Untangled 14: indifference

He said to me, “I didn’t want to tell you, but the cancer has spread. I started having headaches a while ago but thought it was the stress of everything happening. I have a tumor at the base of my skull the size of a walnut. They say I don’t have much longer to live.” It felt like the floor fell from under me. I was now the caretaker of a man I had started dating about five months ago. I was now tasked with possibly planning a funeral and watching a person that I think I love die.

I prayed for him right then and emailed everyone I knew, asking them to pray for him. I scoured the internet for cancer cures, ordered a cold-press juicer, and began juicing carrots and beets for him. I became a quasi-expert in stomach and brain cancer. I had more faith that he would be cured than that he would die. It all seemed cruel to me—a good man comes into my life, but he has issues and is dying. Either way, I was prepared to see it through. If he had to die, I wanted to make his last few months as comfortable as possible.

Later that day he said he needed more clothes because the rest of his were still in Miami at his condo. So, he asked to use my Nordstrom card to get a few things at the Rack. He promised he would pay the entire balance off once the lawsuit ended. I asked, “Why don’t you just fly down to Miami, pack your clothes in your Rolls Royce, and drive it all back here?” That way you’ll have a car and all of your stuff.

He said, “The Rolls Royce was a lemon, so I gave it back.” 

I added that to my mental file of lies but had stopped questioning anything because the stress would make him “sick.” What was the point? I saw this as me rendering end-of-life care to someone who said he was in love with me. Someone who cleaned my house, did my laundry and chauffeured me around.

Since I made the decision to stay with him in his darkest hour, I thought we should be a real couple. After all, we were still in a relationship. I also wanted his last few months on this earth to be great. That was the least I could do. So I planned dates and trips—I was basically *Make-A-Wish* for a grown man. I ignored all the lies and the things I found odd because he was dying. If you can’t get a free pass on your deathbed, when can you? I paid for everything because his accounts were “frozen,” remember. He had done so much for me that first month or so, including buying me a new TV for my bedroom, that I felt indebted. Now that I think about it I wonder where did he get money for his phone bill, those gifts, flowers etc? It’s been years and I don’t wanna go down that hole, because I know there will be some poor woman’s credit card attached.

One day, I asked to see the frozen account. He said, “It’s locked, and I can’t access it anymore.” At the time, he was standing at the sink washing dishes. Then suddenly, his eyes rolled back, and he grabbed his chest. I stared at him from the couch because it looked overly fake. While it was all happening, I suddenly had a flash of clarity. In my mind, I thought, *This is all a lie.* 

I stood up and said, “Oh my God! I’ll call an ambulance!”

He sighed and said, “Let me sit down for a minute. I’ll be fine. I’m not going in an ambulance; it’s probably just heartburn. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow morning anyway.”

When he picked me up from work later that day, I asked, “What happened at your appointment?”

He said, “The doctor said I had a mini heart attack. The readout shows I’ve had several in the past few months.”

I stared at the side of his head, knowing it was all a lie but unable to prove it. He had an answer for everything. So instead of becoming an investigator, I became indifferent.

“Oh, wow,” I replied. “I feel like chicken for dinner.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Facebook.