He Booked Every Billboard; My Death Certificate Arrived

The day I was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer,

Cecil Harding was off diving in the Maldives with his childhood sweetheart.

She gets a little scared in deep water, so I have to stay with her. Take some stomach medicine yourself.

After he hung up, I threw my phone, along with the sixth-anniversary engagement rings he'd given me, into the hospital's medical-waste bin.

A few days later, he booked out every big screen in the city to propose to me.

What came instead was the death certificate for the burial of my ashes.

When the diagnosis was handed to me, the doctor looked at me. "Miss Fox, is any family with you?"

The fluorescent light fell on the endoscopy report. Poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma of the gastric antrum, peritoneal metastasis, late stage.

From the next exam room came an old woman crying, sounding like she was begging the doctor to save her son.

And I sat on the plastic chair, my face blank, calm in a way that didn't fit someone who'd just been handed a countdown to death.

Half an hour later, Cecil's phone finally connected.

But before his voice came the sound of waves, and only then did it occur to me that it had been a long time since I'd seen the ocean.

After a moment, Cecil's voice came through, laughing. "What is it, Sonia?"

"Cecil, I'm at the hospital."

The other end went quiet for a second.

Soon a woman's soft, coaxing voice pressed close to the receiver. "Cecil, the instructor says we can go in now, but I'm scared."

Cecil soothed her under his breath. "Don't be scared. I'm right here with you."

When he spoke again, the impatience was plain. "Your stomach again?"

"It's different this time." The report was crushed soft in my hand. "The doctor says family needs to come."

Cecil sighed. "Sonia, Roberta's been afraid of deep water since we were kids. She only came to the Maldives to keep me company."

"She gets a little scared in deep water, so I have to stay with her. Just take some stomach medicine for now."

Through the receiver came Roberta Henson's light laugh, and before I could say another word, the call cut off.

I looked at the phone still glowing in my palm. The screensaver was the ring Cecil had given me.

Last month, he'd slid the engagement ring onto my finger and said that at our sixth anniversary he'd propose, that he'd give me the grandest wedding in the whole city.

Now I looked at the ring on my finger, the band cold, biting into my swollen, aching skin.

A nurse happened to wheel a medical-waste bin past just then, and the phone and the ring both went crashing in together.

The nurse startled. "Miss, you can't throw those in there."

"I understand. I don't want them." Only after I said it did I notice how badly my throat hurt. "I don't want any of it."

At the end of the hall, the attending doctor caught up with me. "Sonia Fox, your illness can't wait. Notify your family right now and get admitted."

"There's no family. I'm an orphan."

The doctor frowned. "But the surgery consent form has to be signed by someone."

I stood up. "I'll sign it myself."

It was almost funny, really.

Six years. Six years ago, I ran into Cecil outside the orphanage.

Nineteen, just aged out and gone from the home, standing at the roadside with a suitcase whose lacquer had all peeled off. I didn't know the way, and I had nowhere to go.

His car stopped in front of me. He rolled down the window. "Get in. It's raining out there."

It really was raining that day. But maybe he was only passing through, or maybe it was just a passing kindness.

I turned that one rain into a whole spring.

Over six years I moved into his apartment, cooked for him, ironed his shirts, kept track of every meeting on his schedule.

His stomach was bad, so I spent three months learning how to plan nutritious meals.

When he drank too much at business dinners, I drove out at two in the morning to pick him up.

He gave me money to spend. He gave me a "home."

But Roberta had never once disappeared from his life.

She was the neighbor he'd grown up with, and later she went abroad to study, coming back to the country every so often.

Every time she came back, Cecil turned into someone else.

One New Year's Eve, halfway through the hotpot, he suddenly took a call, didn't even set his chopsticks down before he grabbed his coat.

"Roberta's back. I'm going to pick her up."

That night I sat alone in front of a table of food gone cold, waiting until four in the morning. When he came back he smelled of a woman's perfume.

I didn't ask him why it had taken four hours.

If I asked, he'd answer, and the answer was more than I could bear.

Things like that happened many times.

On my twenty-fourth birthday, he said the company needed him. That night someone posted photos on their feed of him and Roberta at a French restaurant.

I messaged him. Three hours later he wrote back. "Sorry, Roberta just got back into the country. I had to see to her."

He didn't mean anything by it. He probably never once thought anything was wrong.

To him, Roberta was the childhood friend who needed looking after, and I was the one who could be pushed to the back of the line whenever.

Last month he suddenly gave me the rings, said he wanted to give me a grand proposal.

For a moment I almost believed it.

But the endoscopy report knocked all of it back to what it was.

My stomach had hurt for three years, and he'd never once come with me for a single checkup. Every time I said my stomach was bothering me, all he ever said was "Take some stomach medicine."

I picked up the pen and signed Sonia Fox on the surgery consent form.

The next morning I took half a day off from the hospital and went back to the apartment to pack.

I pushed open the door, and there in the entryway sat the his-and-hers slippers Cecil had bought us.

