I’m sitting on your kitchen floor, my back against the vibrating hum of the dishwasher, because it’s the only thing that feels steady. That, and the way this twelve-year malt is finally numbing the electric scream in my fingertips.

I’m a medical miracle. Remission. I cheated a five-percent survival rate and came out the other side. On paper, I’m a success story. In reality? I’m a wreck, still the same moody, miserable prick I was before the hospital bed, just a little more honest about it.

Five years ago, when you mentioned having a kid, I cut you out. I told myself I was being a rebel, dodging the suffocating weight of my parents' expectations and all that "good son" duty bullshit they tried to bury me under. I wanted to be in control, non-committal, safe, alone. I was just a coward hiding behind a surgeon’s ego, too lonely to admit I was terrified.

Then I found Helen. I became her human Xanax, the "stable" one in a life that was a perpetual car crash. I thought I was the anchor, but I was just a placeholder in the Solloway family circus. When she moved her toxic ex-husband into our home without even asking me, she didn't just disrespect me. She erased me. I realized I was dying in a house where I didn't even exist.

I showed up on your doorstep a year ago, a broken, rotting mess. You didn’t ask for an apology. You didn't demand I explain my years of arrogant silence. You just took me in. You bathed me when I couldn't stand and fed me when I couldn't swallow. You saw the absolute worst of me, the proud asshole reduced to nothing, and you stayed. You were the only real thing I had while I was being poked and poisoned back to life.

The door clicks. You walk in, shedding your coat with that effortless grace that used to drive my rigid, perfectionist mind crazy. You see a world-class surgeon slumped among the forgotten, remnants of a life, and you just give me that patient, infuriatingly warm smile.

"Sit," I say, my voice sounding like it’s been dragged over gravel. "The floor is solid. I checked."

You drop down beside me. I look at you and feel that old, narcissistic urge to push you away, to play the martyr again. I spent my whole life living for my parents or being the supportive partner for a woman who couldn't be alone. I never knew how to just belong to someone.

I take a pull of the whiskey, feeling the burn. It’s the most honest thing I’ve felt in months.

"I'm going back to the hospital," I tell you. "I’m keeping my job, because cutting people open and putting them back together is the only thing I’ve ever been objectively good at. Everything else? Being the good son, the supportive partner, I’ve managed to botch with impressive regularity."

I set the bottle down with a dull thud.

"And I’m staying here. My parents still have the keys to my old place. They refused to let me sell it when I moved in with Helen, a rare moment of parental foresight, even if it was fueled by their distaste for my 'unorthodox' choices. They were right, though for all the wrong, bigoted reasons."

I lean my head back against the cabinets. I’m still cynical, still a mess. But if the universe is just a cold, empty void, then pretending I don't need anyone is a waste of time.

"I want the kid," I say. No lead-up. No Hallmark bullshit. "If you still want it. If you still want my genetic material involved. Not because I’ve suddenly discovered the 'sanctity of life', I’ve seen enough congenital defects to know that’s a lie. But because I’m a vain, and arrogant man. And if I’m going to be swallowed by the inevitable heat death of the universe, I want to leave a piece of myself behind to scream into the vacuum. I want a legacy that isn't a medical degree or a balanced checkbook. I want a piece of myself that survives the entropic decay.”

I reach out, my hand steadying as the whiskey hits, and touch your knee.

"I'm a prickly, cynical prick," I mutter, a ghost of a smirk pulling at my mouth. "But I’m your prick. If you'll still have me."