Chasing Lightning

The cancer diagnosis came like lightning—sudden, illuminating everything, then gone. Now there was just the aftermath.

Emma sat on her balcony at 3 AM, clutching a bottle of orange pills. The label said they were vitamins, supplements to support her during treatment. But at 47, after years of running herself into the ground at a law firm she hated, the irony wasn't lost on her. She'd spent two decades chasing partnership, skipping meals, missing her sister's wedding, all for what?

The baseball game played softly on TV inside—some archive footage from 1986. Her father had loved baseball. He'd died of the same cancer at 52. She was five years away from his age at death.

"You're spiraling," she whispered.

She'd been seeing Michael for six months. He was kind, stable, boring in all the right ways. He'd want to know. He'd hold her hand, bring her soup, ask about treatment options with that gentle concern that made her want to scream.

Instead, she'd told him she needed space. That she was focusing on work. The same lie she'd told herself for years.

Her phone lit up. Michael: "Can't sleep. Thinking of you."

Emma stood up. She'd been running from something long before the cancer. Before law school, before her father died, before she learned that safety meant keeping everything at arm's length.

The pills sat on the table. She didn't take them.

Instead, she called Michael. He picked up on the first ring.

"I'm scared," she said.

"I know," he said. "I'm coming over."

Outside, the first storm of summer broke. Lightning flashed again, but this time Emma didn't look away.