Dying in Plain Sight

VANCE’S POV

“I know you’ve been told I’m terminal and I know you think that means years, maybe, or months at least, because that’s what terminal sounds like from the outside — a long, slow, dignified decline with time to prepare.” She pulls her arms tighter around herself and I can see her hands shaking and the grey of her skin and the thinness of her wrists and the blood she coughed up on the pla