Sweet Romance13 min read
"Sign Here, Then Stay" — A Doctor, a Comic, and the Last Ticket
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"I'll sign," I said, and then I tore the page.
The paper fluttered like a small white bird and landed on the floor between us. Carter Archer did not look surprised. He only looked at his watch.
"You always make noise when you cry," he said, cool as a hospital corridor.
"I'm not crying," I lied.
"You were," he said. "You had a nosebleed in the lobby."
"I had allergies," I said. I folded my hands so they would stop shaking.
He put his palm on the car door for a second the way men do when they are deciding something. "We can do it properly tomorrow," he said. "We sign at nine. The clerk will give us thirty days."
I looked at the marriage certificate on the counter like a coin that belonged to someone else. "We are getting a divorce because there's no feeling left," I heard myself say at the clerk's question, and the word left tasted like a lie I had practiced.
"Personality differences," Carter told the clerk. He was always precise about words. He had learned to be exact during rounds and surgeries.
"Do you have an emergency?" the clerk asked, watching his watch.
"I have a ten o'clock surgery," he said, and his voice had the same flatness it used to have when he described test results.
We left the registrar's office and stood in the cold morning air. He opened my car door for me like habit. He walked away before I could tell him anything except, "Take the bone broth. I left it on the counter."
He took it without looking back.
I breathed in and the breath burned my nose. Blood started. A thin line, then drops, and the public steps under my feet became stained red.
A stranger asked if I was okay. I fumbled for tissues and realized I had used them all. I called a cab and went to the hospital.
*
"You're here early," Dr. Flynn Hashimoto said without smiling when I came to the neurology clinic. He had the tired eyes of people who slept in call rooms.
"I'm late," I said. "My nose won't stop."
He reviewed my scans slowly. Paper after paper. He closed his eyes like he could see inside them. "We have to move chemo up. Tomorrow," he said finally.
"Tomorrow?" My voice sounded foreign in the bright white room.
"Start tomorrow. Prepare."
The hallway light stabbed my eyes like a question I couldn't answer. I held my script tablet so hard it bent. The comic on the screen—my comic, Rabbit and Cat—had a new page due. I used comics to breathe. I used them to hold my quiet. I used them to connive a life where I was the black cat who stood on a rock and told the white rabbit, "Meeting me was your luck."
On the word "luck" my head spiked. Blood spilled on the tablet. I wiped it and finished the page with one shaky hand until it was midnight and the page was sent and the money maybe would come.
I lived on joints of bone broth and the ping of my phone. The ping came at the worst time—Carter's name waited on the screen. He sent a text with a document attached: a lawyer's draft.
"All joint property split fifty-fifty. You have any issues?" it read.
I couldn't read the contract. My mind was full of images: clinic white, the comic rabbit, the cheap orange at the supermarket I tried not to buy because I had paid for chemo. I whispered, "Keep the house. I'll buy your half." He said, "Whatever."
"Is there another woman?" I asked that evening, heart punching up like a trapped animal.
"Yes," he said in one word.
The word landed like a final blow.
*
I did what I always did when life burned me small and cheap. I cooked bone broth and boiled the world down into a pot: marrow, salt, time. He said he'd leave. He said he'd take the next steps. He took everything but the orange pips on the counter and the pages of my comic.
Two days later I was at the clinic to collect medication. I stood in line with my paper and the small brown boxes of pills. A voice behind me said, "What are you doing here?"
I turned. Carter in his white coat, his face tired but not empty. Another woman in white—tall, sure, smooth like someone who had been practiced at confidence—stood by his side.
"This is my ex-wife," Carter said, offhand, like they were introducing a file. The other woman smiled as if she had expected to see me.
"I'm Natalia," I said, and I hid the pain as by law.
The assistant reached out like greeting a new colleague. "I'm Keilani Schultz. Carter told me about your case. I wanted to help with referrals."
Her smile was too bright. "Pleased to meet you," she said.
"Nice to meet you," I said, and the paper in my hand slipped. Keilani bent to pick it up. She saw the med name—gefitinib—on the script. Her smile froze a second.
"She only had a cold," she said casually. "She'll be fine."
Carter did not lift his gaze.
He walked away with her without looking back.
I stood in the cough-scented corridor and thought, He believes me not worth telling.
I told no one that night but my editor. Gage Lawrence shouted on the other end of the line. "Where are you with the next page? The site wants an extra. Readers are asking."
