The doctor closed the file, adjusted his glasses, and said,
"You shouldn't be alone."
That single sentence was enough.
No one says that before delivering good news.
When you're thirty years old, lying on a white hospital bed, you don't expect to hear numbers like "two months." Those numbers belong to other people. To the old. To those who have already lived their lives.
He kept talking, but his voice faded. Only one word stayed clear.
Cancer.
Strange thing. I always thought if I ever died, it would be because of love, or a bullet, or an accident. Not something that slowly eats you from the inside, like an old memory that refuses to fade.
When I stepped out of the room, the hospital corridor smelled of disinfectant and despair.
It felt familiar. As if I had been here before. Maybe not with my body, but with my soul.
I sat on a bench and checked my phone.
No messages.
No missed calls.
I laughed quietly.
You only realize how alone you are when you're told you're dying.
If my father were still alive, he would be sitting next to me now. With that heavy stare of his. The one that always said weakness was not an option.
But he's been gone for years.
And he took many things with him.
Through the large glass window at the end of the hall, I saw the gray sky. It was autumn. Autumn is always kinder when you have nothing left to lose. Leaves are a lot like us. Beautiful at first, then abandoned.
My hand trembled. Not from fear of death.
From the thought of her.
I hadn't allowed myself to think of her name for years. Some names, once spoken, burn everything around them.
But now?
Now it didn't matter.
If I was going to die, I had the right to tell the truth.
The truth my father had buried years ago.
The truth that cost one love, one life, and perhaps this body.
I stood up.
Before death, there was one thing I had to do.
Not for revenge.
Not for forgiveness.
Only so that silence would not be the final lie of my life.
And that was how everything began.