choice for her.

The hospital courtyard was windy and crowded. I sat at a picnic table and looked up flights. I checked my savings.

I could leave tonight, if I wanted.

Caitlin-Anne was awake when I got back to her room, giggling with her friends. “Hey! Where’d you go?”

I took the baby from Gillian without asking. She looked pissed, but I didn’t care. This is my kid. I can take him whenever I want.

The baby wriggled one hand out of the swaddle.

This is my kid.

“I can’t believe you guys haven’t named him yet.” Gillian picked up the baby name book I’d brought with me, the night of the birth. “I thought Bourne was the winner.”

“Blake doesn’t like it,” Cait sighed. I looked up, surprised she’d realized this, and more surprised she cared.

“Well, you like ‘B’ names,” I said, clearing flight schedules and packing lists from my head when the kid opened his eyes. They were gray, but everyone kept telling me they’d change, in time. “What about Banner?”

I prayed she wouldn’t ask me where it was from, because she hated all things comic-related. Almost as much as I hated Cats.

“Banner,” she repeated, and her friends did the same. I passed her the baby and she whispered it. No providential sign came down to tell us yes, this was the name, but we did feel something.

“Banner Andrew?” she prodded.

My heart raced under my shirt. “If you refuse treatment,” Dr. Gunnar told me, when I asked how long I could go on like this, “I’d say…six months. Maybe up to a year, if you’re lucky, and that’s if you stop all alcohol consumption.”

I’d cracked my knuckles against his desk, all eight fingers at once. “And what are my chances of surviving if I do get treatment? Like…no more cancer, all clear?”

He looked away, so I braced myself. New doctor, poor bluffing skills. “The survival rate is low. Usually, we can just…prolong a patient’s life. Three years, four.”

My head felt hot, like my brain was overheating, unable to process it. “So there’s no real cure.”

“There are a few cases documented where the cancer doesn’t return or spread. The tumors get removed, the patient goes into remission, and goes on living their life to old age.”

“How many?”

Again, he glanced away, messing with a wooden block calendar on his desk. It was turned to the wrong date. I had a fierce urge to fix it, but didn’t.

“So few,” he answered, finally, “that I can’t give you a number. But I think it’s worth it to at least try.”

Three years. Four.

New York. Canada. Anywhere but here.

“Is that a yes?” Cait asked, when I didn’t answer.

“Yeah.” I ran my finger down the baby’s cheek. He’d already fallen back asleep, the rise and fall of his chest somehow forcing mine to match. “Andrew’s good.”

* * *

“I didn’t want Banner to watch me die, either,” I explain to Mel, now. “You know? To get a dad for a few years, and then...that’s it.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “Some time is better than none.”

“That’s what I tell myself, whenever I feel guilty for staying. I honestly didn’t think I would live this long. I thought that…that maybe he’d get a few good years, and then he could forget me.” I pause. “Unless you were talking about us.”

“Both,” she whispers. She lifts her head. “What I don’t get is, how did you even manage to hide it?”

“I got lucky, I didn’t lose much hair during chemo. Then I had the first surgery—”

“No, I mean....” She bites her lip, sniffling. “How? Emotionally, how could you go through that all alone?”

Her hand reaches out and touches my face. I lean into the warmth of her palm. When I look at her like this, so close I can’t do anything but lock my eyes with hers, I wonder if I made a mistake, after all.

“Maybe it wasn’t the best option.”

She manages to laugh. “You think?”

I smile a little, kissing her fingers. My oxygen tube gets in the way the first time, so I do it again.

“When you told me to leave,” she says, but breaks down, and has to start again. “Being apart from you? That hurt so much more than anything we could’ve gone through, Blake.”

I nod. “I think I get that, now.” Now that I’m at death’s door. Now that she’s here, and I realize it doesn’t matter if we get five years or five decades, or even five minutes. As long as we get something. When you love someone, you want to see things through to the end. Whenever it happens.

“Too little, too late,” I mutter. “My life motto.”

“Some time is better than none,” she repeats, leaning forward to press her mouth against mine, just before she dissolves into tears again—wondering, probably, the same thing as me: just how much “some” really is.