efficacy

When the doctor told us she had six months to live, the Devil wouldn't let me take her place. I asked him why and he just smiled. He's always smiling. He said he'd let me give everything up, though. My job, my career, my friends. Everything I ever worked for. And I did, of course. I signed it all away in a heartbeat. Anything so she'd live.

I went to bed happy that night. I told her everything would be okay, and she told me not to give her any platitudes. In the morning she'd forget it ever happened.

We both woke to a new world that day. It was a world where she would continue living a long life and maybe even find happiness, if anyone ever does that. It was a world where I was a destitute failure of a man. It was a world where she'd have nothing to do with me.

I tried to explain how much I'd sacrificed for her, and I think she even believed it, but what did it matter? In this world I repulsed her. In this world I'd given everything up for her and part of that 'everything' was anything she ever saw in me.

At least she was kind. She even helped me pack up my things and move out. She gave me some money out of pity.

It turns out when you give everything up, sometimes you don't get it back.