#giving backstories to characters when dc wont

This story is fictional. Please don’t worry. 

My beloved husband is dying. He’s twenty-four years old. Neither of us knows what happened. He seemed perfectly healthy one day, and the next he started complaining of an intense headache. Since he had never been prone to migraines, this seemed odd, but he insisted that we ignore it. We don’t have much money, and with a baby on the way (I was three months pregnant), he said that we shouldn’t waste money on something that would probably go away on its own after a few days. But it didn’t go away. 

For the next three months, his headaches grew more and more intense, and his eyesight started to intermittently blur. While he tried to ignore them and keep working, they eventually became so intense that they were interfering with his work as an electrician. And then he had a seizure at work, one so intense that he had to go to the hospital. 

The doctor told us that he had stage 4 brain cancer. 

“He’s only had symptoms for two weeks!” I cried. The doctor said that some forms of brain cancer don’t cause symptoms right away; that the tumor in my husband’s brain had been growing for several months and had only now grown in such a way that it was causing noticeable symptoms.

A week later, my husband started chemotherapy. It was difficult for both of us. My husband hated feeling sick and weak, and I hated watching him lose his beautiful, curly brown hair. I hated watching him vomit, and I hated that he blamed himself for being unable to provide for me and the baby while he was sick. Worse, all of the drugs seemed to be having no benefits. The tumor wasn’t shrinking, and the cancer wasn’t going into remission. 

As my husband grew sicker and sicker, our medical bills started to climb. Since my husband is self-employed, and I work as a seamstress and am currently between employers, we had very minimal health insurance, and, as a result, we found ourselves paying upwards of $10,000 dollars a month for the chemotherapy. Our relatives and friends chipped in as much as they could to help us pay for the medical costs, but the payments still wiped out almost all of our savings. 

About two and a half months after starting treatment, my husband told me that he wanted to stop the treatments. When he said this, I burst into tears, begging him to not give up. I said that I couldn’t bear to lose him and that we had to keep trying, but he refused. He said that he knew that he wasn’t going to survive. 

“Martha, the doctors have told me that the cancer has metastasized. Even with treatment, I won’t live for much longer. There’s no point in spending all of our money on drugs that won’t save my life. I don’t want you and our son to have to live in poverty after I’m gone.” 

Half a month after my husband came home from the hospital, I gave birth to my son at home. There was no money for another hospital visit. For a first pregnancy, it was an easy birth, at least physically. Emotionally, it was another story.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how we were going to take care of our son with us both out of work; how I was going to raise my son without a father; how I was going to survive without my husband.

My husband cheered when our son was born. I couldn’t stop crying. Seeing my husband hold his son only reminded me of the fact that he wouldn’t get to see his newborn son grow up. He would miss his first steps, his first words, everything. It wasn’t fair. There were so many terrible fathers who would be able to ruin their children’s lives well into adulthood. Why wouldn’t my husband, who loved his son so much, be able to see his child grow? 

Our son is seven months old now; strong, healthy, and getting into everything. We named him after both of our grandfathers. His father can no longer play with him; no longer even seems to recognize him. My husband is too weak to get out of bed. He barely eats, and his memory is deteriorating rapidly. Since the cancer spread to his lungs a few weeks ago, he’s started coughing up blood, and he vomits up much of the little he does eat. He’s not even thirty years old, and he looks like an emaciated old man. The doctors say he probably won’t live for more than a week. And I don’t know what to do with that information. 

Right now, I’m sitting by his bedside. He’s sleeping, albeit restlessly, and as I look at my husband’s disease-racked body, I can hardly recognize the man I married only three years ago. 

We met, in all places, at a roller rink. I was there celebrating the birthday party of my roommate and best friend, Lorraine O’Reilly, and my husband was there on military leave with one of his unit buddies. Both of us were twenty years old, and we were introduced to one another when he lost control of his skates and quite literally crashed into me. Luckily, neither of us was hurt, and we soon struck up a conversation that lasted throughout the night and ended with us exchanging phone numbers. We had our first official date a week later, and, after a six-month whirlwind romance, we were married just before he went back on duty. The only guests at the wedding were our parents, Lorraine, and my husband’s unit buddy, Jackson Thomas. My husband finished his tour of active duty two years later, and promptly set up shop as an electrician, having served in that capacity during his time in the army. 

I almost regret that I love him so much; that he’s so kind and charming and good. Maybe if he wasn’t so wonderful, it would be easier to lose him. 

“Martha?” My husband is awake, and he looks more lucid than he’s been in weeks. 

“Yes, Percy?” 

“I love you and our son so much. You’ve made my life worth living. If I had lived to be a hundred without meeting you, I don’t think that I could-” My husband starts coughing violently; spits up crimson blood. 

“Percy, please. Save your strength.” 

“No. Martha, dear, I don’t have much time. I’m just glad that I was given the chance to tell you how much you mean to me before I go. You’ve made me the happiest man in the world, Martha. If I could go back and live my life all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love you, and I love our son. I just wish…I just wish that I could be there to help him grow up.”

“I…I love you, too! Please, don’t go! Your son needs you…I need you!” 

“I’m sorry to leave you like this…I love you.” His grip loosens, and his eyes close. For a minute, his chest rises and falls…and then it stills. There is a sound like the crack of doom. 

It takes me a moment to realize that the noise is me.

My husband is dead. I was supposed to grow old with him, and he’s dead at twenty-four! What will I do now? How can I go on? 

Time seems frozen as I sob, and sob, and sob.

Then I hear another noise…the cry of my son. My husband’s son. Half-dazed, I leave my husband’s side, go to my son’s room and lift him out of his cradle. After a few minutes of rocking, he smiles at me, and I realize how I will go on. 

It won’t be easy. I don’t know how I will do it. But I will go on, for the sake of my Percy’s son.

Samuel Joseph Scudder.