"Do you think you could go get me an ice cream, love?"

My daughter Jill, pushing my wheelchair, leaned over and smiled. "Sure thing, dad. Chocolate as always?"

"Sure. Or if they have fudge ripple, I'll have that. Feeling adventurous". I laughed, and regretted it as my usual choked cackle led to a minor coughing fit. I swallowed the blood just in time to avoid spitting it out, alarming her. She's seen it before, of course. She was there when the doctor told me: small cell lung cancer. Incredibly aggressive; by the time I started paying attention to my own body and realizing how I felt, it was already essentially untreatable. Stupid old man.

"I'll be back in a few minutes dad. I love you." Her voice trembling ever so slightly, as it did so often lately. She walked away. I knew it would be more than a few minutes; I'd seen the lineup at the kiosk as we went past earlier. A gorgeous day like this, everyone wants an ice cream cone.

Grunting with pain, I wheeled myself over to the edge of the seawall. Far below, the ocean crashed against the broken concrete blocks dumped in to prevent erosion. Hungry seagulls wheeled overhead, one flying past a metre from my nose as I peered over the edge. Lurching forward, I threw my arms over the railing. Thank God it wasn't higher... But I've been trying to keep my strength up, just for this. I'll only get one chance, after all. I heaved myself up pulling my torso forward farther out of my chair.

I never understood my "power". It didn't make any scientific sense. Not like the heroes in comic books, where they had a mutant gene or the yellow sunlight gave them super strength. It seemed like an arbitrary gift granted by... god? The universe? There were no answers. No one to ask about it. As a young man, after that fight, I thought that I could maybe use this ability to do some good. "Fight evil". But it turned out I was just really bad at fighting. I baited a few muggers walking through the park... The second one stabbed me in the stomach. I just barely managed to drag myself up a small tree and dive head first at the sidewalk. The next guy could have had a gun, and there's no climbing a tree with half your head missing. Stupid young man.

So instead, I became a firefighter. A lot of the guys on my squad were, despite their bravado, afraid of getting burned. Afraid of living out the rest of their life going through skin graft after skin graft, looking like something out of a horror movie. But not me. I knew that if worse came to worse, I could always take a plunge out of a window, and walk away. "Lucky me, I guess my helmet did its job!". And I did do good. We saved people's homes. We saved lives. And I never did have to jump out that window.

I guess the smoke got to me though. Maybe it was that big tire fire. Maybe when the chemical plant went up 10 years ago. Maybe it was just the cumulative damage of a few decades of asbestos and burning couch cushions. The cancer has been brutal. It moved fast and the treatment barely touched it. Believe it or not, I'd never actually tried to cure an illness using my power before. I didn't know what the rules were, after all. What if I didn't have an injury, and I jumped? Would it just kill me? I wasn't about to try that for a cold or flu.

But now? I'd try anything. I left a note in case it didn't work... Made sure the disease was advanced enough that, who could blame me? They knew I was in pain. But if it did work? I'd be a new man. "A remarkable recovery!" I'd get to see Jill graduate from dental school. Maybe see grandkids someday. Even marry again. Live a long, and oddly healthy, life.

I tipped myself over the railing.

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