Epilogue: The Road We Would Walk Together
I held Maya in that quiet corner of the clinic as if I could anchor her to the world by refusing to let go.
For the first time in months, neither of us pretended to be strong.
She cried into my shoulder. I pressed my face against her short hair and whispered the only promise I could make honestly.
“I’m here now.”
The road ahead would not be simple. It would be long, uncertain, and painful. There would be doctors, treatments, fear, and nights when hope felt too fragile to touch.
But she would not sit alone in fluorescent hallways anymore.
Not while I had breath in my body.
Later, when a nurse came to take her back to her room, Maya looked at me with tired eyes.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
I stood beside her wheelchair and took her hand.
“Maya,” I said softly, “I should have been walking this road with you all along.”
And this time, I did not let go.