The summer never felt any colder than it did when I sat alone in the waiting room. Valentina developed lung cancer and did not get proper treatment until she finally couldn’t handle their demands; she shrugged off her symptoms lightly and merely sat down in the restroom to endure the pain when it rammed into her. She thought some Ibuprofen was enough. The tumors grew into an untreatable stage after the restaurant incident; they went airborne in the lungs when it was considered that she required treatment and each scattered colony grew independently throughout her lungs. I sat there waiting for the doctors to let me in and visit her but she could speak no more at that point.

A cruel way to end our saga together. No last words traded in her final moments. I cried one night, fearing a day like that would come. I woke up from fear and the trauma I had of losing Valentina in an apocalyptic dream made me worry about the remaining time she had. I thought about her dying in old age, dying from a car crash, dying because she just was. She awoke from my frantic shrills and comforted me until she started uncovering the cause of my wriggling and sweat. And she laughed when I sobbed over her like a baby. "You're crying over me?," she grinned,"Why's that?" And I replied to her For obvious reasons w-why. "Hon, Ada, hon, everyone comes and goes. God likes to pluck people in the most sudden and sometimes violent of ways. I guess it's a cruel truth but what can you do?" She stared at me with her deathly blue unshaken eyes and repeated what can you do? It was all a trial, she explained. "When I die, what can I do about it? Nothin'. The easy solution to overcoming that kind of fear is doing all that you can do. Imagine: I die and then what's your best move? It's okay to grieve but when you do it all your life tsk tsk. It'd be pitiful," she paused for some consideration, "nah~ (phew) one night of tears; no more no less." She was nonchalant about the whole dying thing while I was petrified at the thought of eternal darkness, lost of conscious, or the state of nothingness overall.

As I sat there, all alone, in the room, I held an imaginary conversation with Valentina one last time. I would say I'm going to miss you a lot and she'd reply Imma watch you pointing skywards and mouthing above. She may not even say that. It'd be much cooler and clever and wordy. She'd be all and well with her strong black hair flowing the way it did and all that was happening was that she was taking a flight of stairs away from me, huffing and puffing her joints along the way up. She'd laugh about the whole thing and raise her hands up saying something like, "Oh no, I'm dying!" In the cool way she'd say things. She'd curl that smile of hers and look down upon me with her Cheshire Cat omnipotence. As I imagined her beside me, I didn't realize that her Cheshire Cat smile had already warped out of existence until the doctors called for my name and asked if I wanted to see the diseased. I stopped for a bit to think. To prepare me mentally. Given some time to think of what Valentina would have really wanted me to do. I thought about it. And thought. And accepted grimly. And nodded. I braced for what sight was about to appear before me.

All the doctors and nurses cleared out like a tag team of startled raccoons and all there was left was me. And a body. She had lost her flowery grace already; her petals were plucked from the bald surface of her head and she looked different in her plain blue attire which was too big for her delicate and slim physique. It was unlike her. I examined the body a couple of times, scanning it from top to bottom, to confirm the validity of the reality. It was Valentina that laid dead on the hospital bed. I accepted that it was her because of the expression her closed eyes painted; the cool calmness that remained even after death. There was no happiness. No sadness. Just absolute tranquility. I fell beside her and prayed, reluctantly, to the God who took her away from me and pleaded bitterly, with my teeth grinding against each other, Please care for her. No tears gushed out. I stopped making them when Valentina told me to stop. Her final gift to me was her calm demeanor.

I reasoned that she was better off this way. Free from her constant and fruitless labor. Free from the cancer. Free from inconsideration. Free to be happy. But the message did not quite register into the form of my lips; they bent a rainbows sorrow during the rain. I stared once more at her and decided that the next best move was to muster what wits I had left and built my resolution. I vowed to make my life like hers: make my life a posted lighthouse that shined for the drifting ships during the darkest hours. I stood up and opened the blinds that blocked off the sunlight's radiance. I was halfway through the door when my mind wanted to look back at the remains of Valentina once more. But my best move, in my head, was to continue out and tell one of the doctors that my business was finished. As I was in the process of exiting the hospital, I saw a child bawling her eyes out all alone. I felt a sort of sadness towards her despair but as I lingered around a bit longer I realized that she was crying because she did not know what was happening to her mother. She thought the balloon in her mother's stomach popped and that she was dying from the gastric explosion. At least, that was what I could deduce at the time when I saw her father come out to grab his child's arm to pull her into the delight that slapped a smile and glimmering eyes on his face. I leaned on the walls to listen more and I heard the words it's a boy! and many cheers blew up and the panting and crying from the joyous mother followed the doctor’s exclamation..

I guess I smiled at the time too since I thought a new Adelaide was conceived as well in that silent moment. She did not cover or yield obsequiously at the might of the blizzard. She took the strong gusts head on until the chaos died down and all that was left was a wonderful Winter Wonderland. The Adelaide that was born that day emerged from the depths of the snow and breathed in the cold for the first time. She did not wince at the dryness that numbed her nose. She enjoyed the freshness of the air and laughed at the feeling of being alive. The first words I finally muttered in awe when I exited the hospital was "What a beautiful day we have today." I imagined what Valentina would have done if she saw my fortitude and quick-recovery that day; she would have made a little smirk as she looked down at me during her golden ascension up to heaven. Then she would look no more out of respect and continue on through her journey to meet the maker himself, preparing to brag her heart out about the wonder she had just let loose in His capricious mesocosm:

Listen here buddy, do you hear that? It's the sound of victory. I made that victory! Now, dammit if I don't receive my award I swear~

That's at least what I imagined her saying. It's what I can hear her saying. It's what I believe her saying.