It was mid-November, 1983 when James first got sick. It started with a dry cough and exhaustion; in all ten years that Edward had been with him, the occasional affliction was nothing out of the ordinary. James got sick like no one else he had ever known; he’d get chills and shake for nights on end, and then he’d simply go back to work. So, when mid-November, 1983 came around there was still lingering hope that James had just gone and caught another nasty cold. They had heard the rumors, but James never got too sick; he’d take Robitussin for a couple days and then would be fit as he’d ever been.

It wasn’t until Ricky died that Edward started worrying. Ricky who got sick just as often as James, Ricky who had been in the hospital for a few months and slipped away on the cold morning of December 2. He didn’t get worried until he got a call from Ricky’s partner Charlie crying on the phone about how he needed help finding a churchyard that would bury his body. He didn’t get worried until Charlie was the only person standing at the front of Ricky’s wake on December 9, and James had to leave to go cough outside when it was their turn to give their condolences.

They fought about it, of course, and James would soothe him softly and say he’d just taken medicine, it was just a cough, he could still go to work. Like clockwork, James seemed to get better and Edward could stop worrying; they would settle back into their routine. This was broken slowly.

First Edward heard James in a coughing fit late one night, and as he stumbled out of bed found him on the small balcony of their apartment. James had given him a lopsided smile and held up a cigarette.

“I really should stop smoking these things, huh?”

Edward stared back at him, and James stamped out his cigarette with the sandal he’d slipped on and went back to bed. Edward looked down at the cigarette; it was barely burned, like it’d been lit just before Edward had walked out.

Second was the rash creeping up red and awful across James’s back, that he refused to talk about.

“I’ll go to the allergist after the holidays I swear, I must’ve developed one in my old age, did you know you can develop allergies later in life?”

“James, you’re 31, I think we should see a doctor now, you’re clearly sick—”

“Just allergies.”

“James—”

It was then that James slammed his hand on the table; in ten years together, never once had he raised his voice. December 23, 1983 he did.

“Good God, Edward!” – He never called him Edward either, he was always Ed or Eddie to him – “you’re too much sometimes you know that? I will go see an allergist after the holidays. I promise you I am fine, good-fucking-night.”

And with that he stood up from the table and left.

James heaved in his room before he began to cry. Sob is a better word, shoulder shaking, wheezing sobs. James knew he was being cruel, promising things he couldn’t; it was selfish, he knew that, but by God he just wanted to enjoy one last normal Christmas, he just couldn’t let those last couple of normal days slip through his fingers.

When you love someone, you begin to inexplicably recognize their needs as your own. If James craved a little more time, so then did Edward. He opened the door slowly and quietly, but even that creaky old thing couldn’t puncture the sound of his sobs. Slowly Edward wrapped his arms around James, pressing his face into the nape of his neck. Within a few minutes the sobs calmed to an occasional whimper, and then the only sound that whole night seemed to just be soft breathing. Sometime in the early hours of Christmas Eve, 1983 Edward asked:

“The 26th?”

“The 26th.”

They did not speak again until they made coffee in the later hours of that morning.

That Christmas was as normal as they could make it. They talked, they laughed, and then they would go into long lapses of silence that felt like purgatory before one of them would break it and the cycle would start anew.

When the diagnosis, if you could even call it that, was given, they both got the same feeling. Like water was filling your ears before you drown, the inevitable is coming but your ears have just popped for now; there’s still a chance of being saved, isn’t there?

“I’m sorry,” were the first words out of James’s mouth when they stepped out of the hospital room. He wouldn’t have even had to say it because when James was sorry, he’d always get this look in his eyes, his eyebrows would turn down just a little and his eyes would go a little bit lidded. His body could say sorry before his mouth could produce the words.

Edward shook his head and just hugged him; he hugged him so tight that maybe God could forgive every gay man on Earth if it really had been a plague to take them out. Every second they hugged in the hospital lobby felt like begging.

“Please God not him, I have loved him so much it makes me feel holy. Please, we just had Christmas, please, doesn’t he deserve another one? His smile is the whole world and I met him while dancing. God, if that doesn’t sound like love to you, I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

Perhaps God doesn’t listen to begging.

Ten years they’d made it; maybe that’s good for people like them, ten years. The doctors gave James a month, telling him he’s got an especially bad case, and he’d made it through two. Edward wondered if that prayer in the lobby was what brought about that extra time, but truth be told he never wanted extra time. He just wanted the man he loved to live.