The cramping in my stomach came again, like something blunt turning over and over in the flesh.

I braced myself against the shoe cabinet and waited until it eased before I walked into the bedroom.

The closet was crammed with the designer clothes and bags Cecil had bought me, along with the jewelry he'd picked up on a whim.

I had just dragged out a suitcase when Cecil's assistant, Gregory Weiss, called.

"Miss Fox, Mr. Harding's flight lands at eight tonight. He says you're to go pick him up."

I stuffed a coat into the recycling bag and kept my voice flat. "I'm not going. I don't have time."

There was a second of silence on the line. Gregory clearly hadn't expected me to refuse.

Before, whenever Cecil came back from a trip, I'd stay up to meet him no matter the hour, even at three in the morning.

Gregory pressed on. "Miss Fox, Mr. Harding caught a chill diving and he's still running a fever."

"If he has a fever he should see a doctor. What good does calling me do?" I tossed a few unopened necklaces into a box.

"Miss Fox, you're overplaying this hard-to-get act." His tone grew more impatient. If even an assistant could talk to me like that, it said plainly enough how little I mattered to Cecil. I just hadn't paid attention to any of it before.

Gregory's voice kept coming. "Mr. Harding says if you keep throwing tantrums, your supplementary card gets canceled right now. You're an orphan. How would you get by without him?"

"Fine. Tell him to cancel it." I hung up and added Gregory to my blocked list too.

Without the supplementary card, I couldn't even cover the hospital bills.

So I got in touch with the manager of a secondhand luxury resale shop and packed up everything in the closet that Cecil had bought.

Looking at the small mountain of bags, the manager was startled. "Miss Fox, a lot of these are limited editions. It's a shame to let them go at a discount."

"It's no shame. Cash it all out."

Two hours later, my bank account was three hundred thousand richer.

I picked up my old suitcase, the lacquer peeling off it, and walked out of the apartment I'd lived in for six years.

That afternoon I took a cab out to Southridge Cemetery to buy a plot in a good spot.

While the staff member walked me through signing the contract, he asked, "Miss, is this for an elderly relative?"

"No. It's for myself."

His hand gave a little shake, and he looked at me with a complicated expression, as if he thought there was something wrong with my mind.

"Then what would you like carved on the headstone? Any family names?"

"No need. Just carve the name Sonia Fox, that's all. I don't have any family."

I chose a spot that faced the sun, ringed with pines and cypresses.

I get cold easily. The light is good here. Resting here for good, I won't feel lonely.

That night, lying in the hospital bed, I saw a new post from Roberta on my social feed.

In the photo, Cecil leaned back in the car seat with his eyes closed, his face pale.

The caption read: "Cecil pushed through his illness just to come home with me. The wildflowers out there may be pretty, but they're never home."

In the corner of the photo, you could see the watch on Cecil's wrist, the one Roberta had given him.

That watch. He never even let me touch it.

Staring at the screen, I felt a wave of nausea churn up through my stomach.

I tapped like, and then deleted both Cecil and Roberta from my contacts.

A nurse wheeled in the treatment cart and pushed a thick needle into my vein.

"Miss Fox, the chemo drugs hit pretty hard. You may get nauseous and throw up, so brace yourself for it."

The icy fluid ran down through my veins, cold enough to leave me shaking, my teeth chattering.

I closed my eyes and buried my head under the blanket.

On the third day, the chemo side effects hit all at once.

I hunched over the trash can and threw up until there was nothing left but bile.

My hair came out in handfuls on the pillow, and my face had gone bone white.

That afternoon, Cecil finally noticed I was gone.

He called my phone from a number I didn't recognize.

The second I answered, his voice came through, tight with the anger he was barely holding down.

"Sonia Fox, you've grown a spine? You think you can block me?"

In the background, Roberta cooed, "Cecil, come taste these grapes, tell me if they're sweet enough."

Cecil ignored her and let out a cold laugh into the phone. "I went back to the apartment. Half your things are gone. What, you sold them? If you were short on money, you couldn't just ask me? You had to pull something this cheap to get my attention?"

"Six years living off me, off everything I gave you, and now you've got an attitude."

I leaned against the raised arm of the hospital bed, watching the medicine drip down the IV line. "Cecil, let's break up."

For three seconds there was dead silence on the other end.

Then came his voice, so furious it turned into a laugh, thick with mockery. "Sonia Fox, what game are you playing now? Because I took Roberta to the Maldives, you're using a breakup to force my hand?"

"Roberta's health is fragile. I looked after her a little, so what? Do you really have to keep score like this? You used to know how to behave."

"Do you have any idea how long I've been planning our sixth-anniversary proposal? I booked every screen in the city. You pull this stunt now, are you trying to make me call the whole thing off?"

He was certain I wouldn't dare, because he knew how badly I wanted a home, knew how humbly I'd spent six years currying his favor.

He thought all he had to do was dangle the word "proposal" and I'd come crawling back, wagging my tail.

