The Ninth Inning of Sarah

The vitamin D bottle sat on her nightstand like a judge's gavel—amber plastic, half-empty, a daily reminder that sunlight had abandoned her life. Sarah hadn't taken one in three weeks. What was the point of strengthening bones when the cancer had already decided which ones it would hollow out first?

I pulled the baseball cap from my back pocket—a faded Mets cap she'd bought me at Citi Field during that weekend we pretended we were just friends. The bram was bent from years of nervous adjustments, a nervous tic I'd never shaken. I set it on her bald head, adjusting the fit until she looked like herself again, or at least the herself I'd fallen in love with during late nights at the office, the one who made coffee bitter and laughed too loud at client meetings.

"You kept it," she whispered, her voice rustling like dry leaves.

"Of course I kept it."

She smiled, thin and knowing. We'd spent seven years playing the most careful game of emotional baseball I'd ever participated in—stealing bases, sliding into home, never quite scoring. Each advance had been a calculated risk: a drink after work, a hand that lingered too long, texts that meant nothing until they meant everything. We were experts at the foul ball, at hitting it just outside the parameters of what we were allowed to want.

"I should've told you," she said. "Before."

"Before what?"

"Before I stopped being able to do anything about it."

The heart monitor beeped steadily, marking time we'd already wasted. I reached for her hand, her skin paper-thin over fragile bones. Outside, the October sun burned brilliant and indifferent through the window, mocking the supplements, the prayers, the statistical impossibilities we'd pinned our hopes on.

"Sarah," I said, and the name felt like swallowing something whole. "We're still in the bottom of the ninth. Anything can happen."

She closed her eyes under the brim of my hat, a slow smile lifting the corners of her mouth. "Then you'd better start swinging."