Take care of our girl. Tell her, someday, that her father spent his last months thinking about how to give someone else more of what he was running out of.
I love you both completely.
Julian
⸻
I sat in that small consultation room for a long time after finishing the letter, Dr. Whitfield quiet beside me, giving me the space the moment clearly required.
⸻
“Did it work?” I finally asked. “The surgery. Is Desmond alive?”
⸻
“He is,” Dr. Whitfield said gently. “The transplant happened four hours after Julian passed. Desmond’s recovery has gone remarkably well so far.”
⸻
I gave birth to our daughter, Marlowe, nine days later, Julian’s absence sitting heavy in that delivery room in a way I don’t think any amount of preparation could have softened.
⸻
I didn’t reach out to Renata right away. I want to be honest about that. It took almost two months before I felt steady enough to hold that particular kind of complicated gratitude without it collapsing into fresh grief every single time I thought about it.
⸻
I finally called her when Marlowe was six weeks old, working through an unsteady, careful conversation that started stiff and slowly softened into something neither of us fully expected.
⸻
“I didn’t know how to reach out either,” Renata admitted. “I’ve thought about you and your husband every single day since Desmond told me the full story. I didn’t want to intrude on your grief by making it about our relief.”
⸻
“It’s allowed to be both,” I told her. “I think Julian would have wanted exactly that, honestly.”
