Mentions of cancer.
You stared at the brown hairs in your hands and your whole world ground to a stop. Tears clouded your eyes ans your vision went blurry, but you could still make out the beautiful hair in your hands. You wanted to throw it at something, someone. You wanted to bunch it up so tight it just disappeared.
A giggle from the bathtub tore your gaze from the hair. You looked back up to see your daughter smiling and wiggling around in the water. That sight alone would usually make you grin, but you couldn't fathom it today. She was too young to process most of the pain, too young to know what the word 'cancer' even meant. She hadn't even noticed that her hair was starting to fall out again.
The first time it happened, she asked about it. Lena quietly told her it was because of her tummy bug she complained about all the time. You had held your wife's hand through that conversation because you could see the desperation in her body language.
You forced yourself to not cry in front of your daughter and gave her a half hearted grin before going back to brushing through her hair. You didn't think about in a few months time it would be gone, you couldn't think about it.
You got her out of the bath and dried, letting her go and colour whilst you made dinner and tried to process why you deserved this.
When Lena got home, you told her and she looked over at Ella with a sad kind of smile, picking her up and hugging her tight before doing the same to you.
When Ella went to sleep, you and Lena both cried and held each other.
A week later Ella threw up at school and you picked her up, taking her home to feel more comfortable as you played with her hair. An hour later Jess called you saying Lena had broken down at work and should really be taken home. You called Alex to watch Ella for a bit and went and fetched your wife, who was sat on her couch crying when you got there.
When you had both your girls home and tucked under your sides, both in pain and suffering, you cursed the universe for giving your family so much agony.
That night when Lena and Ella were both asleep you went onto the roof and screamed until your throat was raw.
You tore your heart out on that roof and picked it back up some time later, when your eyes were too dry to cry anymore.
Ella passed away a year later.
You and Lena were there in the hospital and you held her frail hand as she breathed her last breath. Lena kept repeating no over and over and over and you just tightened your arms around your shaking wife and cried onto her greasy hair as she sobbed into your collar.
The next year Lena found and produced a cure for cancer. She had worked on it for a while, worked harder those first few months after Ella's death. You hadn't minded, not really. You knew it was her way of coping. And you had sat, for days and nights as you watched her work and as you held her as she cried and cried and cried. Lena dedicated her work to Ella and you gave her a proud smile, for your wife and you had made a wonderful girl and let her go.
You and Lena would each have your days where you couldn't get up from the weight of your loss. There were days where it was both of you, where you both lay in bed, looking at nothing and exchanging stories of her you lived through and knew anyway.
A year later you got pregnant again. You both were happy, you both were healed, and you both wanted children. You gave birth to Lucas and you held him close to your heart. Lena struggled the first month, telling you she didn't want to get attached and loose another loved one. You understood and you worked through it and in no time Lena was spending every waking second with him and asking you why she ever doubted herself in the first place.
Even years later, her birthday or her death day hurt. Lucas never fails to bring you and Lena breakfast in bed, get in between you and wipe tears from faces. It's a day where he's your parent instead, and you are forever grateful for such a wonderful boy. Ella is always in your heart, and Lena talks about her enough that she isn't forgotten, and the loss never leaves, but it's more bearable now.
