What Remains in the Water

The orange sat on the bedside table like a small, imperfect sun. Sarah couldn't eat it. She hadn't kept anything down in three days.

"Take your vitamins," I said, not for the first time, already knowing the futility of the command. Her oncologist had prescribed them along with the chemotherapy, as if concentrated nutrients could somehow reverse what the poison was doing to her body.

She swallowed them dry, flinching. Outside, lightning fissured the sky, sudden and violent as revelation. The storm had been brewing for hours, mirroring the pressure in this room.

"Check the goldfish," she whispered.

I crossed to the bowl on the dresser. The fish—stupid, resilient thing we'd bought on impulse five years ago—was floating near the surface, gills moving with agonizing slowness. It had outlived two apartments, Sarah's promotion, my affair with the temp from Legal, and now it would outlast her.

"He's fine," I lied.

"Don't lie to me, David. Not now."

I sat on the edge of the bed. The monitor cable snaked across the floorboard—I'd been working from the bedroom more and more, my laptop tethered to machines in offices where no one knew my wife's name. The email from HR about my leave of satatus sat unanswered.

Sarah's hand found mine. Her skin was paper-thin, translucent. "When I'm gone, flush him."

"Sarah—"

"He's suffered enough. We both have."

The room filled with white light again, thunder following so close it rattled the windowpane. In that moment, she looked like she had when we met: fierce, exhausted, beautiful.

I peeled the orange. The scent of citrus cut through the smell of sickness and rain. I held a segment to her lips, and this time she opened them.

"Tomorrow," she said, juice running down her chin, "we'll talk about everything. The funeral. The fish. The truth."

But tomorrow was a luxury we might not have. Tonight, there was only this: lightning outside, the taste of oranges, a fish that refused to die, and love that refused to simplify itself into something painless.

"Okay," I said. "Tomorrow."

I stayed awake while she slept, watching the storm break something open in the sky.