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Return to New York Part 1

The doctor's office smelled like lemon cleaner and resignation. Maddox sat stiffly on the edge of the exam table, the paper crinkling beneath him, his fingers absently twisting the edge of his coat sleeve. He wasn't surprised. Not really. The coughing fits, the fatigue, the weight that kept dropping no matter how much he ate…The weight he'd carried for years - the grief, the guilt, the isolation - had finally rooted itself in his bones, and now, sickness was claiming what was left.

The words were delivered with clinical sympathy. Advanced. Aggressive. Not much time. Terminal. The kind of phrases that didn't quite land until you were sitting alone on a park bench afterward, watching pigeons fight over breadcrumbs and wondering how long you'd still be around to do even that.

He didn't tell anyone. Not even his mother. She'd only press him for details, ask about treatment options, offer to uproot everything for his care. That wasn't what he wanted. He didn't think he needed to tell Daphne. After all, they were nothing real to each other.

But Idalia… he'd failed so much with her already. Showing up at all had felt like too much some days. She was older now, smart and intuitive. She asked questions he couldn't always answer. He could've stayed and wasted away quietly, let himself disappear like a bad memory, but something had shifted.

Maybe he could give her something more than silence before it was too late.