Chapter 184: Cold fear

I had fallen asleep.

There was something about being away from the city that had done me in. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the trees outside the windows, or the absence of sirens and traffic and the constant low hum of everything demanding something from me. For the first time in what felt like months, my body seemed to believe it was allowed to let its guard down. Just a little.

I had already built an entire itinerary in my head for tomorrow. Breakfast on the porch. The beach. We'd take the camera and wander until he got tired. I'd find somewhere for us to sit. We'd come back before sunset. Dinner. The fireplace.

It would be a good day, a happy day. I had decided that much.

Then I heard my name.

"Michael."

I stirred, confused, my cheek still against the couch cushion. For a moment, I didn't know where I was. The room was dark. The windows had turned into black mirrors, reflecting only fragments of the furniture inside.

"Michael."

Ryan's voice. Something in it made every trace of sleep disappear. There was panic there, not much but enough. I stood so quickly the room tilted.

"Ryan?"

It wasn't loud, but there was a sharpness in my voice that fear had carved in over the past few months. I followed the sound down the short hallway and found him in the bathroom. He was standing over the sink, both hands gripping the porcelain rim. His head was tilted slightly forward. Blood was pouring from his left nostril.

Dark, thick crimson spilled rapidly over his upper lip and down into the white basin, violently bright beneath the bathroom light.

My stomach dropped. With his platelet count, a nosebleed wasn't just a nosebleed.

"Don't tilt your head back."

My voice came out instantly, rigid and controlled. The voice I'd learned to use when everything inside me wanted to panic. I crossed the room in one stride, grabbed a clean washcloth from the rack and ran it beneath the cold water.

"I know the drill," Ryan muttered. His voice was muffled as he pinched the soft part of his nose between two fingers. His skin looked almost translucent beneath the harsh light. There was sweat shining at his temples. "Just find the spray."

My hands were shaking violently. A stupid, uncontrollable vibration in my fingers that made me want to tear them off and replace them with someone else's. I headed to the bedroom and forced them steady enough to open the drawer. I found the Afrin. The vasoconstrictor Parsons had told us to keep nearby for exactly this kind of situation.

I grabbed it and hurried back to Ryan.

"Hold still."

I gently moved his hand aside just long enough to administer two sprays into his nostril, then pressed the cold cloth firmly against the upper bridge of his nose. He sucked in a sharp, wet breath. His eyes squeezed shut. The medication had to sting against the raw lining. He didn't pull away. Instead, one hand reached blindly for me, his fingers locked around my forearm. Desperate enough to hurt.

I let him.

We stood there, frozen in place, listening to the slow drip of water from the faucet.

One minute, then another.

"It isn't stopping."

His voice was barely above a whisper, his eyes opened. He looked down at the dark red collecting in the basin. There was something in his expression I'd never seen before. Not pain, or exhaustion.

Cold and immediate fear.

"Michael."

"It's going to stop."

"It's too thin."

"It isn't."

His voice shook, I stepped closer until there was nowhere left between us. My left arm wrapped around his shoulders, pulling his back against my chest while my right hand kept the cloth pressed firmly against his nose.

"Look at me."

Ryan didn't move. Slowly, his eyes lifted and found my reflection above the sink. His pupils were wide, his breathing came too quickly, each breath shallow against my ribs.

"I'm right here."

I stared at him through the mirror. I had no idea whether it would stop in thirty seconds or whether we'd be driving back toward the hospital before midnight. I had no idea whether I was reassuring him or lying to both of us. But I made my voice certain anyway. "We have twenty minutes before we call the on-call line. We're at minute three."

I kept my eyes on his.

"Breathe through your mouth. Slowly."

He watched me. For a long moment, neither of us moved, then he drew in a shuddering breath. Then another. His chest gradually began to rise and fall against mine in something resembling a rhythm. His fingers loosened around my forearm though he didn't let go completely.

Neither did I.

Five minutes. Seven. The blood gradually slowed from a steady stream to a sluggish crawl.

Then nothing.

I waited, counted down the familiar numbers in my head. Nothing.

Ryan exhaled. It was the longest breath I'd heard him take. His head fell back against my shoulder, all the tension draining out of him at once. His body seemed to fold into mine.

"See?" I whispered, but my voice cracked. I hadn't realized how tightly I'd been holding it together until then. "You're fine."

Ryan looked at our reflection one last time. His eyes were still frightened, then he closed them. That broke something in me, because it was one thing for me to be afraid, I'd accepted that. I'd built my entire life around it lately, I could carry that fear. I could hide it beneath lists and schedules and clinical language and the illusion that if I stayed alert enough, nothing would surprise us.

But Ryan wasn't supposed to be afraid too. At least not like this. Not the way he'd just looked at himself in that mirror, as though he was just realizing that his body could genuinely betray him without warning. I'd spent months trying to protect him from the fear. And now I was watching it settle into him.

That was worse than my own. Because I knew what fear did when it had nowhere to go. It followed you into bed, it sat beside you at breakfast. It turned ordinary things into omens. It didn't matter if it was a headache, a cough, or a red mark on a tissue. And suddenly you weren't living your life anymore, you were interpreting it.

I tightened my arm around him. His weight felt frighteningly light.

"I've got you," I whispered.

He didn't answer, maybe he was too tired. Maybe he was just trying to believe me. I rested my cheek against his hair and stared at our reflection.

The cabin was supposed to be an escape.

For the first time since we'd arrived, I understood that there was nowhere we could go that would be far enough to make his body stop being his body. The woods couldn't change that. The ocean couldn't. Four days couldn't.

And neither could I.

I could hold him, count the minutes, memorize every instruction Parsons gave us. I could drive faster than anyone should and learn every hospital between here and home. But I couldn't stand between Ryan and his own blood. I couldn't bargain with it. And I couldn't love him hard enough to make him well. I closed my eyes and just let myself admit how fucking terrifying that was.