Recovery was long.

Months later, cleared to come home, Ifeoma told Emeka on the terrace that the chemotherapy had taken her fertility — that she grieved, sometimes, a child she would never hold.

He didn’t reach for a platitude.

He had learned that deep grief doesn’t need fixing; it needs witnessing.

He held her hand in the cool air.

He knew this because he had been on the other side of it.