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A few weeks before he died, Julian began asking to speak to his doctor alone nb. I never understood why. Whenever I asked what they discussed, he would only squeeze my hand and say, “There’s something I need to arrange. Please trust me.”
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It was unlike him to keep anything from me, especially then. But he was strangely firm about it.
So I let him do it.
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He died in the hospital with my hand wrapped around his, two weeks before my due date, exactly the way he’d quietly feared for months, never once getting the chance to meet our daughter after all.
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Afterward, I signed the final donation papers with tears dripping onto the page.
I remembered that Julian wanted this. I had to honor his final wish, even though doing so caused me unbearable pain.
