Chapter 1: The Porcelain Pedestal

The spoon trembled against the rim of the porcelain cup, the faint, high-pitched clinking the only sound in a room suffocated by the smell of clinical antiseptics and impending death. I blew gently on the lukewarm chamomile tea, my eyes fixed on the skeletal figure propped up against a mountain of pillows. Richard, the man I had loved with an all-consuming devotion for thirty years, was disappearing before my eyes.

Cancer is a thief, but it doesn’t just steal time; it steals the very architecture of a person. Looking at his translucent, papery skin and sunken cheeks, my mind desperately superimposed the man he used to be over the frail ghost in my bed. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, and the scent of sterile gauze was replaced by the smell of sawdust and summer sweat.