Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
“Later,” I echo, and the word is a cliff and a meadow. I don’t know which it will be. I might get to choose.
Doc’s gaze sharpens gently as if she’s reading me like a book. “Do I have your consent to treat you here for the next few days, Jami?”
Consent. No one has asked me for that word in too long. It makes my throat go tight. “Yes,” I say, and the sound surprises me because it’s stronger than a croak this time.
“Good.” She squeezes my shoulder. “We’ll keep you comfortable. We’ll keep you safe. Tommy’s here. Crunch and Jenni are close by if you want them. Nobody comes in this room unless you say.”
A dam breaks somewhere behind my chest. I swallow it back down because if I let it out my body will shake apart. “Okay,” I manage to get out.
Doc gives Tommy a look I can’t interpret and a list in a whisper I can’t hear. He nods. She leaves as quiet as she came.
The room shrinks to me and him.
He doesn’t fill the silence with apologies or speeches. He sits there, breathing with me. That’s how he’s always loved me — not loud, not performative. Steady. Stubborn. Like a man who found the house he wants and keeps shoring the foundation no matter how many rains come threatening to wash it away.
I close my eyes and sleep tugs me under again. It’s not a kind sleep. It’s thin and twitching and loud with pictures. But when I surface, he’s still there, and that puts a brick back in a wall I thought was gone.
Hours pass. They measure them with fluids, with sips of water, with cool cloths pressed to my forehead when sweat beads like rain. The nausea comes in waves that make the corners of the room curl up. Doc is there with a small tablet to take and the promise it won’t hurt my brain the way the other stuff did. It eases the worst of it. My stomach unclenches enough to let a cracker in. Head Case does the counting with me. In four, hold four, out four. He says my name like it’s not a question.
When the shakes come, Tommy slides blankets around me and the weight helps. He doesn’t try to fix it. He anchors it. “You’re here,” he says, voice low, like he’s telling my nervous system a bedtime story. “You’re not alone. I’m right here.”
I believe him even when my bones try not to.
We don’t talk about the motel. Not yet. We don’t talk about the baggies, the hallway, the door code, the way my hands learned old habits like they were lullabies. We talk about small things he pours into the space like warm water. The way the sky looked when he drove me here — pink, then gray, then that pale yellow that means morning. The way Red stood on the porch like a guard dog until Doc said I was stable. How Crunch carried in armfuls of blankets like a man who believes linens can hold a person together if there are enough of them.
“Jenni?” I rasp.
“She knows you’re safe,” he confronts my worry head on. “She’s in the next room of this duplex. Asked if she could sit in the hall just to be close. Doc said not yet for the hallway but she’s close enough I can yell for her.” He half-smiles. “Said she’d fight the doctor if it wouldn’t get her banned from the building.”
A laugh catches in my throat and turns to a cough. He eases me up so I can sip. “Later,” I whisper. “I want to see her, but later.”
“Later,” he echoes. He doesn’t push for now. He never has when I’m not ready.
The shakes ease. The fever that isn’t a fever rides in and out, leaving my skin hot, then cold, then confused. Sleep peels me open and wraps me wrong and then lets me go again. Time is slippery. The room holds steady.
At some point, Tommy’s head nods. His chin hits his chest and jerks back up. He starts to apologize like he’s failed a watch, and I squeeze his fingers, a little pressure. “Lie down,” I say, surprised by the sound of it: permission, not apology.
He hesitates. “I’m not sure. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“Please.” The word carries more weight than it should. “On top of the blankets. Just be here.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. He does as he’s told, long body stretched on the fluffy duvet that has enveloped me. He laces our hands across the gap like a bridge he intends to keep.
“Okay,” he says softly to the air. “Sleep, Tiny.”
Night again. The room dims to the kind of dark that isn’t frightening, just real. Doc comes and goes in soft shoes. Head Case sits on the floor and tells me how to name the things I can feel when I think I can’t feel anything name what brings me comfort. I begin simply with the weight of the blanket, the cool of the water, the fan’s breeze on my palm, and then I allow myself to go deeper, my comfort is the sound of Tommy’s breathing like a steady engine.