The beauty of the task is utter, absolute triviality. The stakes are zero. A misplaced comma does not lead to an organ flare. A misunderstanding of cellular respiration does not mean a trip to the emergency room. My biggest problem right now is convincing Jimmy that writing “The Sedum Story” in narrative form is not appropriate for a scientific report. I have to focuson the difference between the word “tough” and the concept of “drought-resistance.”
I lose myself completely in their tiny, green worlds. When I finally look up, my neck stiff, the light seems too bright above me, the darkness in the windows absolute. I check the clock on my phone: 2:38 a.m. I made it past two a.m. I survived the silence. I stopped the panic spiral. I made a difficult phone call and accomplished some real-world good. I also corrected fifty-two essays on small, resilient plants. I put the pen down. My hands are steady now. I realize I’m still scared, of course, but the fear is a dull ache, not a jagged tear. It’s manageable. I can breathe.
I get up, stretch, and walk back to the couch, pulling the throw tight around me. Frida lifts her head, sighs contentedly, and settles back down. I close my eyes, ready to let the sedum-fueled exhaustion finally take hold. I was able to throw myself into this activity, and now, finally, I can rest until the next time the phone rings.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Maya
I drag my left foot over the worn threshold of my apartment, my body already starting to feel more relaxed. Flick’s arm is wedged beneath my right elbow, and Hannah’s hand rests lightly, supportively, on the small of my back, guiding me forward like a delicate, slightly damaged piece of antique furniture. In my mind, my hospital stay is now just a sterile chapter I’m desperate to close, but the journey from the car to the front door has felt like a marathon. Every joint protests, every muscle fiber feels loose and unmoored, yet the air in my bright, clean apartment is suddenly the sweetest thing I’ve ever felt.
I lean heavily against Flick, closing my eyes for just a second, inhaling the scent of my home: a mix of laundry detergent, the faint, comforting aroma of coffee Zachary must have brewed in the kitchen, and my favorite pumpkin scented candle that’s lit in the apartment’s small entryway. It’s the smell ofsafe. It’s the smell ofmine.
When I open my eyes, I notice that the entry and kitchen are immaculate. Not just ‘tidied up,’ but truly, deeply clean. Every surface gleams. The little pile of mail that had beenfestering on the table next to the door is gone. The books on the shelf are reorganized by color, a small, ridiculous, and instantly recognizable Zachary touch. He has even wiped away all the dust that had been accumulating in the corners of the baseboards. I can only assume the rest of the apartment has been treated the same. My heart swells so intensely it feels like a sudden, dizzying rush of blood to my brain.
He had stayed back and insisted that Hannah and Flick handle the hospital pick-up, arguing that the apartment needed to be a ‘sanctuary,’ not just a place to crash. And here it is. I swallow past the emotion clogging my throat at his thoughtfulness.
I walk past the kitchen counter, and my gaze drifts to the fridge. The door is covered in new, colorful sticky notes. I recognize Zachary’s precise, angular handwriting:‘Soup: Day 1—just heat and slurp! (Don’t chew, love).’ ‘Yogurt & Berries: Day 2—smoothie-fy this morning.’ And the colorful notes go on, enough for several full days of easy meals. He’s stocked the entire fridge with pre-chopped, pre-portioned, spoon-ready, easy-to-digest foods, anticipating the exhaustion and the lingering rawness in my body. He knows I want to avoid anything that requires more effort than breathing right now.
And Frida. Oh, Frida. I haven't seen my mischievous ferret in days. I glance toward one of her favorite spots in the corner and see her curled up in a nest of blankets she made for herself, just like I knew she would be. Zachary has fed her, played with her, and kept her company so she wouldn’t be lonely while I was gone. My chest is filled with so much gratitude, I feel like my sternum might crack. I know I’m exhausted and emotional from my flare and subsequent hospital stay, but it’s more than that. It’s him.
I crave the simple, ordinary privilege of his constant presence. The hospital visits, those sterile, regulated hour-long stretches under the hospital’s fluorescent lights, felt like cruel teases. He would sit beside the bed, holding my hand, meticulously detailing his day, telling me about the bizarre bird that he had seen, or about when he had a class full of first graders and a mouse scampered across the trailer floor causing mass mayhem as the students screamed and stood on their chairs. He caught it in a humane trap and released it into the woods by the school.
I would just close my eyes, trying to absorb the sound of his voice, trying to memorize the way his thumb rubbed circles on my skin. One hour. Sixty minutes a day to sustain a connection that is usually hours of comfortable proximity while we taught in the same space and then went back to one of our apartments together. It all felt criminally inadequate. I missed him so much.
