Chapter 116 It won't...
I had figured the side effects would hit later. In all my research, all the frantic scrolling through medical forums and clinical trials, the consensus was usually a delay. A grace period of a day, maybe two, before the poison really started to make itself at home.
I’d built a mental timeline, a sequence of events I could edit and manage. But the biology of the man I love doesn't care about my calendar.
The side effects didn't wait for the car ride home. They didn't wait for some time to pass. I could see the nausea crawling over him like smoke. The tightness around his eyes, the way his fingers twitched as if fighting against something invisible, it all screamed the truth before he could speak it.
He had been chatting a little at first, his voice soft, attempting normalcy like a shield, and then the minutes passed. And slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, he shrank into himself.
Ryan began to retreat, his sentences shortening into syllables, and then into a silence so heavy it felt like a third person in the room. By the second hour, I could see the shift in his skin, that translucent, sickly gray that makes him look like he’s slowly being erased. This was the worst I’d ever seen the nausea hit him. It wasn't just discomfort... it was a total, violent occupation of his senses.
Every tiny detail...a crease in his brow, the faint tremor in his lips, the way his eyes darted away from mine, filled me with this icy dread. Because he was still sitting. Still supposed to be “fine.” Still supposed to be capable of bearing it. But the truth, ugly and undeniable, was that he wasn’t fine. Not by a long shot.
I reached for his hand. It was heavy in mine, unresisting, like he was silently surrendering to the nausea. His warmth was muted, a ghost of itself. I squeezed gently, needing him to know I was there, needing it as much for myself as for him.
He didn't squeeze back.
He didn't have the energy to spare for the mechanics of affection.
"How bad is it?" I whispered, my voice sounding fragile even to me. "Talk to me."
He didn't look at me. He just gave a small, slow shake of his head, his face turned toward the beige wall as if he were trying to find a way through the plaster.
His body said more than words ever could. That was one of those moments where whatever was happening inside him rendered him incoherent. Where strength, performance, bravery...they all vanished under the weight of his own body betraying him. He didn’t have to say a thing. I saw it in the slump of his shoulders, the hollow look in his eyes, the way his hands curled in mine.
I wanted to say something to make it better. To take it away. But there was nothing to say. There was only this. Only watching him suffer and knowing, with every fiber of me, that I could not fix it. That the drugs, the care, the love....they didn’t stop the tremors from seizing his muscles, didn’t stop him from being small and human and vulnerable in a way that cut me open.
My hand on his was all I could give. My presence...a reminder that he was not alone. And even then, it felt like I was failing.
Because he deserved so much more than this. He deserved the strength he showed me in fleeting moments. He deserved the life we never risked talking about. He deserved laughter and warmth that didn’t come with the bitter taste of medicine and fear.
And for that moment, all I could do was sit there and watch. Breathe through the quiet horror of that first day, and hope that when it ended, he still knew he was more than the pain. That he was still him. And even as my heart broke, I stayed. Because staying was all I could do.
I watched him shift again in the chair, small movements that were almost nonexistent, but I caught them. They all screamed what he couldn’t put into words. After the infusion, they asked us to wait, fifteen minutes of observation to ensure his body didn't decide to reject the treatment in some violent, acute way.
Those fifteen minutes felt like a decade
Then he turned toward me, and I felt it before I even saw it. The weight in his gaze. All the things he was feeling, all the quiet dread and frustration, compressed into a single look It was the look of a man who had been shoved out into the middle of an ocean and told to keep swimming.
"I feel awful," he whispered, the words sounding like they had to be dragged through gravel to reach the surface.
I squeezed his hand, my own heart hammering against my ribs. "I know," my voice was barely a breath. "I can tell. I’ve got you."
He struggled to swallow, his throat working visibly as he shifted again, his knees knocking together under the weight of the hospital blanket. “It... it won’t get better, will it?” His voice was almost a rasp, fragile and brittle. The question wasn't a request for a statistic or a comforting lie. It was a raw, bleeding plea for a reality that didn't involve this level of suffering.
"Of course it will," I said, leaning in closer, trying to force enough conviction into my tone to bridge the gap between us. "The first day is always the peak. The meds will settle. We just have to get through the next few hours."
He didn't argue. He didn't have the energy for a debate. He just gave a small, slow shake of his head, a movement so slight I almost missed it. "It won't," he whispered.
He looked away then, back toward the beige wall, his profile sharp and fragile. In that moment, I realized he wasn't talking about whatever he was feeling. He was talking about the trajectory...the slow, inevitable erosion of the man he used to be. And all I could do was watch the clock and pray for a miracle I desperately wanted to believe in.