“Then I spend every day we have left making sure you know you were never the burden they told you you were.”
She cried.
So did I.
A year after I came home, we sat in a small oncology office waiting for her latest scans.
I had learned not to celebrate early.
Cancer teaches you that.
The doctor entered carrying a tablet.
Naomi squeezed my hand so hard my fingers hurt.
Then the doctor smiled.
The treatment had worked better than expected.
There was no detectable evidence of active disease.
Naomi stared at her.
“Are you saying I’m cured?”
The doctor carefully explained that oncology rarely offered guarantees and that Naomi would need continued monitoring.
But for that moment, the news was good.
Very good.
Naomi covered her face and began crying.
I leaned forward until my forehead touched hers.
A year earlier, I had found her barefoot behind a beautiful house she wasn’t allowed to live in, hiding beneath a scarf because the people around her had convinced her she should be ashamed of surviving.
Now she was sitting beside me with short curls beginning to grow across her head.
We never returned to the old property.
Instead, we bought a modest house fifteen minutes from the hospital.
Nothing extravagant.
Two bedrooms.
A small kitchen.
A wooden porch.
And a garden Naomi insisted on planting herself.
The first spring, she planted sunflowers along the fence.
One Saturday morning, I watched her kneeling in the dirt.
For half a second, the sight transported me back to the afternoon I came home.
