Citrus on the Oncology Ward

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead as Marcus sat beside Sarah's hospital bed, peeling an orange with surgical precision. His hands, usually so steady when pouring lattes at the café they managed together, now trembled slightly.

"You don't have to keep coming here," Sarah said, watching his fingers work the rind. "You've got a business to run."

"And you're my oldest friend. Both can be true." He handed her a segment. "Besides, Danielle can handle the morning rush."

Sarah's laugh was dry, rattling in her chest. "Danielle once put salt in the sugar dispenser. I'm not exactly confident."

They'd been friends since college, twenty years of shared apartments, disastrous relationships, and that summer they'd backpacked through Portugal with nothing but seventy euros between them. Now Sarah was thirty-eight, and the tumor wrapped around her liver didn't care about their history.

Marcus poured water from the pitcher by her bed, the ice clinking softly against the plastic. "The nurse says you need more fluids."

"Flushing out the poison before pumping more in." She accepted the cup, her wrist bones prominent under the pale skin. "It's ironic, isn't it? Spent half my life obsessed with supplements and organic everything. Choking down handfuls of every vitamin under the sun. And here I am anyway."

"There's a joke there about the power of positive thinking versus a CT scan," Marcus said, and she actually smiled.

"My personal trainer would weep. She swore vitamin C was basically immortal in a capsule."

The orange segment burst between Sarah's teeth—sweet, sharp, overwhelmingly alive. For a moment she didn't taste hospital antiseptic or the metallic undercurrent of her own deterioration. Just citrus and sun and the way Marcus was sitting on the edge of his chair like he'd take her place if he could.

"Marcus?" Her voice dropped. "If this doesn't... if the next round doesn't work..."

"We're not having this conversation today."

"But we might need to. Eventually."

He set down the orange rind, his shoulders settling into something resolute. "Then we have it. Not today. But we have it. You and me, like always."

Sarah reached for his hand across the sterile sheets. His palm was warm, and somewhere beyond the window, rain began to fall against the glass, washing the world in water and renewal, indifferent and absolutely necessary.