“Still attached.” He shifted on the pillows, wincing. “Hurts less than yesterday.”
I made a note of that.
Day 3: reports decreased pain upon waking.
“You’re writing things down,” Seth observed.
“Just keeping track.” I closed the notebook, tucked it into my back pocket. “The doctor said to monitor your symptoms.”
“Tanner.” He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. His grip was warm but weaker than usual, and I tried not to catalog that the way I cataloged everything else. “I’m okay.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean—” He tugged gently until I sat on the edge of the bed. Up close, I could see the shadows under his eyes, the pallor beneath his tan. He looked exhausted in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. “I’m okay. You can stop holding your breath.”
I hadn’t realized I was. I let it out, felt my shoulders drop an inch.
“I’m not holding my breath.”
“You haven’t sat still in three days.” His thumb traced circles on my palm. “You’re barely sleeping. You’re barely eating. And every time I close my eyes, you look at me like you’re afraid I won’t open them again.”
The accuracy of it landed somewhere in my chest, sharp and uncomfortable. I looked away, focused on the sliver of light escaping through a gap in the blinds. I’d need to fix that. Add it to the list.
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit.” He said it gently, without heat. “Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I pulled my hand back, stood, put distance between us. “You need to rest. I’ll make you some toast.”
“I don’t want toast. I want you to stop pretending you’re not falling apart.”
The words hit harder than they should have. I froze in the doorway, my back to him, and tried to remember how to breathe normally. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Basic stuff. Stuff that shouldn’t require conscious effort.
“I’m handling it,” I said.
“I know you are. That’s what scares me.”
I left before he could say anything else.
The kitchen was dark,which was how I’d been keeping everything these days. I made toast by the glow of my phone screen, spread butter in careful strokes, and cut the slices into triangles because that’s how Dad used to like them.
Fuck.
I set the knife down and gripped the edge of the counter. The wave of memory came without warning—Dad at the breakfast table, before everything went wrong, cutting toast into triangles for me while Mom made coffee. He’d been teaching me about forces and vectors, how the diagonal cut was structurally superior. I couldn’t have been more than seven.
That was the thing about grief nobody told you. It didn’t come in one big wave that eventually receded. It came in hundreds of small waves, triggered by toast and penlight checks and the way Seth’s voice sounded when he was confused. It came in the middle of the night when you were counting pills, in the morning when you were closing the blinds against the sun, in every quiet moment when your brain had nothing else to focus on.
I picked up the knife and finished cutting the toast.
When I brought it to Seth, he was sitting up against the headboard, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Thanks.” He took the plate, looked at the triangles, then at me. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I keep meaning it.” I sat in the chair I’d pulled next to the bed—close enough to reach him, far enough that I wasn’t hovering. Finding that balance had taken practice. “Eat.”
