hospital staff adjusted schedules.
Finally, I told him to stop turning love into a debt.
“We are not keeping score,” I said.
“We are keeping you here.”
Mika visited after school whenever his immune system allowed it.
She wore a small mask decorated with stars and carried a comic she had made herself.
The hero was a bald doctor called Captain Narrow-Bed, who defeated monsters by telling the truth before they grew too large.
Ramón laughed so hard that he had to hold his ribs.
“It isn’t subtle,” he told her.
“What does subtle mean?”
“Not obvious.”
“Oh.
Then no, it isn’t subtle.”
She taped the comic above his bed.
After the second treatment cycle, Ramón developed a fever at home.
He tried to dismiss it.
“It is barely thirty-eight degrees.”
I was already reaching for the hospital bag.
“Shoes.”
“Elena—”
“Shoes, Doctor.”
At the emergency department, his blood counts were dangerously low.
He was admitted for antibiotics while cultures were processed.
For two nights, I sat beside him listening to machines measure every heartbeat he had once assumed belonged entirely to him.
On the second morning, he woke and found me watching the ceiling.
“You should go home,” he said.
“No.”
“Mika needs you.”
“She is with Mrs.
Cruz.
She made me promise not to leave you alone when you are scared.”
He turned his face toward the window.
“I am scared.”
It was the first time he had said it while fully awake.
I took his hand.
“So am I.”
Neither confession destroyed us.
The fever settled.
The cultures showed an infection that responded to treatment.
Ramón returned home weaker but more honest.
We removed the hidden camera from Mika’s room.
Before deleting the application, I saved one final clip—not the one of Ramón whispering goodbye, but footage from the evening after his second hospital discharge.
In it, he stood at Mika’s doorway and knocked.
“May I come in?”
Mika looked up from her book.
“Are you scared?”
“A little.”
“Then yes.”
She moved her stuffed animals and patted the mattress.
He lay beside her without hiding, and I joined them a few minutes later.
The bed truly was too narrow for all three of us.
Mika complained that Ramón’s elbow was on her pillow and my foot was trapped beneath the blanket.
Then she smiled.
“This kind of narrow is okay.”
Halfway through treatment, the swelling in Ramón’s neck disappeared.
His night fevers stopped.
He remained cautious, refusing to interpret improvement before the scans confirmed it.
Dr.
Santos reviewed the first follow-up images in a small consultation room.
Ramón sat beside me rather than across from her as a fellow physician.
Mika waited outside with Mrs.
Cruz, drawing another comic.
Dr.
Santos turned the monitor toward us.
“The tumors have shrunk significantly,” she said.
“This is the response we hoped to see.”
Ramón stared at the screen.
“Significantly?” he repeated, unable to keep the doctor out of his voice.
She smiled.
“Very significantly.
But you must complete the full course.”
“I will.”
I looked at him.
He corrected himself.
“We will.”
Months later, after the final planned cycle, the scan showed no active disease detectable on imaging.
Dr.
Santos called it a complete metabolic response.
She also warned us that remission required follow-up, that future scans would
