It wasn't love, not quite, but it was almost there and it was desperate and I didn't know how to put it into words. It was the back and forth of him, the hot and cold, it made me crazy, made me feel crazy, and sanity never felt more pointless than when I was with him.

Cancer, he’d said near the end, is the great equalizer. It doesn’t care who you are or what kind of salary you make. It doesn’t give one damn if you are a good person or a bad one. It is the ultimate villain because it’s not capable of mercy. It only knows how to destroy and that’s exactly what it does. Destroys everything.