Paramedics rushed him to the hospital as Victoria clung to his hand, silently praying for a miracle. This wasn’t just another medical emergency. This was Cole—her Cole—the man who had once been her great love, the father of her child, and now, the fragile anchor in her chaotic world. Her heart broke as the past collided with the present, memories of previous traumas crashing over her like waves—Reed’s hospitalization, Victor’s many brushes with death, the endless stream of Newman crises.

At the hospital, chaos gave way to clinical urgency. Doctors worked quickly to stabilize Cole. His blood oxygen levels were dangerously low. His chest X-rays revealed a large mass in his right lung—ominous, unexplained, and deeply concerning. A biopsy was ordered, and the waiting game began. For Victoria, the moments stretched like lifetimes.

The hospital waiting room became a prison of fear and reflection. Victoria thought of every moment she hadn’t pushed harder, every cough she had rationalized away. She was tormented by regret—until the doctor returned with preliminary results. “We found a large mass. We don’t yet know if it’s malignant, but it is causing bleeding in the airways,” he explained. Victoria’s world tilted. The word “cancer” wasn’t uttered, but it lingered like a shadow in the corners of her mind.

Inside Cole’s room, the emotional weight deepened. He woke briefly, reaching for Victoria’s hand with a weak smile. “You stayed,” he whispered. She replied through tears, “And thank God I did.” Their brief exchange laid bare years of shared history, heartbreak, and unfinished business. When Cole admitted, “I’m scared,” Victoria didn’t flinch. “So am I. But if it’s cancer, then we fight.”

By morning, the final blow came. Dr. Hadley, with grim eyes and a folder heavy with answers, delivered the devastating diagnosis: the mass was malignant. Stage 3B lung cancer, possibly approaching Stage 4. It had already spread to Cole’s lymph nodes. They would need to conduct further scans to assess if the cancer had metastasized elsewhere.

The words hit like a physical blow. Cole’s reaction was stoic, stunned. “How long?” he asked. The doctor’s response was blunt but compassionate: without treatment, less than a year; with treatment, no promises—only hope.

Victoria was gutted. Her voice faltered, but her resolve hardened. “Then we fight. We fight with everything we have.” It wasn’t just about medical battles. It was about reclaiming time, rewriting their story, refusing to let fear or cancer write the ending. In that moment, something shifted in Cole too. “You’ve always been the fighter,” he said. “I’ve just endured.” But Victoria reminded him that endurance is a form of strength too—a quiet, steady one that refuses to break.

Later that day, as Cole was wheeled off for more scans, Victoria stood outside the hospital for air. Her phone buzzed incessantly—Nick, Nikki, even Audra—but she couldn’t speak. How could she explain that her world had stopped turning?

When Cole returned, thinner and weaker, Victoria didn’t hesitate. She climbed into bed beside him and whispered a plan. “Let’s make a list,” she said. “Of everything we haven’t done. Every place we haven’t gone. Every word we haven’t said. And then we’ll do it all. In between treatments. In between hospital visits. This won’t be the whole story.”

Their conversation drifted into dreams of Italy, a lake in Switzerland, and the museum in Amsterdam she always wanted to visit. For a while, they weren’t patients. They were dreamers again.

That night, Cole asked the question Victoria feared most: “What happens if the treatments don’t work?”

Her answer was unwavering. “Then we keep living until we can’t. But we don’t stop being alive.”

He nodded slowly, overcome with emotion. “Will you stay until the end?”

“And past that,” she promised.

As they lay side by side in the quiet glow of the hospital room, fear still lingered—but so did hope. And in a world where the end felt dangerously close, Victoria and Cole chose to write a new beginning—together.