"I'm almost done," I lied, drawing by lamplight until the words blurred.
That night I pressed my face to the pillow and felt the world distant as a cartoon.
Day after day the nosebleeds came more often. I learned to hide them in cafes and in line. I learned to cough quietly. I learned to pretend I ate more than soup. I scheduled chemo like a secret appointment with a god I did not believe.
Then Carter started showing up.
At first it was a glance in the hallway—an exchange of notes. Later he stayed longer in the ICU where my bed lay like a small island of tubing. He brought vitamins and oranges, one small crate of oranges in the back of his car—my favorite, he had remembered as if he had my habit recorded on his skin.
"Why are you here?" I asked haltingly the first time he sat in a chair by my bed.
"Doctor things," he said. "And to check on you."
"You should be at the hospital," I said.
"I am," he said. "This is my floor sometimes."
He had never been the kind of man to sit. For him, action was a list: operate, see, sign. Sitting was claiming time.
"Why didn't you know?" he asked one night, voice low enough for only me. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want to be a fault in your life," I said. "You have your career. You have the future. I didn't want to be a problem you had to carry."
"You are my wife until we sign," he said. "You are my problem regardless."
I should have laughed. I should have hit him. Instead I let the sound of his confession fill me small and hot.
"You lied," he said. "You hid the medicine name and said you had a cold. You could have died and I wouldn't have known."
"I didn't want you to stop loving what you built," I said, which was nonsense. He had not built any of the small things around me. He had built a white coat and a schedule and an empty bed.
He released a breath and looked away. "I'm sorry," he said. "I should have asked."
So I let him sit. He fed me bone broth with a spoon like a man learning to feed a child. He learned how to tilt my chin. He learned how to blow on a spoon of hot soup and make me breathe. He learned what my hands did with a pencil and how they trembled.
The day I was scheduled for surgery I wanted to get one last piece of life that wasn't white halls and needles. There was a ticket in my drawer—two seats—for a concert from the year before. They had sold tickets requiring couples to use both seats together. He had left his ticket in our home and never come. I had kept the tickets anyway.
I walked to the venue and stood outside in the night listening to muffled music. Fans came out laughing, hugging. I could not go in; there was no second presence beside me. So I sat on the curb and listened through the wall. People sang the last song in the packed hall—an ache song with the line, "Next Year Today, will you meet me again?"
I sang with them outside the closed doors until my voice was raw, and then I walked home. I had chemo the next day.
After chemo, a nurse found me in the waiting area crying. Keilani was there too, and she smiled and placed a hand lightly on Carter's arm and said, "He's always been like a brother to me."
I felt something break open in me and empty.
"Tell him I'm fine," I said to the nurse. "Just tell him."
Keilani looked at me coolly and said, "He doesn't need your permission to care for his patients."
"Then tell him thank you for the medicine," I said, and the words came out like a prayer.
"She's been in and out of the hospital a lot," Keilani said later to Carter. "She seems fragile."
"I know," he said, and his voice made my chest hurt.
One night, exhausted after chemo, I walked out of the hospital into the clang of a late ambulance and the low hum of night lights. Keilani caught up with me in the corridor, her heels a quiet staccato.
"Listen," she said. "I was Carter's girlfriend once. I'm back to help him. I don't like the idea of you staying around and messing with his head."
"You don't like me?" I asked. My tongue was dry.
"I don't like women who get in the way," she said. "I told him I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" I asked without thinking.
She smiled thinly. "For leaving before you ever mattered," she said. "For wanting him to go abroad. I'm sorry."
I stared at her, a cold fire in my chest. "I like him," I said. The words slid out like a small, terrible truth. "I have liked him for a long time."
Keilani's face went very still. Behind her, by the stairwell, Carter had stopped walking.
"You like him?" he repeated.
"Yes," I said to both of them. "I like him."
He did not speak. I felt like a paper bird that he could drop any time.
A few days later I collapsed at home. The ambulance took me once more. The next thing I knew, the world was white and I could not open my eyes.
*
When I woke, there were tubes and beeping and the smell of disinfectant. My head felt like someone had pressed between my skull.
"She's awake," a voice said, and it was Carter's.
I opened my eyes and he was there with his hands folded, exhausted, with dry skin under his eyes. He looked like the doctor I had married for safety reasons: practiced, steady, and then suddenly stripped to the bone.