A couple weeks in they decided to move him to the hospital permanently. It was overcrowded, and loud, full of grieving people, all compiled in one place since not every hospital was willing to help a gay man. A medical professional would never admit to not viewing them as human, but if given a choice between helping or not, many would still choose to let them die as dogs.

James would sit in bed, hooked up to all those medical machines, and annotate books to pass the time. There was a notebook he kept, shiny and new that he’d gotten for Christmas, he’d begun writing down all his symptoms and how his body had been deteriorating. James, he’d always considered himself a bit of a scientist, he was writing the progression of illness from one who’s experiencing it so other people might be able to catch it sooner, so they can live longer. That notebook only ever got to be halfway full.

They pulled Edward out one morning; he knew what they were going to say, and they knew that he did.

“If he has any family, you should call them, start getting affairs in order,” and that was all that could be said before a patient needed attention.

Years went by in the doorway of room 364; he saw the man in the hospital bed writing in his notebook before he got too tired to do so anymore. But he also saw New Year’s Eve 1999, turn of the century and if the world was going to end, they were going to do it together. In 2011 the state of Illinois would let them adopt two teenagers who needed a family, and they’d get to be dads just like they’d always wanted, and two teenagers would get parents like they always needed. He saw 2015, because the world wouldn’t end when the clock struck midnight, and at ages 59 and 58 they could’ve waltzed themselves down to the courthouse and gotten themselves a legalized marriage.

But it was still 1984, and James was still sick, and arrangements still had to be made.

It took an hour of searching through the hospital’s phonebooks to find the number of James’ baby brother, who was all grown up by then. It took three rings for someone to pick up, there was a woman on the line, the wife from the wedding James wasn’t invited to. There is a long lapse of silence after Edward tells him, there’s a soft murmuring as he tells his wife he’s driving to meet them.

Three hours later a man hesitates before he opens the door to room 364; he has the same eyes as James, his are sharper though, on guard. Edward and James’s brother mirror each other perfectly, two grieving people, but one had been there, and one hadn’t.

“I’m his brother. Robert.”

Edward stuck out his hand to shake his.

“Ed. I’m his partner.”

The hesitation to shake Edward’s hand is clear, and he feels anger and resentment bubble up in his chest.

“People like this are why people, good people like James are dying,” Edwards felt his breath stop and words rise up like he’s about to say something, or throw a punch when James breaks out into a laugh.

“You’re not going to catch anything, I'm the sick one here.”

Only James, his James, could’ve laughed over something like this, he’s still chuckling when his brother shakes Edward’s hand, till he’s breaking out in a coughing fit and he’s at his side again, smoothing the hair across his forehead and pressing a kiss against it. Edward watches Robert turn away and Edward can feel his eyes roll. James squeezes his hand. His eyes pleaded with him, “give him time,” they say, Edward knew his eyes asked, “but why couldn’t you have more?”

“I forgive him, you know?”

Edward’s breath stops a little in his throat.

“I think he’s having more trouble forgiving himself.”

The afternoon drones on as Edward and Robert are saddled with paperwork upon paperwork about what happens in the after. When you fall in love with someone it becomes difficult to remember what it was like before them, but you know that the before still happened and is real. You relish the present, every touch, laugh, and kiss is vivid, colorful, and real. But as you get caught up in the present and as the past slips away, you fail to consider the afterward.

Edward feigns strength, but everyone still saw tears smudge the ink of his signature on paper after paper. The doctors ask about funeral arrangements; they knew it was coming. Robert steps in before Edward can.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Edward doesn’t ask why until they leave the doctor’s office and they’re back in the hallway of the hospital. Robert’s shoulders sag and Edward sees him stare off down the hallway towards James’s room.

“Because I would hope someone would do the same for me if my wife was dying.”

And he does take care of it. Edward sees Robert standing outside the hospital room making phone calls while he tends to James. This is what coexisting is; Robert doesn’t understand them, but he loves his brother enough to plan his funeral, so his partner doesn’t have to.

It’s a Sunday when James asks if they can get married.

“Would you marry me?”

Edward is quiet for a long moment.

“We can’t, you know that.”

“But if you could, would you?”

He knows the answer, they’ve discussed it a thousand times, but Edward responds with the same heart and the same wistfulness as the first time.

“Yes, James, I would marry you.”

He sits up in his bed all of a sudden and gets this gleam in his eye James only gets when he has an idea.

“We should get married.”

“We can’t.”

