“How did the surgery go?”
The question pulls everything back.
My fork pauses halfway to my mouth.
I put it down.
“It went… well,” I say, and my voice wobbles. I clear my throat and try again. “The doctor said they removed the mass. He said they did everything they meant to do surgically. No complications. Vitals stable.”
“He’s in ICU.” It’s not a question, which makes me wonder if he somehow knows.
I nod. My eyes sting. “They said the next twenty-four hours are important. He’s sedated. He won’t be awake until morning,maybe. Likely, he’ll be in and out of it for the next couple of days. They said I might as well go home and come back.”
I swallow hard.
“Are they worried tonight?” Nico asks.
I shake my head. “The doctor said they’d call if anything changed, but he doesn’t expect it to.”
Nico doesn’t comment on that. He must be able to sense I’m not done, because he just waits.
So the words keep coming, and I couldn’t stop them if I tried.
“I thought I could do it,” I say. “I thought I could come home, shower, sleep, go back in the morning.” My hands curl in my lap. “But the second I walked in, and it was quiet—”
My throat closes.
I take a breath and force it through.
“Not just quiet. Lifeless,” I whisper. “No TV. No noise. No him. No porch light he insists on leaving on when I’m out. No throw blanket balled up at the end of the couch because he can’t be bothered to put it back in the right place. No shoes I almost trip on because what’s the point in putting them in the hall closet when he’s just going to take them out again in the morning?” My breath hitches softly on the weak laugh.
“And all I could think about was… what if this is my life? What if I have to walk through that door every night and it’s just empty? What if I’m doing it forever?”
My eyes burn.
I blink fast, furious with myself for still being this close to the edge after the shower, after the crying, after him holding me until I could breathe again.
“It just… piled up,” I say, and the words sound stupid because they’re too small for what it felt like. Each weight that dropped on me made it harder to move, stay standing, breathe.
More and more until I was a sobbing, broken mess on the floor. “Everything. The surgery. The money because insurance is still giving me a hard time. Last week.” I avert my eyes, my cheeks reddening. “And then I came home, and it felt like the walls were closing in and I couldn’t— I just couldn’t be alone.”
I say it like a confession.
Like it makes me weak.
Nico’s voice stays low. “I’m glad you called.”
My face heats.
“Thanks for coming,” I mumble, hating how small it sounds. Hating how much it mattered.
Nico’s chair shifts softly.
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t close the space.
He just says, “I said I would.”
I glance back at him.
