Their life together had once been ordinary in all the sacred ways: mismatched mugs, shared playlists, the worn groove on the couch where they fit perfectly side by side. When illness came, it didn’t arrive like a villain but like a slow eraser, rubbing out pieces of her until only pain remained. The woman who once laughed too loud now measured her days in dosages and whispered bargains with the ceiling. He tried everything except the one thing she kept asking for, because every part of him had been taught that love holds on, no matter the cost.
When he finally crossed that invisible line, it felt less like a decision and more like surrendering to a truth they’d both known for months. The world called it a crime. He called it the moment love became indistinguishable from loss, and he has been serving that sentence ever since, with or without walls.
