ah, there it goes again. that dejected revulsion i felt when i first read this story.
i kept wanting him to become angry. i wanted him to scream, break something, hate his husband enough to save himself. instead, he only grew tired. he endured the treatments, the blood, the slow betrayal of his own body, and the humiliation of loving someone who returned home carrying traces of another person. after a while, even survival seemed too much to ask of him.
i wanted his husband to suffer. when he found the house empty, i wanted that silence to swallow him. when he searched for him, i wanted every unanswered question to burn. when his flight was delayed and he arrived too late, i wanted to call it justice. but how could there be justice in death?. it felt like another useless tragedy added to all the others. his guilt angered me, but i still understood it, and i resented the story for making me understand. i resented myself even more for being so empathetic.
i wanted the doctor’s love to be enough. i wished it could’ve been. he was gentle with a man who had forgotten what gentleness felt like. he gave him somewhere peaceful to spend the life he had left, but he could not give him back the part of himself that wanted a future. not even if he willed the gods to make it happen.
everyone loved him at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or after he had lost the strength to believe them. what do you do with a lifetime of love when the person who should have received it died believing you had none?
ah, there it goes again. that dejected revulsion i felt when i first read this story.
i kept wanting him to become angry. i wanted him to scream, break something, hate his husband enough to save himself. instead, he only grew tired. he endured the treatments, the blood, the slow betrayal of his own body, and the humiliation of loving someone who returned home carrying traces of another person. after a while, even survival seemed too much to ask of him.
i wanted his husband to suffer. when he found the house empty, i wanted that silence to swallow him. when he searched for him, i wanted every unanswered question to burn. when his flight was delayed and he arrived too late, i wanted to call it justice. but how could there be justice in death?. it felt like another useless tragedy added to all the others. his guilt angered me, but i still understood it, and i resented the story for making me understand. i resented myself even more for being so empathetic.
i wanted the doctor’s love to be enough. i wished it could’ve been. he was gentle with a man who had forgotten what gentleness felt like. he gave him somewhere peaceful to spend the life he had left, but he could not give him back the part of himself that wanted a future. not even if he willed the gods to make it happen.
everyone loved him at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or after he had lost the strength to believe them. what do you do with a lifetime of love when the person who should have received it died believing you had none?