Part 1
I knew Chloe was sick when we met. I knew she had a rare autoimmune disease, and I knew there were hospital visits, treatments, medications, and days when she could barely get out of bed. What I didn’t understand was how bad it really was. We were 27 when we met during a hot summer in Minneapolis, and at that age, I honestly believed people like us didn’t die. Not yet, not people who still had plans, and certainly not people who laughed too loudly, made stupid jokes, and argued over what to order for dinner. At least, not in my world.
Chloe had a way of making me believe that too. She joked about hospital gowns, named her IV pole Barney, and whenever nurses asked her to rate her pain from one to ten, she’d look them straight in the eye and ask, “Emotionally or physically?” Three weeks into dating, I accidentally typed “Clover” instead of “Chloe” in a text message, and she never let me forget it.
“You realize clover is literally just lawn weed?” she complained over the phone.
“Neither is your attitude very polite,” I replied with a grin.
“I’m seriously reconsidering this relationship,” she teased.
“You’d miss me too much,” I said.
“Unfortunately, you might be right,” she muttered.
I loved her before I fully understood how frightened I was of losing her. As the months passed, Chloe’s condition gradually became worse, but I stayed. I drove her to treatments, sat beside her during appointments, and held her hand when she was scared. Eventually, hospital cafeterias became more familiar to me than actual restaurants. I knew which parking garage elevator was always broken, and I learned how to sleep sitting upright in uncomfortable chairs.
I learned that when Chloe was nauseated, she wanted silence, but when she was in pain, she wanted conversation. So I learned how to talk about absolutely nothing, including movies, food, people we’d seen in the hallway, and the weather. Anything that could make the minutes move a little faster worked wonders. Eighteen months after we met, I proposed. It wasn’t elaborate, without a fancy restaurant or a carefully planned surprise. We were sitting on the floor of my apartment eating takeout from a local diner because Chloe had been discharged from the hospital that afternoon and didn’t have enough energy to sit at the table.
I pulled out a ring from my pocket. She stared at it, looked at me, and then started crying uncontrollably. I thought that meant yes, but it didn’t.
“No,” she said through her tears.
I actually laughed out loud in confusion. “No?”
“I can’t marry you, Lucas,” she cried, wiping her cheeks.
“You can,” I told her gently. “I checked the law, and it’s completely legal.”
“Lucas, listen to me,” she said, shaking her head.
“What is it?” I asked.
She pushed the ring box back toward me across the carpet. “I love you too much to do this.”
“That is an extremely confusing reason to reject someone,” I told her softly.
But she explained her reasoning. She didn’t want to make me a widower, and more than that, she was terrified that marrying her would leave me buried under medical bills and debt after she was gone. I told her we’d talk to lawyers, but she firmly refused. Six months later, I proposed again, and she said no. I asked again on our third anniversary, and she said no. Once, I even proposed jokingly in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store, and she threw a bag of frozen peas straight at my chest.
Eventually, I stopped asking. I didn’t stop because I stopped wanting Chloe to be my wife, but because I understood something important. Loving Chloe meant learning that sometimes pushing wasn’t devotion, and sometimes it was just pushing.
Part 2
By the time I was 31, our entire life revolved around her illness. There were good months, bad months, and eventually, there were months I stopped trying to describe to anyone. I reduced my hours at work, we canceled trips, and I drained most of my savings without telling Chloe. I didn’t do it because she asked me to, but because there was always something to pay for. There was always a medication insurance wouldn’t fully cover, a hotel near a specialist, transportation, food, lost work, or unexpected bills.
I had once planned to use that money as a down payment on a house, and Chloe knew that. She hated knowing it with every fiber of her being.
“You’re spending your whole future on me,” she told me one evening.
“You are in my future,” I answered without hesitation.
“You know what I mean, Lucas,” she whispered.
I did, but I just didn’t want to admit it. Then, four years after we met, doctors recommended a major surgery. It was complicated, and while experimental wasn’t quite the right word, reassuring definitely wasn’t either. There was a chance the procedure could dramatically improve Chloe’s condition, but there was also a chance her body wouldn’t tolerate it. The week before the operation, I noticed something different about her because she was unusually quiet.
I was sitting beside her hospital bed, absentmindedly peeling the label from a water bottle, when she reached for my hand.
“Lucas,” she called softly.
“Hmm?” I looked up.
“Marry me,” she said.
She was completely serious. I blinked in disbelief.
“Yes, I just got proposed to by a woman,” I joked, trying to lighten the heavy mood.
She rolled her eyes at me. “That’s your response?”
“I’m processing the moment,” I said.
“Process faster, please,” she requested.
I leaned closer to her bed. “Clover, I’ve asked you approximately 400 times.”
“Five times,” she corrected.
“You counted them?” I asked, surprised.
“Obviously I did,” she replied.
“What changed your mind?” I asked gently.
She looked down at our joined hands. “Look, I might not make it out of this surgery,” she said honestly.
My heart dropped to the floor. “Don’t say that.”
“Lucas, listen to me,” she insisted.
“You’re coming out of surgery,” I asserted firmly.
“Probably,” she allowed.
