"Pregnant," he clarifies. "I mean…I assume. Right?"
I stare for another second. "Oh my God, no, Avery."
"Then what is it?" He runs his hands up and down his thighs, settling them in his lap. He never takes his eyes off me.
Even when I force myself to stare anywhere but him, I still feel him watching.
"A few months ago, I thought I was dying." The words come out unfiltered and totally raw, but to my surprise, my voice remains completely steady.
He doesn’t leap off the bed or panic or ask me to explain.
Instead, his eyebrows pinch together as he waits for me to continue. So, I do.
I tell him how everything started six months ago, when the changes in my body began, subtle at first.
I brushed them off. Convinced myself it was nothing.
Until it wasn’t.
I tell him how the slightest change to my routine could send me into a spiral, migraines that knocked me out for days, even when I had no choice but to keep going.
Some mornings, I’d wake up without feeling in parts of my body. I'd be numb for hours, like I wasn’t even in my own body.
I tell him about all the tests that the hospital ran on me. How the scans, blood work, and lumbar punctures all led to the same result.
An incurable illness that wouldn’t be the cause of my life coming to an end, but could very well make me wish it were.
And then I tell him my diagnosis, and something that I can’t quite decipher flashes across his face, but he doesn’t say anything.
For a long, agonizing thirty seconds, the room is completely silent, and that’s when I open my mouth to change the subject, but he speaks. Almost like he knew if he didn’t take his chance, it would never come back.
"Multiple Sclerosis?" he asks to make sure he heard me right.
My single nod is weak.
"And your doctors, are they sure? Because from what I know about MS, it can takemonthsto diagnose, and even then, sometimes they get it wrong."
"They’re sure." I nod again, sharper this time. Part of me wants to ask how he even knows that much about it, but the other part of me is just glad he hasn’t run for the hills.
I tell him that nobody knows, and when he asks if my sisters do, I shake my head.
"I don’t want them to treat me differently," I admit, my head hung so he can’t see the embarrassment obvious on my face. "They would coddle me. Treat me like I’m breakable. Want me to end the tour and come back home so they could watch my every move." I stiffen. "I’m just not ready for any of that yet."
"The medication I saw in your bathroom…"
"It was so new to me then. I’m not used to cleaning it all up, and wasn’t expecting you to knock." I sit beside him on the bed, crossing my legs, facing him.
"And your alarm?" he asks, turning toward me.
He threads his fingers through mine, resting our hands in my lap.
I nod. "I’m sorry about that. I hadn’t ever missed a dose before, and I freaked out not knowing what would happen." A weak smile is all I can give him. I hope it’s enough.
"If nobody knows about it, how come you’re telling me?" he asks.
I sit with the question longer than I probably should.
Do I trust him?
