\u201cI\u2019m his wife,\u201d I said to the on-call doctor, asserting my place in the cramped exam room. It was a label I\u2019d only recently acquired. A year ago, it had seemed silly to obtain government proof of what we\u2019d known to be true for six years: We were life partners. Now I was so grateful we signed that piece of paper.<\/p>\n
Earlier that morning, I\u2019d driven my husband to an ER in Torrance for what we\u2019d assumed was a nasty flu or its annoying bacterial equivalent. We\u2019d imagined a round of industrial-grade antibiotics, and then heading home in time for our 3-year-old\u2019s usual bath-time routine.<\/p>\n
But the doctor\u2019s face was serious. Machines beeped and whirred as my husband laid on the hospital bed. Whatever supernatural power colloquially known as a \u201cgut feeling\u201d flat-lined in my stomach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s leukemia,\u201d she said, putting a clinical end to what had been our honeymoon period.<\/p>\n
Only six months earlier, a female Elvis impersonator had declared us husband and wife. A burlesque dancer pressed her cleavage into both of our faces as our friends cheered and threw dollar bills. A wedding in Vegas was my idea.<\/p>\n
After two years of dating Marty, a cute roller hockey player with an unwavering moral compass, I knew I wanted to have a child with him. It was marriage, not commitment, that unnerved me. I wanted romance, freedom and to do things my way. The word \u201cwife\u201d induced an allergic reaction.<\/p>\n
As Marty and I became parents and navigated adulthood together, my resistance to matrimony started to feel like an outdated quirk. The emotional equivalent of a person still rocking a septum piercing long after they stopped listening to punk music.<\/p>\n
Marty had shown me, over and over, what it was to be a teammate. He\u2019d rubbed my back through hours of labor, made late-night runs for infant Tylenol and was never afraid to cry at the sad parts of movies or take the occasional harsh piece of feedback about his communication style. And like all good teams, we kicked ass together. So why was I still resisting something that meant so much to him? To our family?<\/p>\n
One random Saturday, at the Hawthorne In-N-Out Burger, after Marty ordered fries as a treat for our son, I finally said, \u201cScrew it. Let\u2019s get married.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wedding day was raucous and covered in glitter. We both wore white. Our son\u2019s jacket had a roaring tiger stitched onto the back and was layered over his toddler-size tuxedo T-shirt. Loved ones from all over the country flew to meet us in a tiny pink chapel. A neon heart buzzed over our heads as we vowed to \u201clove each other in sickness and in health, till death do us part.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t have imagined then that the next chapel I\u2019d be in would be the hospital prayer room. Or that I would have begged a God I struggle to believe in to please spare Marty\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Unlike our decision to marry, acute leukemia came on suddenly. Over the course of a few weeks, Marty\u2019s bone marrow had flooded his blood with malignant cells. Treatment was urgent. He was taken by ambulance from the ER to the City of Hope hospital in Duarte, a part of Los Angeles County we\u2019d never had a reason to visit before.<\/p>\n
Traditionally the 50th wedding anniversary is celebrated with gold, the 25th with silver and the first with paper. But we couldn\u2019t even afford to look paper-far-ahead anymore. Instead, we celebrated that the specific genetic modifiers of Marty\u2019s cancer were treatable, the good chemo days and his being able to walk to the hospital lobby to see our son for the first time in weeks.<\/p>\n
Leukemia has taught me things such as: how to inject antifungal medication into the open PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line in Marty\u2019s veins, how to explain to our son that \u201cPapa will be sleeping with the doctors for a long while so they can help him feel better\u201d and that to do the hibbity-dibbity with a person going through chemo, you must wear a condom. But mostly my husband\u2019s sickness has taught me about healthy love.<\/p>\n
When we had a child together, we\u2019d committed to being in each other\u2019s lives forever. But marriage was different. We\u2019d already made a promise to our son, but when we got married, we made one to each other and ourselves. We had gone all in.<\/p>\n
Since his diagnosis two months ago, there have been so many ways we\u2019ve shown love for each other. People assume that I would do all the caregiving, but it\u2019s more than that. Yes, I\u2019ve washed my husband\u2019s feet when he couldn\u2019t bend down, been the only parent at preschool dropoff and pickup, and advocated on Marty\u2019s behalf to his health insurance with only a few choice expletives.<\/p>\n
But my husband has also taken care of me. Even when he was nauseous, sweating and fatigued, Marty showed up. He made me laugh with macabre jokes about how the only way for us to watch anything other than \u201cPAW Patrol\u201d on TV together was for him to get hospitalized. He insisted that I make time to rest and bring him the car owner\u2019s manual, so he could figure out why the check engine light had come on.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d promised in front of our closest friends and Elvis herself to love each other \u201cfor better or worse.\u201d And when the worst arrived sooner than expected, we did more than love. We truly cared for each other as husband and wife.<\/p>\n
The author is a writer whose short stories have been nominated for the PEN\/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and Best of the Net<\/a>. She is working on a novel and lives in Redondo Beach with her husband and son. She\u2019s on Instagram: @RachelReallyChapman<\/a>.<\/p>\n L.A. Affairs<\/a> chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com<\/a>. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here<\/a>.<\/p>\n