Hank didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to make enemies of the people he loved, not when he had such little time left with them. He let out a long, tired sigh, then reached out his hand and placed it on hers.
And Anika looked up at him gratefully, biting her lower lip to stop it from shaking. “I know I shouldn’t have looked, Hank. But were you really not going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t going to tell anyone.”
Anika’s eyes were red and anguished. “But it must be horrible to do this by yourself.”
“Not as horrible as that look you’re giving me right now,” Hank said.
“Maybe it’s not true!” Anika tried to sound hopeful. “I know I’ve told patients they only had a few months left, and then watched them live years longer.”
“You know this is different,” he said.
Anika sighed deeply. “Well, I promise I won’t tell anyone, if that’s really what you want.”
Hank still believed in keeping his secret, though he knew that his resignation from the hospital had already incited some rumors. （He insisted that he simply needed a break, that the deluge of short-stringers looking for answers had quickly worn him down.） But speaking with Anika, saying the words aloud, he actually felt a small sense of relief that one person knew about his string. It was grueling to conceal it from everyone, to keep worrying that something he might say or do would reveal the truth inadvertently. Now, at least, he could loosen his guard around Anika. He didn’t have to pretend that all was perfectly fine.
“You know, I’ve been so focused on not letting anyone at the hospital find out, and not telling my family,” Hank said. “And in the meantime, I haven’t really cried or screamed or done whatever else you’re supposed to do.”
“Why not?”
Hank knew why he hadn’t cried at his father’s funeral, when he’d tried to stay strong for his mother, and why he hadn’t cried as Anika broke up with him, when he’d wanted to save face before the woman he admired. But this time, he didn’t know what was holding him back.
Anika picked up one of the pillows and offered it to Hank.
“Do you want me to punch it or something?” he asked.
“You can do whatever you want with it,” she said. “You wouldn’t know it when I’m in the OR, but I’ve always been a fan of a good pillow cry myself.”
Hank reluctantly took the pillow from Anika and stared at it silently.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” she asked.
Hank looked up at her through blurry eyes. The black hair falling across her shoulder, even darker against the white of his shirt. The wet remnants of mascara smudged beneath her brown eyes. The sharp, pointed chin that she would rest atop her hands whenever she was working through a problem.
Suddenly Hank crammed the pillow against his face and began screaming violently into the soft fabric. Anika watched the veins in his forehead bursting underneath his skin, like they were howling as loudly as he was.
When he had fully exhausted himself, Hank dropped the pillow into his lap. “Do you think you could stay?” he asked.
Anika wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, and Hank finally allowed himself to be carried away by the waves of deep, full sobs that would appear, overwhelming him, squeezing all the air out of him, and then disappear, leaving him calm and quiet, a moment to recapture his breath, before the next wave inevitably swept him back beneath its undertow.
And through it all, Anika never let go, until Hank, at last, pulled away.
When Hank ran into her at the hospital the following week, Anika asked how he was doing.
“Well, I usually tell my patients in this position to try some sort of therapy or support group,” he said, “so I’m thinking I should put my money where my mouth is.”
Anika gave him the address of the Connelly Academy, a school near her apartment where several groups were being held, and Hank showed up that Sunday, a half hour late after a busy shift in the ER.
He peered through the door to Room 201, where those nearing the very end of their strings had gathered. Everyone was crying, rubbing each other’s backs, passing around a box of tissues. It looked depressing as hell. Hank wanted this group to make him feel better, not sadder than before.
He was about to leave when he heard faint laughter coming from three doors down, in Room 204, home to the short-stringers who still had more time left, who still measured the remainder of their strings in years instead of months. And Hank decided to check it out. Nobody needed to know that he didn’t actually belong there.