“No, no, listen to me, no courthouse, no government, fuck the government, if they’re going to let me die, we might as well stick it to them and get ourselves married? Right here, my family’s all here right now, we’ll get rings, we’ll-”

Edward’s heart shatters when James breaks out coughing, he can’t get too excited anymore without his body fighting back. When he finally calms, he takes both his lover’s hands in his.

"Please, no papers, just the ceremony, it’s been ten years, it's about time we got around to it. What do you say, marry me, for a dying man’s last wish?”

Edward couldn’t help it when he started crying, just nodding against him, and crying. He’d promised to make calls, to get their friends there, he’d make them a ceremony right there in that hospital room. And so, he did.

That evening he went down to the closest pawn shop and tried on wedding bands with teary eyes. No point in buying anything fancy when there are hospital bills to pay, a funeral to plan and no one to wear the ring for too long. Ring after ring slipped onto his shaking hands; it’s a miracle he found two silver bands that slipped onto his finger, he and James had similar enough hands, it’d fit well enough. He bought a plain white sheet cake from the local grocery store and flowers from a florist who they'd known for years. She closed up shop early and brought the flowers for free.

On February 21, 1984, Edward and James were married, surrounded by a tight knit community that this same crippling disease would dwindle over the next ten years. James sat up in his hospital bed, giddy and eager, and Edward stood holding his hand, softly running his thumb over the knuckles, lingering on the ring whenever given opportunity. There was no real officiant and no paperwork. He told James he loved him, and that ten years wasn’t enough, James laughed and then coughed, smiling all the while, and told him: “well then here’s to many more.”

He was the only person Edward would ever know who could joke like that.

James told him he loved him, and Edward nodded, he told him he loved him and that he’ll find him in the next life, or in whatever afterward there was, he’d be waiting. Edward nodded and didn’t speak so he wouldn’t break. He didn’t want to find him in the next life, he just wanted to have him in this one.

There was not a single dry eye by the end. James was trying to cheer people up, cracking jokes only he could make, but Edward wasn’t sure he needed to be; he was happy, really happy. They would never marry on paper or in the eyes of a stained-glass depiction of Christ or Mary, but with pawn shop rings and polaroid photos taken throughout the night, they were married in the way that mattered.

James died on the 29th of February, 1984. On a leap year, he held out till then, hoping this way Edward would only experience the anniversary of his death every four years, but their wedding anniversary every single one. Edward crawled into bed with him and held him like he could breathe life back into him. James went peacefully, but it still felt like a cruel joke; people don’t attend their own funerals, and here was James making home in his own grave.

“I’ll be okay,” Edward told him, and maybe it was cruel to make promises he wasn’t sure he could keep. “We’ll just have to find each other when or wherever’s next, right?”

James’s breath shuddered and he nodded a little, it killed Edward a little when he realized he’d been too tired to respond. Edward holds him like that, James’s head buried in his shoulder, it’s silent except the sound of hospital machines and his breathing, until there’s no more breathing. Edward stares out the window and the whole world looks still.

Edward doesn't plan the funeral, just as he promised, Robert does. It’s held in the same funeral home everyone in the communities' funerals have been, whether it’s because they’re the only ones who will take their bodies or if it’s because of amazing service no one’s really sure.

Hundreds of men file through the door, this is not the life Robert imagined his brother would have. But James was loved, he really was. They shake hands with people Edward and James had known for years, and some they’d never even met. People like them don’t have to be friends to feel the loss, there’s so few of them anyway, someone’s loss is everyone’s to a degree.

Edward goes to shake Robert’s hand as they linger outside his car; he’s going home to his wife and baby, but he’s pulled into a hug and whispered the promise of a family. Robert cried against Edward’s shoulder; Edward saw him then as the little boy James must’ve seen him as. Older brothers never stop seeing their younger brothers as anything but little boys, and little brothers never stop seeing their hero.

“You loved what you did understand about him and what you didn’t. Forgive yourself, James did.”

Those are the last words Edward says to Robert till he shows up on his doorstep a month later, wife and baby in tow.

Years go by and the world doesn’t end in 1999. Edward laughs on the couch as his nephew gags as Robert kisses his wife at the turn of the century. 2011 comes around and Edward decides those two teenagers he’s been fostering have been his children all along; it’s time to make it official, just as Illinois makes it so if James was still around, they both could have.

He never did fall in love again, but on June 26, 2015, instead of going down to the courthouse to marry at age 58, he pulled out a small shoe box of polaroids to show his kids from his wedding day.