The Last Orange

Margot placed the orange on the nightstand, its bright skin a small rebellion against the sterile white of the hospital room. Three weeks ago, David had teased her about buying the expensive organic ones from the farmers market. Now he couldn't keep anything down.

"Your hair is coming back in," she said, reaching to brush the soft fuzz at his temples. "Like velvet."

He caught her wrist, his grip weaker than she remembered. "Don't." His voice was sand on rust. "I look like a cancer patient, Margot. Because I am a cancer patient."

The doctors had given them six months, maybe a year with the new treatment protocol. Margot had researched clinical trials until her eyes burned, printed out articles about miracle cures, bought every vitamin supplement that promised to boost immunity. Their pantry looked like a pharmacy.

"The nurse said you need to eat something," she said instead.

"Not another vitamin smoothie."

"No. An orange. I peeled it for you."

He stared at it like she'd offered him a live grenade. "My mother used to bring me oranges when I was sick in boarding school. She'd sneak them in because the matron said fruit was too messy." His voice cracked. "She died when I was fifteen."

Margot knew this. She knew all of it—the boarding school, the dead mother, the father who had sent him away and forgotten to call on birthdays. She knew how he took his coffee, what he muttered in his sleep, which side of the bed he preferred. She had seven years of knowing him stored up like currency.

"David," she said. "Please."

He picked up the orange, his fingers trembling. A section of peel fell away, releasing a burst of citrus that cut through the antiseptic air, through the smell of decay and antiseptic and despair. For a moment, the hospital room felt like their kitchen on a Sunday morning.

He took a bite. Juice ran down his chin.

Margot reached out and wiped it away with her thumb. "Good?"

"Yeah," he said, and for the first time in weeks, something like peace softened the sharp angles of his face. "Yeah, it's good."

She sat in the plastic chair and watched him finish the orange, section by section, knowing there would be more hospital rooms, more agonizing conversations, more vitamins that wouldn't save him. But for now, there was this: the sticky sweetness on his fingers, the way the afternoon light caught the soft fuzz on his head, the improbable fact of them, still here, still passing oranges between them like a prayer.