"No… Not that…" She protested when she heard him popping the top off the aluminum can. "It's so tasteless…" She complained as he ignored her and continued pouring it into a small glass. Jacob gave her a wry grin and then opened the fridge again while removing another can. He then popped the top and poured another glass. Setting the two glasses on a serving tray nearby, he then walked back over to his wife's bedside and sat down.

"What're you doing?" Louise offered a weak and timid smile. Her smile was not as broad as it used to be. She didn't feel beautiful so she didn't smile much. Her long, luxurious flowing silky hair was now thinning and nil. If it the wig that Jacob had bought her didn't irritate her skin, she would never take it off; but it did. Therefore she kept her balding head covered with a silk scarf. She couldn't stand to see her image in a mirror. It depressed her to see her face hollowed out and like a skeleton frame of her former beauty. Her eyes were dark and sunken, while her skin was like the Mojave desert- dry with very little life in it.

"Here," Jacob said passing her some pills from her pill box. She looked at the pills that were in his right hand as he held her drink in his left.

"Do I really have to?" She asked tilting her head slightly up to look at him.

"If not for yourself; think of the kids and me…" He said pushing the pills into her hands. She could hear him choking on his own emotions; and that made her heart cry. "Besides I have to take you for your doctor's appointment tomorrow." He reminded her attempting to coax her to take the pills without further protest. She smiled taking and looking at them as they lay in her hand.

"Red ones, blue ones, little yellow ones and white ones… Hmm there's even a pink one and a black one too…" She noted observing the different colors of the pill.

"I propose a toast…" He said catching her attention as she threw all of the pills in her mouth and waited for him to finish.

"Long live love, happiness and family…" He said picking up his own glass and clinking it with hers. Together they smile while draining the pasty and tasteless watery white liquid from their glasses.

It wasn't long before Louise lay sleeping in his arm. He wasn't surprised that she was already asleep. Between the three days of chemo-therapy and the drugs; if she wasn't sleeping, she was in the toilet fighting a bout with of diarrhea or she would be bent over the toilet puking her guts out.




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