Chapter 120 Murphy's Law
Murphy’s Law is usually phrased with a deceptive simplicity..."Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."
Most people run with the shallow interpretation. They take it to mean that the universe is inherently malicious, that your phone dies the one time you actually need it. That the traffic light stays red when you’re already late. That the one day you forget an umbrella is the day it rains without mercy.
Like the world is keeping score. Like it’s watching, waiting for the exact moment inconvenience tips into something heavier, and then choosing that moment to act.
But that’s not what it’s actually saying. The law is a statement on probability and vulnerability. It’s saying that if there is a flaw in the system, reality will eventually find it and exploit it. And it won't be a clean strike. It’ll happen at the worst possible time, in the most inconvenient way, when you are the least equipped to handle the fallout.
Anything that can go wrong.... will.
And it doesn't happen all at once. It happens slowly, in pieces, specifically so you have the time to notice the erosion.
It takes me almost twenty minutes to get Ryan to take his meds today. Over the last couple of days, he’s been pushing back more. Not enough for anyone else to call it defiance. It’s a small rebellion, a way of reclaiming a narrative that has been hijacked. He’s started listing the ways the drugs affect him.
How they make the nausea worse. How they leave that bitter taste that doesn’t go away. How they make him feel heavier, slower and further removed from himself. And given the state he’s already in, worse isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a steep, unforgiving drop on an already collapsing scale.
I listen...I do.
In response, I retrieve the heavy-duty anti-emetics we were prescribed and add them to the pile on his palm. An act that earns me a cold look. But he doesn’t argue again, not out loud. After a while, after the silence stretches just long enough to feel like something’s being negotiated internally, he takes them. He swallows them with a mix of resignation and a simmering, buried anger in his eyes.
Then I watch his throat move. I wait. I count the seconds without meaning to. I finally exhale, thinking the battle is won for the next few hours.
But Murphy is watching.
There’s no warning, just a shift. A tightening. And then he’s turning away, too fast, barely making it to the bathroom.
Less than five minutes later, I’m crouched next to him on the bathroom floor. His body folds in on itself with it. There’s nothing controlled about it. Nothing dignified. Just his body rejecting everything, violently and without negotiation. My hand hovers at his back before I place it there, steady and useless.
I can see them...the pills. Colourful, unchanged and unabsorbed. Sitting there like proof that even this small, necessary thing couldn’t stay.
Ryan flushes before I can look any longer. Like he doesn’t want either of us to see it. Or maybe just doesn’t want it to exist. He sits back weakly, his head tipping against the wall behind him, eyes closed and his face the color of wet ash. I stand up, my mind already pivoting to the next logistical hurdle. "I’m calling Dr.Parsons," I say. It’s the only logical move. If the medicine isn't in his system, the wall we’ve built against the illness has a hole in it.
Ryan doesn’t see it that way.
“Don't,” he manages, voice rough and strained. “Michael—”
I’m already dialing, I can’t afford his pride right now. I call the clinic, explain the situation to the oncology nurse, and wait while she consults the doctor. The answer is exactly what I feared.... have him try again.
Retake the dose.
When I relay this, Ryan looks at me with a level of conviction and frustration I haven't seen from him yet. It isn't the exhaustion of a patient anymore, it’s the fury of a man who feels like he’s being tortured in the name of salvation. Like this small thing is where he’s drawing a line.
"No," he says, the word hitting the air with a finality that makes my chest tighten. "I'm not doing it again. I won't."
And for a second, I just look at him. Because Murphy’s Law isn’t loud, it doesn’t need to be. It’s this. It’s the part where even the solution fails. Where the body rejects the help meant to keep it going. Where the next step forward feels worse than staying exactly where you are.
I’m trapped in the space between the man I love and the medicine that’s supposed to keep him here, realizing that sometimes, the "right" thing to do feels exactly like a betrayal.
And I realize how being the "healthy one" carries a specific, silent trauma. It's the agony of the spectator, the person who has all the energy to help but none of the power to heal. It’s the realization that you would trade your own marrow in a heartbeat, that you would offer up your own blood, your own breath, your own skin if it meant he could stand up and walk away from this. But the universe is indifferent, it doesn’t accept trades.
It doesn't negotiate with the desperate.
So to love someone is to provide the universe with a hostage. You are no longer just afraid of your own end, you are afraid of the end of the world as it exists in the other person. Love doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn't build a fortress around you. It makes you wider, more exposed, and therefore infinitely easier to hit.
It also doesn’t ask if the timing is right. It doesn’t check circumstances, or weigh outcomes, or pause for consent. It just... happens. And then you're left to deal with the consequences.
These are the consequences of me picking up his book at that forum. These are the consequences of me being unable to get him out of my head, of looking him up and finding where he worked, of showing up there like that was a reasonable thing to do....with a heart that was already beginning to tilt in his direction.
These are the consequences of not stepping back when I should have. Of being too enthralled. Too curious. Too drawn in by something I didn’t understand and didn’t try hard enough to resist.
And now I’m here. Devastatingly, irreversibly in love with him. And I finally understand something I used to think was exaggerated. Love isn’t logical. It’s not measured, it’s not cautious, it’s not even particularly intelligent. It’s blind in a way that feels almost intentional. Because even now, knowing everything I know...how this unfolds, how heavy it gets. Knowing the exact weight of this silence, the gray tint of his skin and the gut-wrenching sight of those unabsorbed pills...if I were given the chance to go back, I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t hesitate.
I would still pick up that book, still look him up. Still walk into that school and start a conversation that would lead me here.
To this exact moment.
To this bathroom floor.
To standing here with a fresh glass of water in one hand and another round of the same pills in the other.