"You scared me," I whispered.
"You scared me," he answered back.
He told me later that he had signed the operation consent without being listed as a contact; the paperwork had my name and a phone number for him. He had been at work and refused to leave the hospital until he had seen me after surgery. That was the first time I saw Carter catch himself: a man who always thought of others clinically, who now hated his own distance.
When he learned exactly what medicines I had been given, he was furious. Not at me—at the life that had allowed me to hide. He called in outside specialists, Finnegan Gentile and Aquiles Vitale, two top brain surgeons he had once met at conferences. They came quickly, and they did what the local team could not finish. They cut and pruned and told us the truth: the operation removed most of the mass, but there were small places that might return. There were no guarantees.
"I will stay," he said on the night after the operation when the corridors had emptied and a small moon leaned over the hospital windows. He said it to air like a patient note. "I'm not leaving."
"You don't have to," I said, hoarse.
"I do," he said simply.
It took a week in ICU before I could stand without coughing. Carter came every day. Sometimes he arrived in scrubs and sat in the most uncomfortable plastic chair, reading case notes. Sometimes he walked in the door like a man who had run and the sight of him made my breath hitch. He learned to feed me again with a terrible awkwardness that was almost tender. He learned my small dislikes—how I refused to drink tea that tasted like lemon. He learned to make me laugh at stupid things so I would get enough air.
Others noticed. A nurse told him, "You are spending a lot of time here for someone who says he doesn't like her."
"I don't know," he said. "I don't know what I am."
He returned a favor when he paid the medical bills without telling me. "You don't have to sell the house," he said one afternoon, laying a small envelope on my lap.
"That's yours," I said, hands trembling.
"Call it a loan," he said. "You can sign it back when you are able."
I thought I would hate him for rescuing me. I thought I would keep my pride like a shell. Instead, the smallness of the world opened. Maybe I had been too proud to accept help before. Maybe I had thought that being alone was a kind of virtue.
Then the slow, fragile thing between us started to change. He no longer avoided my room after work. He paused in the kitchen when I came back from clinic and would put my scarf around the chair. He began to speak more in the quiet moments. One night he read one of my comics—my black cat and white rabbit—and he cried.
"Why are you crying?" I asked.
"Because you gave them everything and nobody gave them anything back," he said. "Because the black cat is braver than I thought. Because the white rabbit didn't know how to say thank you."
I laughed and held his hand. "It's only ink."
"Not to me," he said.
*
Keilani did not like the change. She complained in the corners of the hospital, where people passed and could hear. She came to the ward early, and once she pushed open Carter's office door to demand he confirm their engagement date in front of his parents. Carter looked at her like a man who had been insulted.
"I can't," he said flatly. "I won't."
Her face went hard and she called him cruel. She told his parents he was being unreasonable. She tried to make a ceremony of what she had planned. She wanted me to be shamed. She wanted me to be the forgotten fixture she had once left behind.
Carter's response was level and terrible. At dinner with her parents—where she wanted to show her hand—he stood and told them the truth. "I am married," he said. "I married before I realized what I wanted. I didn't tell you because it was private. I'm sorry."
Keilani's parents were stunned. Keilani shrunk. The last time she saw me she had the look of a hunted animal.
"I can't force him," her father told her gently later. "But you should apologize."
She did apologize, tears wet on her cheek. She apologized for past arrogance and for expecting a man to fall in lockstep with her life. The hospital corridors gossip quieted down.
The day came when the discharge papers were ready. I wanted to be out. I wanted the home that smelled of our broth and our cups. But the truth was this: I had been the last to sign out. I had been the last to want to make it real again.
At the front desk Carter stopped me and said, "Do not sell the house."
"I will," I said softly.
"No," he said again, harsher. "I'm not letting you sell it. I'm not letting you think you have to go through this alone."
We did not divorce. The paper that had once fluttered on the floor saved by my finger was tucked back into the file where it would gather dust. He canceled the meeting with Keilani. He told his parents that he wanted to talk about life choices and to stop their arrangements. There was no grand ceremony. There was a silent, long reprieve.
Weeks later, I had a new routine. I drew three hours a day. I took my pills on time. I went to chemo and to check-ups. Carter made a bad soup once that tasted of too much salt because he thought it was fancy. I pretended to like it. He still made it sometimes, just to see me smile.
