Chapter 81 Time
Some people measure time in years. Others measure it in milestones....graduations, weddings, promotions, children.
But people who’ve been close to loss measure time differently. They measure it in ordinary moments.
In cups of coffee that weren’t supposed to matter.
In conversations that lasted five minutes longer than they should have.
In quiet evenings where nothing happened at all.
Because when time starts to feel fragile, the smallest moments begin to look like entire lifetimes.
Ryan slept much later than usual today, almost noon. I noticed the time around ten, then again around eleven, but I didn’t wake him. I just let him lie there, breathing softly into the pillow, the morning light shifting slowly across the room as the hours passed.
He needed the rest, even if sometimes he complained that resting itself was exhausting. That was one of the strange paradoxes of illness....how doing nothing could somehow leave a person more drained than doing everything.
It was Sunday. No doctor’s appointments today. No hospital corridors or waiting rooms or nurses asking about symptoms and side effects. Just a quiet apartment and a long stretch of time. So I figured today it could just be us.
Or rather.... it could be me watching Ryan.
That had become a habit lately. Not consciously, not in a way that felt invasive. Just the quiet, constant awareness of him. The way people watch something fragile without meaning to.
He finally woke up around one. I heard the soft creak of the mattress before I heard his footsteps, slow and careful against the floorboards as he made his way down the hall. By the time he reached the kitchen, I could hear cabinets opening. The faint hum of the microwave. The quiet clink of glass against the counter. When he appeared in the living room a few minutes later, he was holding a glass of orange juice in one hand and a small plate in the other.
Scrambled eggs and toast.
He walked slower than he used to. Not dramatically slow, just cautious. Like every movement had to be negotiated with his body first. It had become the new normal.
But there was more life to him today than there had been yesterday. I could see it in the steadiness of his steps. In the way his shoulders weren’t quite as slumped.
He lowered himself onto the couch beside me, placing the plate on the coffee table before taking a slow sip of his juice. I hadn’t stopped watching him.
Not when he walked in.
Not when he sat down.
And as I watched him drink the juice, something inside me loosened. Something tight and quiet that had been sitting behind my ribs for days. Because Ryan was eating of his own accord. It sounds simple, but the past few days had been anything but.
Food had been a negotiation. A risk. Something that often ended with Ryan leaning over the sink, pale and shaking, muttering that he’s fine even when he clearly wasn’t.
So the sight of him sitting there, glass of orange juice in one hand, fork in the other....felt almost unreal.
He didn’t turn to me. Instead, he picked up the plate again and took a small bite of the scrambled eggs. I watched the movement of his throat as he chewed. And without meaning to, I realized I was holding my breath.
Just waiting.
Waiting to see if the moment would hold. If his stomach would accept it. If his body would let him keep it.
The seconds stretched longer than they should have. Then he swallowed and nothing happened. No sudden tension in his shoulders. No quick inhale signaling the familiar wave of nausea.
Just quiet.
I exhaled slowly, only then realizing I’d been bracing for something. Ryan turned his head toward me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
There was genuine curiosity in his voice. No suspicion, no heaviness.
Just Ryan.
His eyes flicked briefly to the laptop resting on my knees, then back to my face.
“Looking for a new job?” he added lightly.
I smiled and shook my head. I'd asked Jenny to hand in my resignation letter for me. It had still been in a drawer in my office. My eyes drifted across Ryan's face for a moment....taking in the faint hollows beneath his cheekbones, the quiet tiredness lingering around his eyes, before they slipped back to the laptop screen.
To the blinking cursor waiting patiently on the blank page.
Last night, I’d decided that today I would write. That I would wake up, sit down at the table, and put words on the page. But then this I woke up, and I ran my hand through his hair, and his hair came off. Now every time my eyes drifted back to the screen, to that quiet blinking cursor waiting patiently for a sentence that refused to exist, all I could think about was the strands tangled between my fingers earlier.
Dark.
Soft.
Familiar.
And for a moment I considered telling him the truth. That I was trying to write something about life and time and ordinary moments. That I was trying to make sense of the quiet terror of watching someone you deeply feel for slowly change in front of you.
But all I managed to say was...
“Trying to work on something.”
Which wasn’t exactly a lie.
And Ryan nodded, didn't ask what. Then he said he missed the park. It wasn’t dramatic when he said it. Just a quiet observation, spoken halfway through his breakfast like he’d only just realized the thought had been sitting somewhere in the back of his mind.
“I miss the park,” he’d said.
Then he looked up at me and asked, “Do you want to go?”
Of course I did.
Of course I wanted him outside. Wanted him breathing air that didn’t smell like antiseptic or medication or the stale stillness of an apartment where someone had been recovering for too long.
I wanted him in the world.....
Somewhere that wasn’t a bed. Somewhere that wasn’t a hospital.
So now we’re here.
The weather is perfect in that effortless way early afternoons sometimes are. The sun is warm but not aggressive, the air moving gently through the trees so the leaves whisper to each other overhead. Ryan had brought a book. He’d lasted maybe ten minutes before abandoning it beside him on the bench. Now it rests face-down on the wood, completely forgotten. Instead he’s people watching.
A couple walking their dog.
A father trying, and failing, to convince a toddler to stay on the path.
Two teenagers arguing quietly under a tree like the entire world exists just for the drama of their conversation.
Ryan watches all of it with quiet interest. Like someone reacquainting himself with a place he used to belong to. There’s color in his face today. Not much, but more than yesterday. The sunlight catches in his hair when the wind moves it, and for a moment I feel that familiar instinct again.....the one that makes my hand want to reach out and run through it.
But I stop myself.
Instead I just sit there beside him. Watching him watch the world. And there’s something strange about it. Something quietly devastating. Because for most of the people moving through the park, this is just another afternoon. Another ordinary moment they won’t remember in a week.
But sitting here beside Ryan, feeling the warmth of the sun on my arms, hearing the soft rhythm of his breathing next to me, it feels enormous.
Like the kind of moment people measure entire lifetimes by.