This morning, after a long, sleepless night, I finally brought myself to tell Bailey about the leak in the gas tank hose.
I told her that this meant our one plan to get out of the mountains was gone. I told her that, honestly, I didn't know what we were going to do, or how we were going to survive.
But I also told her that I wasn't giving up. No matter what. We'd find a way. Somehow, we'd find a way.
She was quiet for a long time.
Then, finally, she said, "You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?" I asked.
"I've known for a while now that I won't ever make it out of here." She started to cry. "But you will," she said. "You don't need the U-Haul. When the snow melts, you're going to walk out of here. And you're going to live your life."
I couldn't accept that she was giving up. It was unfair to be angry at her. But I couldn't help it. How could she just give up?
"I'm not leaving without you," I said. "We're both going to get out of here." I told her that we just had to be smart and figure out a new way to get off the mountain. I told her that she'd feel so much better when she was back on her meds. I told her, again, that we'd find her the best doctor in LA. I told her that we would find a cure, and that she would get better, and that we'd live our lives together.
She dried her eyes. She grabbed my hand and laced her shaking fingers into mine.
"Listen to me. This is me being unflinchingly honest." She looked deep into my eyes. "I'm going to be gone soon." She told me that she knew that she was dying. "I can feel it," she said. The best doctors in world couldn't save her, she told me. She'd known all her life that her disease was incurable, and in the end no amount of meds would ever change that. "When it's time for me to go," she said, "I'll just go. Not you or me or anyone can stop it from happening. And it's going to happen soon."
"I don't accept that," I said. It was true, I didn't.
"You have to accept it." She started to cry again, very softly. "I'm terrified of dying. I can't do it alone, I just can't." She said she needed me to be there with her when she died. She needed me to help her see her through it. And if I couldn't accept that she was dying, if I was "in denial" about it, she told me, then, for her, it would feel like she was dying all alone, with nobody there, even if I were present.
"This is my hard truth," she said, squeezing my hand almost painfully tightly. "Please, please don't leave me all alone with it."
And then she did something that I didn't expect at all.
I'm going to try to write about what happened next in the next post. I promised Bailey that I'd record the truth of our lives without leaving anything out, no matter what. But it's not going to be easy. I'm only just beginning to make sense of it. I'll do my best.