"I'm uncomfortable with making such an assessment."

He's a young doctor, not yet inured by years of assessing. His fingers toy with his pen; he isn't even aware of how much he spins it about in his hand.

"The success rate of the radiation therapy is very high, which is why we are suggesting such a path of treatment, but the location of the—" He pauses, while he searches for a delicate word. Failing to find it, he simply skips past the detail. "—there are some elevated risks with the localization of her treatment."

"Her brain," Martin says flatly. His face is heavily lined, and his eyes are dry. He has been out of tears for weeks.

The doctor nods, eyes flicking away from her father's face.

"Do you have children of your own?" Martin asks.

The doctor, though he is young, has heard this question before. The skin around his eyes tightens, and his pen stops moving. He doesn't like the question, doesn't like that it forces him into a position of insensitivity. "No," he admits, too young to lie, too naive to bluster past the inference.

But Martin doesn't say what should come next. He knows there is no point. Not for his daughter, at least. Martin simply swallows everything, pushing it back down into his gut. Nothing will help him, and the young doctor knows this too.

"I'm sorry," the younger man says. "I wish there was a better way." It is the closest he will ever come to apologizing for the medicine he knows. He lifts his shoulders, an unconscious twitch that shakes off the weight of Martin's pain, and leaves the older man standing in the hospital hallway.

The lights go out as the doctor retreats, and when there is nothing left but the dim blue glow of the emergency lighting , Martin puts his face in his hands and tries to cry once more.

"What choice do I have?" he asks, eventually. "I gave her this life. Do I have the right to take it back? Do I have the responsibility to end it when . . ."

When it is no longer a life worth living?

"Who decides that?"

She does. You do. You honor her decision because you gave her the autonomy to make those choices.

"And if I don't want to let her go? If I want to hope that they can cure her?"

That is a choice too.

"Will she hate me?"

No, but her pain will never leave you. If you let her go, then you let go of all the things she still has to give you. If you let her go now, your memories of her will be fixed. She will always be your little girl. She will never grow old. She will cease to be real.

"Just a memory, then. Is that all I will have of her?"

Is that enough?

"No. She's my daughter."

Which pain can you bear?

"Is there a third option? Some way where she doesn't have to suffer? Where I don't have to lose her?"

No. There are only two forks in the path: to continue or to change. The dualities must be maintained.

"You are a cruel God."

I love you, Daddy.

Martin raises his left hand. To wave goodbye. "I love you too, NeeNee." To make a choice.