I untangled my IV from the machine and hobbled backward into my crunchy hospital bed, directing my gaze at the Empire State Building to avoid making eye contact with the man on the couch.

I hadn’t seen Kevin in more than eight years, when we dated for a couple of months, but he had been seeing me ever since, on Instagram and in bookstores and, more recently, on GoFundMe, where he learned I had advanced, metastatic cancer and a slew of chemo-related complications that kept landing me in the hospital.

Our last conversation was when I called him on the street to say I couldn’t see him anymore. I had spotted him in a coffee shop on what seemed like a date. On the phone, I acknowledged that we had never talked about exclusivity, so he wasn’t in trouble. Whether or not it was a date — he claimed he had run into an old acquaintance — I told him that our casual arrangement wasn’t working for me. I sensed it was all he was capable of, and he didn’t disagree.

After that, we didn’t speak until this past July when he walked unannounced into my hospital room like a hallucination.

Because I was hooked up to a device that lets severely ill patients press a button for intravenous pain medication, I had a thin plastic tube under my nose that monitored my breathing. If my breath got too slow, an alarm went off and a nurse rushed in to make sure I was OK. Because of the nature of my infections, the nurses also monitored my bathroom activity.

So in my drool-stained hospital gown, I rang the nurse to talk about my bowel movements in the presence of a man I once straddled at a music festival. As this man made pleasantries with my father, I flipped through the stack of Pedro Pascal coloring books he’d brought, along with flowers, pastries and a Kirby stuffed toy.

Kevin had clearly paid close attention to my Instagram stories, which feature Kirby and Pascal. I had unfollowed him shortly after “DateGate,” so I knew nothing about his life, except that he appeared to still be tall.

A week earlier, he had initiated contact by texting me when I was at the hospital in the throes of sepsis. “I’m sorry to see you are in the hospital again,” he wrote. “Let me know how I can help you (late with that offer but very serious about it).”

We started texting, and 24 hours after my discharge I had to rush to another hospital for surgery. He found me in my room — the number of which I hadn’t given him — with an armful of gifts.

I wanted to hide. With my bald head and saliva-caked cheeks, I hadn’t had enough time to gauge my tolerance for being seen by someone I once wanted to find me pretty.

“Dad,” I said, “this is my friend Kevin.”

I didn’t try to explain our history to my father. The only clear memory I had of our romance was asking him, “Can you say even one nice thing about me?” And the silence that followed.

Kevin came to the hospital every day after that, sometimes both before and after work, bearing treats and blue Gatorade, which I drank diluted with a full cup of hospital chip ice. He learned to prepare this cocktail without me asking, monitoring the blue liquid in my cup and jumping into action when it became less than half full. We talked about his work, my new book, my pain levels, his dating life, my pain levels, my nausea, my cancer, my pain levels, my pain levels.

When the nurse said that I would be discharged — a terrifying prospect given I always had to rush back days later — he took off work to help get me home. In the Uber, it hurt to sit upright, so I lay my head on his lap, a position that became common in subsequent trips. His thigh was hard, almost tense. He put his arm around me, and we softened.

Back at my apartment, he told me not to go back to the hospital alone, that I should call him first, even in the middle of the night. Being single in a society that’s pathologically oriented toward romantic love, and with my family out of state, I didn’t feel like I had one person I could call at 4:17 a.m. to take me to the emergency room if things got dicey, one person whose job it was to take care of me, even though I had many wonderful friends who support and love me.

Did I have a friend who would pass my apartment on his midnight runs to make sure my lights were off and that I was not awake in excruciating pain? No, but Kevin did that for me. Did I have a friend who picked up prescriptions, laundry, bottomless Twizzlers and embarrassing butt-related ointments without being asked? No, but Kevin did that too.

A few friends had been growing distant. I worried that the magnitude of my need was unbearable for some. I couldn’t fathom why this commitment-averse former flame was treating me with the care and devotion of a husband of 40 years.

I gave him my keys, and he became my primary caregiver. During longer hospital stays, he would move into my apartment to babysit my traumatized Chihuahua, earning her love with (too much) chicken. I would return to a spotless apartment to find Tupperware containers of gummy candy on the coffee table and all my cosmetic products tidily reorganized. While watching the U.S. Open together, I mentioned offhand that I wanted to play tennis again one day. Two days later a racket and tennis balls arrived at my door.

On days after chemo, as I languished on the couch, I’d sometimes catch him on his hands and knees scrubbing my floor, or deep cleaning the ancient air-conditioner that I worried was carcinogenic. Sometimes he kissed my head.

“I think I’m easy to like but hard to love,” I said to him one day. I felt particularly forthcoming in the hour or so after taking my pain medication, which we referred to as “truth serum time.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “But I think actually the opposite is true.”

Naturally, I took it the wrong way — “He thinks I’m unlikable!” — and pouted. Then I then toyed with the other way: “He thinks I’m lovable?” It took almost a decade, but Kevin had learned how to say a nice thing about me.

My great fear became that he would disappear. People had pulled maneuvers like this before, engineering connection against my will then slinking away once I needed them. Would he really do this to a cancer patient? I didn’t know. There were things he did to a cancer patient that I probably wouldn’t, like say, “You’re pretty for a dying person.”

Another nice thing about me, I guess. He was at my bedside when I was once again curled up in the ER. I didn’t care that he said I was dying — at this point, I longed for death. But I already felt so insecure about my appearance, being so sick and bald.

Months later, Kevin took me to my last chemo and filmed me ringing the bell, a rite of passage for cancer patients to celebrate the end of poisoning. On my birthday that weekend, he gave me a piñata he had packed with candy, cancer awareness stickers he knew I found cringey, and dog treats so my Chihuahua could feel included. His visits grew more infrequent, and my heart grew wobbly, like it did eight years ago.

With my condition finally stable, our relationship had to shift beyond the patient-caretaker paradigm, and I worried it had become too scary-real to him, now with fewer barriers to physical and emotional intimacy.

I recently summoned him to my apartment for a conversation like the one that ended things, except this time we both said, “I love you.” Despite acting like my husband for four months, Kevin then said he was afraid of a relationship with me.

“I don’t want to mess it up,” he said. “I would end up disappointing you.”

Weeks later, he came with me to a surgical biopsy. The receptionist asked, “What is the nature of your relationship?” I turned away, deciding to punish Kevin with the burden of answering.

After three long seconds, he said, “Best friends.” I laughed. At my bedside, he helped me undress, tenderly pulling off my socks and folding my pants. He tied the back of my hospital gown. He said I looked good.

Maria Yagoda is a writer in Brooklyn. Her latest book is “Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop.”

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