Our sweetest piece was small and private. One night after a long day, I could not sleep. The head pain came like a hand squeezing. Carter sat beside my bed and pressed his fingers at my temple, small and exact like a surgeon trying to soothe.
"You should not work so late," he murmured.
"I like to," I said.
"Not like this," he insisted. "Not when you do not need to."
I looked at him and it occurred to me that the man who had once signed divorce papers downstairs had become the man who unsigned them upstairs.
He leaned forward and kissed the place behind my ear. It was quick, precise, and not meant for announcing. "I'm sorry," he whispered, though we both knew apologies had lost their edge.
"It is okay," I said, and I meant it. For the first time in a long while, the future shrank to the size of our bed, and both of us were in it.
*
Gage Lawrence called one afternoon. "Your comic is breaking the site," he said, exuberant. "People love the ending. They plaster the forums with theories. People are donating to your tip jar. Natalia, you have to let me pitch a book."
I stared at my tablet. Fans wrote to me about the black cat and white rabbit and how they wanted hope. They wanted the black cat to survive. They wanted the white rabbit to wait. I thought about the line I had drawn under the last panel: Next Year Today, we'll meet.
"Will you come to the signing with me?" I asked Carter one morning, a tiny hope parting my chest.
"I will," he said. He looked sleepy. "If you want me."
"I do," I said.
We went to the bookshop the week after my next check-up. He came in a plain shirt and jeans and stood at the back. He did not put a hand on my shoulder until I smiled at him in front of the small crowd of readers. Then he reached and squeezed, once, like a promise.
Time kept moving. Tests came back less worrying. There were still gray areas and lines on scans, but the worst had been cut out. Chemo tapered. The specialists were satisfied. Nothing in life returned entirely to the way it had been, but we learned how to live in a world with scars.
When we finally signed the final forms—no longer for a divorce but for a new lease on a house together—Carter placed his pen and then did something he had never quite done in the last three years: he looked at me.
"Do you want a proper wedding?" he asked.
"Your idea of proper is a list," I said.
"Lists can include celebrations," he said.
I laughed and it was easy this time.
"We will have soup," I said. "And oranges."
"Always oranges," he repeated.
That night I lay awake and drew. In the corner of the last page I drew a small black cat standing on a rock with a small sword on his back. The rabbit lay warmed and white at his feet. The black cat wrote a note: Next Year Today. We'll meet.
I put the tablet aside. Carter came up to the window and joined me. Outside, the moon was pale and steady.
"Will you remember me?" I asked after a pause. It sounded childish.
He turned and looked at me in the raw, honest way that had no clinical distance. "I will," he said simply. "I will remember every stitch you taught me. I will remember the smell of broth and the way you smear ink on your fingers. I will remember that you are brave."
I smiled. Then he did something even braver.
He opened his hand and showed me a small piece of paper—two concert tickets folded inside. "Next year," he said, "we will go in together. You and me."
Tears came to my eyes not because I feared the future, but because I had not expected to be chosen again.
"Promise?" I asked.
"Promise," he said.
The night leaned in. Outside the city lights were small fires. Inside, the two of us were a small, stubborn warmth.
On Next Year's Today we would be in a crowd, or maybe at home, eating oranges. Either way, the comic would be there and the cat would have a sword and the rabbit would not be alone. We would be older, fragile in new ways, but held.
I put my head on his shoulder and traced a finger over his hand. He answered by resting his forehead on mine.
"I love you," he said, quiet, no spectacle.
"I did first," I answered, and then we both laughed, because it was true in a way that did not matter who said it and when.
We stayed like that, two people who had almost let a life go, staying because they had chosen each other in the small hours where fear becomes honesty.
Outside, the city went on. Inside, the lights were low, the orange crate on the table, the final page uploaded and saved. I drew a new panel that night: the black cat looked up at a small gate and read the note in his paws—Next Year Today. He smiled.
I closed my tablet and slept.
When morning came, Carter was already making broth.
"Come eat before rounds," he said.
"I will," I said, and in saying it I meant the whole bad and the whole good. I stood up and wrapped my fingers around the mug. The broth was warm and tastes like home.
We did not fix everything. There were tests to come and uncertain lines to watch. There were papers we had once torn and papers we had never signed. But we had learned the thing that had been missing at the registry's counter: the small, steady act of staying.
And that, more than any grand speech, was the promise we both wanted.
The End
— Thank you for reading —