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)
“I can’t do tomorrow,” I whisper once in our session, sudden and raw.
“Do now,” Head Case says. “That’s the only piece of time humans can actually touch.”
“Now hurts.”
He nods. “Yes. And you’re still here inside it.”
I turn my head and look at Tommy. “You came,” I remind myself, because I need to keep saying it until it fits.
“I told you I would be wherever you needed me,” he says simply. “Even when you didn’t want me to.”
The apology leaps to the back of my tongue. He sees it coming and shakes his head once. “Don’t,” he warns, gentle. “Not yet. You don’t atone for this shit when it’s still raw and tearing you up inside.”
Bleeding without blood — that’s what this is. I close my eyes so my body can work without my mind trying to narrate it to death.
By the third day, I know the room well enough to name it with my eyes closed. The small table with the pitcher and the clean cups. The stack of washcloths. The basket of socks because Head Case says warm feet trick your body into remembering it’s allowed to be alive.
My body remembers other things too — the pull like gravity toward the familiar quiet that wasn’t quiet at all. The ache under the ache. The thought snake that says just one line and you can sleep. I tell Doc when it slithers in. She doesn’t look disappointed; she looks like a woman who understands how crafty snakes are. “Cravings crest and fall,” she says. “You don’t have to do anything about them. They’re weather. They pass.”
We weather them. Tommy sits me up and puts a cool cloth on my neck. Head Case gives me a trick: find five square things in the room, four round, three soft, two rough, one that makes a sound I like. I point them out like a child showing off a classroom. It feels dumb until it doesn’t. Until the snake gets bored and slides back under the door.
When I can stand without the floor swinging, Doc walks me to the bathroom with a hand under my elbow. The mirror is covered with a towel. “I’ll take it down when you tell me to,” she says. “Not before.”
“Leave it,” I whisper. “I’m not ready to look yet.”
She nods. “You’ll tell me when you are.”
She waits outside the door until I rinse my mouth and splash my face. The warm cloth smells like soap that doesn’t pretend to be anything else. My hands tremble a little less when I dry them.
Back in bed, I watch the window. A thin slice of sky shows through the shade, blue lifting to a paler blue. Morning feels different here, like it’s not trying to blind me.
“Tommy?” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Were you scared?” It’s a foolish question. Of course he was. I ask it anyway because I need to hear his version of the truth.
He takes a breath like he’s lifting something heavy. “Yeah,” he shares honestly. “Scared in a way I didn’t know I could be. When I saw you—” He stops and swallows. “I was scared your eyes wouldn’t find mine. I was scared I was too late.”
“I thought I died,” I expose my truth, and my voice shakes on the last word.
He squeezes my hand. “You didn’t,” he says fiercely. “You didn’t.”
“I promised,” I whisper, eyes stinging. “Before it went dark. I promised if I lived, I’d go back. I’d choose the light.” The words feel melodramatic and exactly right.
He nods like I’ve said the most practical thing in the world. “Okay,” he says. “Then that’s the plan.”
“The plan,” I echo, bemused. “Like a grocery list.”
He grins, a brief flash of teeth, relief making him boyish for a second. “We are absolutely making a grocery list for your life,” he smiles. “Item one: keep breathing. Item two: water. Item three: more water. Item four: Doc’s orders. Item five: call Jenni when you’re ready. Item six: rehab — if that’s where you want to go. I’ll drive you. I’ll sit in the parking lot and learn to knit. I don’t care. I’m there.”
The laugh turns into a sob I can’t swallow this time. It rips out of me, ugly and real. The kind you only make when the body can’t carry the weight alone anymore. He doesn’t shush me. He doesn’t tell me to be strong. He gets his arms around me without jostling the IV and lets me cry into his shirt until it’s damp. He breathes like he’s willing his lungs into mine.
When it passes, there’s a clean feeling under the raw. My head aches less. The light through the shade looks like possibility instead of interrogation.
“I did terrible things,” I say into his chest, the words more air than sound.
“I know,” he says. “And I’m not leaving.”
“You should.”