Between Two Kingdoms

Will comes back from California for Christmas. Suleika and Oscar are both excited to see him, and they decide to go to Saratoga to spend time together. They talk about how their relationship needs to change. They attend a New Year's Eve party, and their friends comment on how happy they look together. At the party, she finds out that Will has written to her friends and asked for their help so that she would have people to call when he was busy at work. They plan to attend couple’s therapy and decide they want to move into a small house in upstate New York.

Will and Suleika search for a therapist, but they can’t find a good fit. Their attempts leave them feeling more lost than before. They have the same fights every night in which Suleika asks Will: “Why are you so distant,” and he responds, “I need a break” (184). They no longer have sex, and they spend more time looking at their phones. Suleika notes they’re drifting apart but hopes that since Will’s been there for three years he’ll continue to be there. Most of their family members don’t know they’re having problems.

The doctors tell Melissa that her cancer is terminal and there is nothing they can do. Suleika tries to cheer her up. They go out for a night of fun: to a motorcycle and tattoo festival, and afterward, they dance on the tables at a burlesque show. They end the night on Coney Island and then get stopped by the police when they jump the turnstiles at the Metro. The cops let them off when Melissa pulls her wig off, and Suleika reflects that when you’re dying, “YOLO—you only live once—takes on a new meaning” (187). Suleika goes in for her second to last chemotherapy treatment. Melissa is in the hospital, too, and only allows Suleika, Max, and a few other close friends to visit her. As death grows more imminent, Melissa declares that she still has so much to do. Suleika and Melissa plan to return to India together even though they both know it will never happen: “There was no way Melissa could board a flight to anywhere” (188).

Melissa moves to a hospital in Massachusetts so she can be closer to her family’s home in New Hampshire. Suleika doesn’t get to see her before she leaves and never sees her again. Suleika says, “Death never comes at a good time, but getting a death sentence when you’re young is a breach of contract with the natural order of things” (189).

Suleika finishes her last chemotherapy appointment, and friends and family congratulate her on the accomplishment, but the next month she is hospitalized four times for an intestinal infection. The night before the first hospitalization, Melissa dies. Her friend Erika marries the chef, but instead of being in the wedding, Suleika is in the hospital. After the third hospitalization, Will talks about a more drastic change in their relationship. He wants to move out and get his own place.

Even though Suleika admits that she’s been expecting to hear this for a long time, she finds herself reeling from the news (192). She thought their love would last. She gives him an ultimatum. Either he stays and they work it out, or he moves out, and they split up. “I can’t keep doing this,” she tells Will (192). Will finds an apartment and plans to move. Suleika goes into the hospital for the fourth time, and he moves out the day she gets out of the hospital.

She goes home to an empty apartment and smokes a cigarette, the “hospital bracelet still wrapped around [her] wrist” (193). She explains that to rid her body of cancer, it had to be burned and cut out. Suleika has her life, but survival has come at a cost: “Melissa is gone. Will is gone. My cancer is gone” (193-94). All she could do was close the blinds and get into bed that day.

Will and Suleika continue to see each other, and she hopes they can still be together. Jaouad writes, “But our togetherness, what was left of it, felt hollow” (195). She still isn’t sure why they separated. She realizes that if she wants to survive, she needs to fight for herself and her new place in the world, not for their failing relationship.