Dying For Sex(15)
“Wow! Every day this week you’ve had something planned. Someone give me a crown because I must be a king.”
“Damn straight! You are my king.”
“I’m the King of Mara!” he boasted, laughing. “Not that I’m complaining, but is there anything you should be telling me?”
Damn! She apparently didn’t fish out his dick fast enough. Men are so much easier to control with their dicks hard. For the first time, she resented his mind reading. He must have sensed something because the vib he gave off changed completely.
“Mara, please tell me what you should have told me a few days ago.” The fucker knew! “Your mother doesn’t know anything, and Dr. Blake’s office told me he no longer treats you. I need to know what’s going on.”
“It’s been six months since they found any trace of my cancer,” she said.
“That’s wonderful!” He pulled her into his arms. “I may not lose you, after all.”
“It should have come back by now,” she told him. “That treatment in Geneva may have snuffed it out.”
“Again: that’s wonderful. Now we can try a normal life. But why would you keep this from me?”
He watched her debate herself, and she grew irritated that he surfed her vibs so well. Finally, she broke and fetched a red bottle with the poison symbol on it.
“When it’s your time, I plan on going with you.”
She said it with such finality that he laughed. “What the fuck are you talking about? When it’s my time for what?”
“I may live for years, but I cannot go on without you. So when you go, I go. I bought these pills from one of those self-help suicide sites for the terminally ill. I’ll be there for as long as you need me, but if you decide to end the pain, then we’ll end it together. Probably naked.”
“Mara, wait. Are you saying you’d rather die than live without me?”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Michael. I’ve given this a lot of thought and you won’t change my mind.”
“But I’ve told you a million times, I’m not sick. I am not dying. I do not have an incurable disease.”
She didn’t believe him. “But you go to the doctor every few months. Somebody comes to the house every other week to take a blood sample.”
“If I get what killed my father, I need to know as soon as possible. That’s why I’m on a special diet, why I take those pills, and why I go for preventative treatments to boost my immune system. I get tested every three months because I’m paranoid. My dad didn’t get cancer until he was twice my age, but he didn’t catch it in time. I’d probably survive it if I caught it early, so I get tested a lot, just to be safe.”
He could tell that she still didn’t believe him, so he took out his phone and called his treating physician, who also treated his father. Michael explained the situation, passed over the phone, and watched his wife’s face as his doctor assured her that Michael did not have an incurable disease. He assumed she would be happy, but she looked ready to drop dead.
“But I thought we were going to die together,” she explained.
“We are. Just not for a while.” He could see cracks in her armor as the news sunk in. “That new Swiss treatment cured you? I know we have to wait a year or two before we know for sure, but I never believed all that shit they said about their success rate. I never expected that million bucks to save your life. I would have been happy with another month or two.”
“Million bucks?” This was new. “But the treatment is free.”
“I had to motivate the hospital to open up another slot. Despite government subsidies, they have massive costs that, unlike here, they don’t pass on to the patients.”
“You paid them a million dollars? And never told me?”
“And make you feel guilty? But that would defeat the purpose because you cannot enjoy what little life you would have left if you felt guilty. I didn’t want death to dominate your life like it did my parents. That’s why I had you go on shopping trips, took you to sports games, and toured the world’s tourism sites.”
“That’s why you took that job!” She covered her mouth. “I bankrupted you!”
He laughed it off. “Not at all. The house and cars are still paid off, I have no debt, other than medical bills, and I’ll probably make a lot of money working for this hedge fund guy I went to Harvard with.”
“Just how much have you spent on me?”
“On you, nothing. But what I spent on us was worth every penny. I needed to get a real job anyways, since I no longer have enough funds to invest for myself.”