"Do whatever you want." A vicious pain tore through my stomach, and I coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The dark red stain landed on the white sheet, stark and horrible.

Cecil heard me coughing, and his tone went colder still. "How many times have you played the sick card now? Always your stomach. Can't you come up with something new?"

"You think you've been so wronged? Let me tell you something, Sonia Fox. Without me, you wouldn't even have a roof over your head. Everything you have, I gave you!"

"I'm warning you, my patience runs out. If you're not back here on your knees apologizing before midnight tonight, the proposal is off for good!"

"After that, you can beg me on your knees and I won't spare you a single glance."

His words were a rusted saw dragging back and forth across my nerves.

I pulled out a tissue and wiped the blood from the corner of my mouth.

"Cecil, I'm not begging you anymore."

"Save your proposal for Roberta Henson. I don't want it."

And with that, I hung up and dropped this number into the block list too.

The pain was so violent it curled me into a ball on the bed, cold sweat soaking through the hospital gown.

When the doctor came on rounds and saw the blood on the sheet, his face changed. "Get her to the ER, now! The patient may be bleeding internally."

They wheeled me onto the gurney, and the fluorescent lights along the ceiling of the hallway streaked past above me.

Through the haze, I heard a nurse calling urgently in my ear, "Sonia Fox! Don't sleep! Stay awake!"

I tugged at the corner of my mouth, wanting to tell her I was just so tired.

Six years of chasing. I'd burned through every last bit of my strength, and all I wanted now was to sleep.

The ER doors slammed shut, and the harsh surgical light came on.

I closed my eyes and let the darkness swallow me whole.

Getting hung up on pushed Cecil over the edge.

Gregory stood off to one side, watching the storm on Cecil's face, and asked carefully, "Mr. Harding, should we keep setting up the proposal venue?"

"Set it up. Not only set it up, move it up." Cecil ground the words out through his teeth. "Book every big screen downtown. Tomorrow night, eight o'clock. I want the whole city to see it."

"She wants to make a scene? Let's see how she keeps up the act once the entire city knows I'm proposing to her."

Cecil was certain of it. Give the spectacle enough scale, and I would break down sobbing with gratitude and crawl right back to his side.

But the next afternoon, Roberta showed up at the hospital instead.

She wore a couture dress and four-inch heels, and she stood at the foot of my bed.

I had just come out of the resuscitation room, tubes running into me everywhere, unable to breathe without an oxygen mask.

Roberta covered her nose and looked down at me with open disgust. "Sonia, your little suffering act is almost too convincing, isn't it? You even had them hook up the oxygen? To force Cecil to marry you, there's really nothing you won't do."

"Cecil is proposing to you tonight at the downtown plaza. But he says if you dare not show up, he'll announce right there in front of everyone that he's proposing to me instead."

She bent down, brought her mouth close to my ear, her voice thick with vicious triumph. "Looking like this, you'd only embarrass yourself by going. If I didn't refuse to have children, you think Cecil would ever have looked at you? You're nothing but my stand-in. The one he's always loved is me."

"If you know what's good for you, get out of this city right now and stop being an eyesore."

I looked at her, and it settled in my chest. So this was what Cecil had done it for. But now I didn't even have the strength to speak.

The line on the heart monitor was flattening out, its beeping quick and shrill.

The pain rolled over me like a tide, and my vision began to scatter.

Doctors and nurses rushed into the room and shoved Roberta aside. "V-fib! Get the defibrillator ready!"

Roberta stumbled from the push, and she looked at my ashen face and the blood soaking the bed, and finally understood I hadn't been faking.

Her own face went white with fear, and she fled in her high heels.

Eight o'clock that night.

The downtown plaza roared with the crowd. Every big screen in the city lit up at once, all of them showing a photo of Cecil and me from six years ago.

Cecil wore a bespoke suit, holding an enormous diamond ring, standing high above the plaza.

He was waiting for me to appear, waiting for me to wag my tail and crawl over and thank him for his mercy.

Minute by minute the time passed, and the crowd began to whisper.

The look on Cecil's face got worse and worse. He pulled out his phone and dialed my number.

"We're sorry. The phone you are calling is switched off."

He let out a cold laugh and turned to Gregory. "Find out where she is and drag her here to me. This wedding happens today whether she wants it or not."

Just then, his phone suddenly rang.

An unfamiliar landline number.

A smug little smile pulled at the corner of Cecil's mouth. He hit answer, his tone laced with condescension. "Sonia, so now you know you were wrong? Too late."

But the voice on the other end was tired and heavy. "Hello. Is this Mr. Cecil Harding?"

Cecil frowned. "Who is this?"

"This is City General Hospital. Miss Sonia Fox passed away ten minutes ago. Resuscitation was unsuccessful."

"She left your number with us. Please come to the morgue as soon as possible to identify the body and handle the death certificate."

The smile froze on Cecil's mouth.

The diamond ring slipped from his hand with a small clatter, hit the ground, and rolled into a pitch-black drain.