Despite my illness, we spent time together, and I started to fall for him. But I feared my dying days would only hurt him. He promised to make the most of the time we had left, and I tried to accept thatOne night, I woke up to find John speaking to the nurse in the hall. They couldn’t do anything more. I went back to bed, accepting my fate. But then, I woke up in Rome,
not the afterlife as I thought, but at a clinic offering experimental treatment. John had arranged it. He sold everything to be with me, and I might live after all.As I processed this, I smiled. “We can go to a real beach now, but you have to bring food from your restaurant,” I said. He smiled back. “I don’t have a restaurant anymore. Now I have something more valuable… you.”We embraced, and for the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful.