Over the next few days, we pretended life was normal—work, meals, evening walks—but there was a quiet heaviness between us. He tried to joke as usual, but the sparkle behind the jokes wasn’t quite the same. When the dermatologist appointment finally came, we sat in the waiting room holding hands, both of us pretending we weren’t imagining worst-case scenarios. The doctor examined the spot carefully, her expression calm, professional, unreadable. She told us she wanted to run a biopsy “just to be thorough,” and in that moment, the room seemed to shrink around us. On the drive home, he rested his head against the window and whispered, “I didn’t think something small could change everything.” I reached over and took his hand, wishing I could pull the worry right out of him.
The waiting was the hardest part. Those days felt longer than entire seasons. We cooked together, watched old movies, even rearranged the living room just to feel like we had control over something. And somewhere in the quiet of those days, we talked more honestly than we had in years.Continue reading…