Zachary.I need to crawl into bed, burrow deep under the covers, snuggle into him, and demand he put on that cheesy space adventure movie—the one with the questionable CGI but the absolutely epic soundtrack. I just want to listen to him, to hear him comment on the plot holes, to feel the rumble of his laughter against my ear. That is my reward. That is my finish line.
My energy, already draining rapidly, gets a brief boost from the thought of that movie night. I have a week left of the high-dose steroids, and I’m braced for the inevitable swing into that awful, wired, emotionally volatile, and physically miserable state. But so far, nothing. No massive mood swings, no raging hunger, no debilitating insomnia. Just this intense, crushing fatigue, which I’ll take over the emotional roller coaster any day. I’m pleasantly surprised. Maybe, just maybe, I’m getting off easy this time.
Flick guides me out of the kitchen towards my bedroom, her grip firm. “Alright, Maya-girl. Almost there. Zachary has the bed completely… wait. Whoa.”
I look up, following Flick’s line of sight, and the air seems to freeze in my lungs. My mouth goes dry. The wave of longing and exhaustion is instantly replaced by a sharp, cold spike of shock that slices through the warmth of homecoming.
Perched perfectly upright onmysofa, looking impossibly chic in a tailored black suit that looks severely out of place in my cozy living room filled with mostly thrifted furniture, is my mother.
She is here. She is on Pine Island. She is inmyapartment.
For a moment, I think I’ve hallucinated her, or that the residual hospital drugs are stronger than I thought. But no. The silver streak in her dark hair is real. The careful, elegant posture is real. The hesitant, almost apologetic look in her eyes is shatteringly real.
I stop dead, leaning so hard into Flick that she stumbles slightly. “Mom? What are you doing here?” I hear the question escape my lips as a flat, disbelieving exhale.
She looks uncharacteristically unsure for a moment before her mask of cool confidence falls back into place. “Hello, Maya. I spoke with Zachary on the first day you were in the hospital. We agreed that you and I need to talk and work some things out.”
A sudden, sharp heat floods my cheeks. My first reaction is a flash of pure, indignant betrayal aimed squarely at Zachary.How dare he?How dare he orchestrate this without telling me? My homecoming—my sacred, planned moment of collapse into his arms—has been hijacked by the one person I needed distance from the most. I should have been warned. I should have had the chance to mentally prepare for the inevitable storm of emotional complexity she brings with her. I open my mouth, ready to demand that my mother get out of my apartment and book the next flight back to New York.
But then, the heat subsides, and a cold clarity takes its place. Zachary knows me. He knows the lupus, the doctors, theprotocols. But he also knows thepersonI am, the one who runs from confrontation, especially when it involves the tangled, painful threads of my relationship with my mother.
He knew that if he had told me, I would have begged him to call it off. I would have exhausted myself arguing against it, convincing myself that the hospital stay was too much, the fatigue too heavy, the timing too wrong. I would have found a thousand reasons to delay this conversation—the conversation we’ve been avoiding since she painted that huge, devastatingly public piece about my illness, a piece that turned my very private struggle into a gallery spectacle. In this moment, I suddenly realize that would have been a mistake to avoid this conversation any longer.
The issues don’t magically disappear just because I’m tired or because I was sick. They just wait, festering, until the next crisis. Zachary, in his gentle, unwavering wisdom, has forced the moment. He’s done the hard, administrative work of cleaning up the apartment and stocking the fridge, giving me a soft, safe landing, and then, immediately, he’s presented the one piece of necessary, painful work that needed to be done: talking to my mother.
I sigh, the sound a ragged wheeze in my chest. I look at Flick and Hannah. “Okay,” I whisper, my voice sounding weak and resigned. “Okay. Thanks for everything, guys. But before we get to the confrontation, can you just… get me to my bed?”
They spring into action, their relief palpable. They ease me back up, and the three of us navigate the small hallway toward the bedroom. The bed is perfectly made, the crisp white duvet turned down invitingly. I see a small carafe of water and a glass on the nightstand, along with a book—the one I’d left mid-chapter—and a small vase containing a single, perfect white orchid. A bouquet would have been too much effort to carefor. The single orchid is a masterpiece of considerate detail.Zachary.
Hannah and Flick help me peel off the jacket I’m still wearing and help me into my bed. They tuck the duvet around me with unnecessary, loving fussiness. I feel like a fragile doll being placed back in its box.
“Thank you, both,” I manage to say, reaching out a hand to each of them. “Really. For everything. For the ride home, for getting me inside, for the perfect tucking.”
