Chapter 2 - The Shadows of Our PastI didn't leave her side for the rest of the evening.
When the nurses came to roll Sophie back to her room on the fourth floor, I didn't ask for permission. I grabbed the back of her transport chair, guided her through the double doors, and pushed her IV pole myself. When the young resident doctor stepped into the room to check her vitals and politely informed me that visiting hours ended at eight o'clock, I looked at him with an expression so lethal he immediately turned on his heel and left without another word.
I pulled an orange vinyl armchair right up to the edge of her bed, taking her cold, thin hand in both of mine, refusing to let go even when she fell into a restless, medication-induced sleep.
At 11:00 PM, the door to the room creaked open, and a tall, middle-aged man in a dark grey suit and a white lab coat stepped inside. His eyes were tired behind silver-rimmed spectacles, and he carried a thick, black leather-bound chart under his arm.
He looked at me, then down at Sophie's sleeping face, before gesturing quietly toward the hallway.
I gently tucked Sophie's hand beneath the thin cotton blanket, kissed her cold forehead, and stepped out into the quiet corridor.
"You're Ethan, aren't you?" the doctor asked, extending a hand. "I'm Dr. Harrison. Head of Cardiac Oncology."
"How bad is it?" I asked, skipping the pleasantries entirely. My voice was raspy, hollowed out by hours of crying. "Tell me the absolute truth, Dr. Harrison. Don't hide anything from me."
Dr. Harrison let out a heavy sigh, adjusting his glasses. He opened the file, pointing to a series of dark, high-contrast chest scans taped to the inner cover.
"Sophie was diagnosed eleven months ago with Stage III cardiac angiosarcoma," Dr. Harrison said softly. "It is an incredibly rare, exceptionally aggressive malignancy. Because of its location on the wall of her right atrium, traditional radical surgery was deemed impossible by our surgical board—it's too close to the major vascular pathways. We attempted three rounds of systemic chemotherapy to shrink the mass, but..."
He paused, looking up at me with profound, professional pity.
"Her body couldn't tolerate the toxicity," he continued. "The chemotherapy caused severe cardiotoxicity, further weakening her heart muscle. Two months ago—around the time your divorce was finalized—she made the decision to stop all aggressive treatment and enter palliative care."
"Palliative care," I repeated, the words striking me like physical blows. "You're telling me she gave up."
"She was exhausted, Mr. Park," Dr. Harrison said gently. "She had no family left in the city. Her parents passed away years ago, as you know. She attended every single infusion alone. She sat in those chairs for six hours at a time, vomiting into plastic basins, taking city buses back to her apartment, with no one to hold her hand or drive her home. By the time she stopped treatment, her spirit was as spent as her physical body."
Every word Dr. Harrison spoke felt like a hot iron pressed against my skin.
I remembered those nights eight months ago. I remembered coming home late from the office, finding Sophie asleep on the couch with the lights off. I had assumed she was ignoring me. I had assumed she was retreating into her shell out of resentment toward me. I had felt annoyed that dinner wasn't made, or that the laundry was piling up.
I had been blind. Unbelievably, unforgivably blind.
She wasn't ignoring me—she was recovering from cytotoxic poison coursing through her veins. She wasn't holding a grudge—she was hiding her bruises, her hair loss, her dry-heaving, all so I wouldn't notice.
"Is there really nothing else?" I begged, grabbing Dr. Harrison's arm, my knuckles white. "There has to be a specialist! A clinical trial! A different surgery! I have money, Dr. Harrison. I have savings, I can sell my condo, I can liquidate my retirement accounts—I don't care! Take everything I own, just give me an option!"
Dr. Harrison stared at me for a long moment, his eyes searching my frantic face.
"There is one person," Dr. Harrison admitted slowly, leaning closer so his voice wouldn't carry down the hall. "Dr. Elizabeth Vance at the Brigham and Women's Cardiovascular Center in Boston. She is the pioneer of ex-vivo cardiac resection—a procedure where the heart is temporarily removed, the tumor meticulously carved out under microscopic precision, and the heart reconstructed and autotransplanted back into the chest."
My heart leaped into my throat. "Then why hasn't Sophie seen her?!"
"Because the procedure carries a sixty-percent mortality rate on the table," Dr. Harrison said bluntly. "And because the preparatory work, the specialized air transport, and the surgical team costs nearly seven hundred thousand dollars. Insurance refused to cover it, declaring it 'experimental.' When Sophie looked at the numbers three months ago, she closed the folder and walked away. She told me she had no one left to fight for."
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Dr. Harrison placed a heavy, warm hand on my shoulder.
"She gave up because she was alone, Ethan," the doctor whispered. "If you want her to fight that sixty-percent mortality rate, you are going to have to give her a reason to live."
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