Before I Die

Tessa wakes up in the hospital, as her father and Cal talk quietly beside her bed. Hearing that she has been hospitalized due to an infection, Tessa panics that she not ready to die: “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Not sudden, like being hit by a car […] I’m supposed to get weaker and weaker until I don’t care any more” (254). 

Still in the hospital, Tessa wakes up to the sight of flowers everywhere in her room. Her father is by her bedside, and she sends him to buy her more presents. He is happy to have this tangible small task to perform.

Tessa’s latest doctor, James Wilson, is humane and straightforward with her. After she presses him, he tells her that she does not have very much longer to live. Her that disease is now in her “peripheral blood” (259), which means that she will be lucky if she lives for eight more weeks—when Zoey’s baby is due.

Adam visits. Tessa tells him to be honest with her rather than polite and standoffish. He responds by getting in bed with her. She makes him promise to have sex with her one last time before she dies.