Chapter 105 Origin Point
I drag a chair up beside the bed and sit.
And I wait.
There’s nothing else to do. Nothing useful, nothing that fixes anything...just this quiet, helpless kind of vigilance. Watching. Listening. Measuring every small movement like it might mean something. Like it has to mean something.
He’s turned away from me, curled in on himself, his body drawn tight like he’s trying to contain something that refuses to be contained.
Pain does that, folds you in. Makes you smaller. Reduces you to the shape of survival.
I can still hear my own voice from the phonecall with Dr. Parsons a few minutes ago, trying to stay steady and failing anyway.
He’s shaking... he’s in pain...he’s not really coherent.
There was a pause on the other end. Then clear and calm instructions to take his temperature. I remember my hands, how they didn’t feel like mine for a second. Slightly unsteady as I reached for the thermometer, as I tried to do something simple without letting the panic bleed into it. I pressed it to his skin and waited. Watched the numbers climb then read them out loud.
There was another pause, and then he said it's not emergency level. Those words should’ve helped. They didn’t. Because there’s nothing about this that feels not like an emergency. He asked if Ryan had taken the medication. I said he had. And he told me to keep an eye on him for the next hour. If the medication doesn’t seem to be working, bring him in.
An hour.
It sounds so reasonable when someone else says it. From here, it feels like something else entirely. Like being told to sit still while something invisible runs its course through someone you. My gaze drifts back to him. He’s still curled in on himself, his breathing uneven, occasionally catching like it’s being interrupted by something sharp and internal. There’s a tension in the way he holds himself that doesn’t ease, not even for a second.
I hate this.
Not in the vague, passing way. I hate it with a kind of clarity that makes my chest feel tight. Because there’s nothing to fight, nothing to fix. Just... this. Waiting for something inside him to either loosen its grip or not.
My hand finds the edge of the mattress, fingers curling slightly into the fabric, grounding myself in something solid while everything else feels uncertain. I keep thinking about how he looked in the car.
There’s a particular kind of cruelty in the way pain can hide just enough to be underestimated. In the way he still tried to make it smaller than it was. And how I told him it was going to be okay because silence would’ve been worse.
But sitting here, watching him like this, I realize how little those words weigh against what’s actually happening.
I lean forward slightly, my voice quieter now, like I’m speaking into something fragile.
“Ryan?”
He doesn’t respond. I don’t know if he can or if he’s just choosing not to. So I don’t push it.
I just stay.
Count the minutes without meaning to. Watch the rise and fall of his shoulders. Listen to every uneven breath like it might change, like it might tell me something I can use. I glance at the clock, it’s only been a few minutes and already it feels like too long. So I sit there, in the space between what I can do and what I can’t, hoping, quietly and helplessly that the medication starts to work. Before I run out of ways to pretend that waiting is enough.
Eventually, the shaking eases. Not all at once. It softens first, like something loosening its grip, inch by inch...until the tension starts to drain from his body. The sharp edges of his breathing dull, then even out, the strain fading into something quieter.
Then he goes still, too still. I watch him. Every instinct in me sharpens, my throat tightening as something unspoken rises, dark and immediate....I swallow it down.
No.
I’m not finishing that thought.
I’m not even allowing it shape.
I push up from the chair and lean over him, just enough to see his face. His eyes are closed. His features softer now, no longer pulled tight with pain. His breathing is steady.
Sleeping.
Relief doesn’t hit the way I expect it to. It doesn’t flood in. It settles instead, fragile and careful. Like it knows better than to take up too much space.
He’s sleeping.
Hopefully, that means his mind has finally quieted the signals, because pain isn’t really in the body, it’s something the brain decides to feel. And right now the best I can ask for, the best I can get, is that his has chosen to let him rest.
I sit back down. The chair creaks softly as I lean into it, my gaze drifting around the room like I’m seeing it for the first time. Neatly arranged books stacked with intention. Plants, all thriving, all green and alive. And color. There’s so much color in here. Warm tones, soft textures, small details that make the space feel lived in. Thought about. Loved.
It’s his, all of it. And yet when my eyes shift toward the door, all I can picture is me walking through that door, holding onto him. Carrying something fragile and urgent and slipping through my hands no matter how tightly I try to keep it together. I drag a hand over my face and let out a slow, measured breath.
It catches somewhere in the middle because the thought won’t leave. It shifts, deepens. Settles into something worse.
Is this the start?
The question comes quietly, but it lands heavy. Because everything else had one. An origin point. A moment that didn’t feel like much at the time but in hindsight, became the beginning of something that never really went away. There had to be a first time the bleeding started before I met him. Before it became part of him, like it was just another inconvenience.
There was a first wave of nausea. One moment where it felt strange, unfamiliar...and then it stayed.
And the fatigue, he’s always tired now. But there had to be one specific, forgettable day where he paused and thought...'that’s odd.' Where his body felt heavier than usual, and then it never really stopped. And he adapted. We adapted. Folded those things into normalcy.
Learned how to exist around them.
With them.
So now I sit here, watching him sleep after pain that bent him in half, and I wonder, is this another one? Another beginning disguised as an isolated moment? Do we get used to this too? Does this become something we learn to anticipate? To manage? To accept?
The thought sits wrong. Deeply wrong. Because some things shouldn’t become normal. Some things shouldn’t be folded into routine and labeled as part of it. My gaze drifts back to him, to the quiet rise and fall of his chest. And I realize I don’t know which is worse. This being the start of something that stays, or this being just a glimpse of something that gets worse.
I lean forward slightly, resting my forearms on my knees, my eyes never leaving him. And for the first time since he fell asleep, I let the silence settle fully. Not as relief, but as a fragile pause between what just happened and whatever comes next.