Chapter 4 - The First Battle
The first round of chemotherapy began on a rainy Thursday. The poison dripped slowly through the IV, a toxic salvation. Elias sat beside her, reading aloud from a battered paperback of The Great Gatsby—the book they had bonded over on their very first date a decade ago.
The side effects hit faster and harder than the doctors predicted. By day three, Hannah was a ghost of herself. Her skin took on an ashen hue, and her bones seemed to press sharply against her flesh. Elias slept in the uncomfortable plastic armchair, waking at every shift of her breathing.
One night, under the dim glow of the hallway light, she reached out and found his hand in the dark.
"Elias?" she whispered, her voice raspy.
"I'm here," he murmured, instantly awake, leaning over the bed rails.
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"I was so angry at you for so long," she confessed in the quiet dark. "But when the doctor told me they found a mass... in that exact second, the only thing I wanted in the entire world was you."
Elias pressed his lips to her fragile knuckles, a tear slipping from his eye and landing on her skin. "I've never stopped loving you. Not for a single day."
