Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(77)
“Then go do that.”
I scoffed. “No.”
He stared at me.
“No. I won’t. HIV, human T-cell leukemia, polio, West Nile virus, multiple sclerosis, multifocal motor neuropathy, Kennedy’s disease—they all mimic ALS. I’ll be tested for all of it, poked and prodded in the hospital for months and for what? I either have it or I don’t. And if I do, it’s fatal. There’s nothing they can do about it.”
He blinked at me. “But…but what if that’s not what it is? What if it is something else?”
I shrugged. “Then it won’t progress, and it won’t be a problem. If it’s still around in six months, but nothing else has changed, I’ll have my hand looked at again. But the most likely contender was carpal tunnel, and they’ve already ruled that out.”
He stared at me like I’d gone mad. “How can you live like this?” he said incredulously.
I shook my head. “What choice do I have, Adrian? What choice do I have but to live like this? I’ve always lived like this.”
His breathing was ragged. He looked like he was going to be sick. I felt like I was going to be sick too.
I sat next to him. “Look, let’s just calm down. Okay?” I rubbed his back. “We can talk about this when you’re calmer.”
“No. We talk about it now.” He was so out of breath it took him a minute to say the next thing. “If you don’t have a diagnosis, how can they get you on the right medications?”
I felt my heart shattering.
He knew nothing. None of it. None of the things that I thought he did.
How had this happened? How did something so big slip through the cracks?
“Adrian,” I said gently. “I won’t be taking any medications.”
He froze to stare at me. “What?” he breathed. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not seeking treatment.”
“What do you—you need medications, there’s clinical trials—”
“So I can spend the rest of my short life getting spinal taps and dealing with side effects worse than the disease? In exchange for maybe a couple of extra months of life expectancy? And that’s if they don’t give me a placebo. And treatments?” I scoffed. “Do you know how few medications there are to treat what I might have? Do you know what they do? They give me three months, Adrian. That’s it. Three extra months. Melanie took them. She had headaches and vomiting and was so dizzy and tired she could barely keep her eyes open. She was hooked up to an IV every single day, they had to constantly monitor her blood and her liver function. I don’t want to live like that. I’ll be tied to whatever hospital is treating me, I won’t be able to travel—”
The look on his face could only be described as horror.
“But…what if there’s a breakthrough?” he said. “What if it’s happening right now? What if they find a cure and you’re not in the trial? Vanessa, you have to get treatment—”
I shook my head. “No. I won’t. I’ll do physical and speech therapy virtually so I can travel. And when I need help breathing and eating and moving, I’ll take those steps. I’ll do what I need to do to stay comfortable and independent for as long as possible. But I won’t take the medications and I won’t enter a trial. If I have this, it’s already too late. My family’s strain progresses too fast. Not any of the promising research they’re doing in those trials reverses the damage of the disease. It only slows the deterioration. By the time I got a diagnosis and got in a trial, there wouldn’t be any fixing what it had already done to me—and then what? I get to be a guinea pig? That’s it? That’s the rest of my time here?”
He didn’t reply. He just looked at me, breathing heavily through his nose.
I licked my lips. “Adrian, I want to live my best life. I want to travel and have adventures and drink all the wine while I’m still able and laugh and have fun for as long as I possibly can. I don’t want to give this disease one more minute. And neither should you.”
He got up and my hand fell away from his shoulder. He started to pace. “No.” He shook his head. “No, you can’t. You have to hang on for as long as possible. You don’t know what might happen. You don’t know what developments they might come up with—”
I let out a long breath. “There’s no clinical trial I haven’t read about or study I haven’t followed. There’s not going to be a miracle. At least not in time for me. If I have this, I’m dying. And all I’m asking is for you to understand how I want to continue to live. Believe me. This isn’t some spur-of-the-moment decision. I know what I want. And I won’t change my mind.”
He shook his head at me, tears in his eyes. “No. I won’t let you do it.”
I blinked at him. “Won’t let me do what?”
“I won’t let you give up.”
“I’m not giving up. I’m just choosing to live and die on my own terms.”
He closed the space between us and put his hands on my arms. “We’re a couple. We decide things together, Vanessa. You have to fight this. Let me help you fight it. We’ll find the best doctors in the world, we’ll go anywhere. I’ll fly—” He choked on the last word and my heart broke all over again.