How a Dying Woman Rewrote Her Epilogue novel Chapter 729

Jarrod’s long fingers tensed around his glass. He had a feeling he knew exactly what Elodie was about to say.

She turned her head, her gaze steady and calm. “If the surgery goes perfectly, if the prognosis is good and they manage to remove all the tumor and cancer cells, and if I can walk away whole—that would be the best-case scenario. But the truth is, no one can make that promise.”

Given how far her illness had progressed, and the earlier miscarriage that forced her into surgery, it was clear she’d been through more than anyone should have to bear.

“Jarrod, you really don’t have to—”

“I reached out to some specialists in Europe,” he interrupted, his voice low. “They’re working together to come up with the best possible treatment plan.” He turned away, grabbed an orange from the fruit bowl, and started peeling it with careful, deliberate motions. He didn’t look at her, focusing instead on removing every strand of pith from each segment. If you looked closely, though, his hands were trembling ever so slightly.

He’d cut her off before she could finish.

Elodie stared at him, silent. She didn’t want to give him false hope—she wasn’t even sure what to hope for herself. No matter how she looked at it, the road ahead was bleak.

In the best-case scenario, the surgery would be a success. She’d need regular checkups, but her daily life and everything else would go back to normal. But there was also the chance the operation would fail, that complications would cut her life short—to just two, maybe five years.

Or they’d have to remove her uterus entirely. She’d never have children of her own.

Apart from the best outcome, everything else was a burden Jarrod shouldn’t have to carry.

She was just being realistic, she told herself. Jarrod wasn’t ready to face these possibilities, not really. But with something as serious as this, dangling too much hope was dangerous—for him and for her.