Chapter 8 - Theresa Told Me Lucy Was Refusing Care
By the final year, I barely spoke with Lucy face-to-face.
She stopped video calls.
Theresa said:
“She hates how she looks.”
That was believable.
Lucy sent short texts.
Sometimes:
Love you.
Sometimes:
Tired.
Sometimes nothing for days.
I blamed:
treatment.
Then Theresa began saying something new.
“Lucy isn’t cooperating.”
“With what?”
“Appointments.”
“Why?”
“She says she’s done.”
I panicked.
“Done with treatment?”
“She says she can’t live like this.”
“Put her on.”
“She’s sleeping.”
Another time:
“Doctors want her eating more.”
“She refuses.”
Then:
“She’s becoming impossible.”
I began feeling:
anger
at my sick wife.
That shame belongs to me.
I thought:
I am working thirteen-hour days.
Fighting this company.
Sending everything.
Why won’t she do the part only she can do?
I never said that to:
Lucy.
Theresa heard it.
She encouraged:
resentment.
“You can’t save someone who won’t save herself.”
That sentence eventually became her moral permission to divert:
money.
If Lucy would not fight,
why keep spending?
Melissa had children.
Theresa had bills.
Nathan had a future.
Lucy became:
the bad investment.
By the time I returned home, my mother no longer saw my wife as:
a woman with cancer.
She saw:
a failed project consuming family resources.
The terrifying part was that I had spent months approaching the situation through a softer version of the same framework.
Treatment progress.
Money sent.
Results.
Efficiency.
I had turned my wife’s survival into:
project management.
May you like
Then wondered why she stopped talking to me.
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