Chapter Twenty-One

Mia

Something was wrong. I knew it the moment this new medicine went into my veins. It burned. It felt different and I was immediately swimming in a sea of weird delirium and constant nausea, which I fought—successfully, thanks to the anti-nausea medication I was on—to keep down most of the day. Given how things progressed later, it probably would have been better if I’d not fought to suppress that reaction while I was in the hospital under the watchful eyes of the nurses and doctors.

Because that night, I was in hell.

Adam always knew I had to make it straight to bed on the first day of a round. I would be good for nothing but sleep and sickness for at least twenty-four hours, usually more.

But when I woke in darkness with the powerful urge to vomit—not even making it to the toilet on time, the sickness overcame me with such violence that I was projectile puking and peeing my pants at the same time. My body convulsed over and over. It felt as if every one of my cells was fighting the chemo. Every single inch of me ready to implode in rebellion against the poison merrily coursing through my veins.

I wanted to die.

And no, it wasn’t a joke. I really, really wanted to die rather than endure this.

The craziest part was that I didn’t hit the emergency button on the bathroom remote. I must have been mental or too damn fiercely independent, because in my weird psychotropic delirium, I actually fought the urge to call Adam for help.

Not until I was half passed out on the floor. By that time, when I went to reach for the intercom button, I found I didn’t even have the energy to lift my arm in order to do it.

Instead I turned my head, tears seeping from my eyes as my stomach continued to convulse long after there were any contents inside to empty out. Large blue spots in my vision and darkness at the edges indicated with only a split-second warning that I was about to black out.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Adam

Thank God I checked on her regularly after a new round. Because when I found her unconscious on the bathroom floor, I had no idea how long she’d been there.

“Fuck!” I said, kneeling beside her, pulling her into my arms. “Mia… Mia…” I jostled her and she immediately responded, muttering something under her breath that I couldn’t understand.

“Sorry…so sorry. Should have told you…” she whispered.

“Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

She was shivering. “S-s-s-sssso cold.”

“Come on.” I pulled her up against me and she slid, almost fell, but I caught her. She was scaring the hell out of me.

I put her thick bathrobe on her, but she continued to shiver. I wrapped her my arms tightly. The violence of her reaction—the fact that the drugs she’d been administered were new, scared the living hell out of me. I needed to call the hospital immediately. But I wasn’t going to leave her for a second to do it.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she mumbled. “Get me to the bed.”

So I picked her up and carried her to the bed. “Can I get you something? Water?”

She shuddered. I grabbed a blanket and tucked it around her. “I’m going to call your doctor—”

“No. No, stay here. I need you to write something down for me.”

“What?”

She flopped her arm toward the nightstand, as if she no longer had control of her hand. “Get paper. I need to make a list.”

“You can do that later.”

“I’m fine. I need to make this list. Now. You need to write it down.”

I grabbed a notebook off the nightstand and searched for her phone. It was nowhere to be seen. Mine was back in my room. I got up to go get it. She hooked her hand in my shirt.

“No, don’t leave me. Please, you have to write this down.”

I sat down with a huff. “Okay, quickly, because I need to call the hospital.”

“Um. Okay.” Her eyes rolled up toward her head as she sat, thinking. “Learn the tango. Kiss someone on the Eiffel Tower. See the Venus de Milo. Ahhh.”

I scribbled them down quickly. “Okay. Got it. Now—”

She tugged on my shirt. “Not done yet. Keep writing. Sixty-nine, or sex in public.”

“What?”

“Just write. This is my bucket list.”

“You want to put sixty-nine on your bucket list?”

“Wish on a falling star. Knit a sweater. Volunteer medical work. Um… a sunrise, somewhere cool like on the Arctic Ocean. See the Northern Lights—”

“Okay, enough. You can work on this later. I’m calling the doctor now.”