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“Go home and live your life. You’ll make an appointment to come back in a few weeks to check up with how the prosthetic is doing, or if you have any issues with it in the meantime, give us a call. In a month, we’ll screen again, and continue to screen with longer intervals in between for the next few years. I know that sounds like a long time, but trust me, when you reach five years in remission, we consider you as healthy as someone who never had cancer in the first place.”

“You hear that?” I asked with a broad grin, turning to Raya as I spoke. “The tock is ticking. They took out the cancer, and now I just have to outlast the next five years and we can consider myself as healthy as anyone else in the world!”

“That’s the best news I could have hoped for,” Raya said as she clasped her hands together. “I knew you were going to beat this thing. I just knew it.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, and you, too, doctor,” I said.

I shook his hand, and he gave me a few more instructions before leaving me and Raya alone in the room together. She was beaming, and I had to admit, I was glad she came back into my life. I didn’t know now what I had been thinking when I broke up with her. She was the best thing to happen to me, and I almost threw it all down the drain because of the fact I was scared.

Perhaps I didn’t have life all figured out. Maybe fate brought Raya into my life to show me that there were some things I still had left to learn. Such as what true love really meant, and how to show someone you felt that way about them.

“You ready to go home?” she asked.

“I’m ready,” I said. “Can’t wait to try this out in a saddle.”

“Easy there, cowboy,” she said. “You just got your leg back. Why don’t you give it a minute trying to get around on the ground before you get back on a horse?”

“We’ll see,” I said with a wink.

She rolled her eyes, but there was no hiding her amused smile. She knew me. I was going to be on the back of a horse as soon as I could. It was like air to me. I loved to ride, and I wasn’t going to let this keep me from doing it again. I was bound and determined to live my life, and two legs or one leg, nothing was going to stop me.

Now that I had Raya by my side, I knew I could face anything life threw my way.

We were a team, and we stuck together.

No matter what.