It was beginning to build, like a low-level frequency that began to drive you mad.

How could it not. This... This declaration of love.

It was beginning to ring so loud in his ears that he couldn’t hear anything else.

They went to another doctor appointment, and it was like something with claws had reached into his chest and speared his heart. Like it was being pulled asunder.

He couldn’t seem to find any protection for it. And it was a monstrosity the likes of which he had never experienced before.

Nor did he want to.

And it was a terrible thing, because he wanted her in his life, he wanted to claim this thing that he was certain he could have, and yet, he was undone by the feeling that he was doing it wrong.

He was different. He could think he was doing the same things as other people and discover he wasn’t, actually. He could think he knew what someone else needed and be wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

His father had always told him he was wrong.

His mother had told him he was right as he was, but she had died and he had no way of knowing if she would have always thought he was okay, or if she would have seen him struggle later and...

What if he was broken?

What if he would never be able to be there for her in the way that she needed?

He wanted to be.

She had told him that he needed to show care in the way that another person could receive it. The truth was, she had said she loved him. And that must mean on some level it was the sort of care she wanted shown back to her.

What did he know about that?

But even if so, it was like having somebody watch him open presents.

He wasn’t sure if his response was acceptable. He wasn’t sure if it could ever be.

He was sure of nothing.

Nothing at all.

What he wanted to do was engage in an exploration of his own soul. Come to some kind of medical conclusion, and yet that was the problem with humans.

Nothing was half so simple. Even when he wanted it to be.

He understood that for most people, medicine and medical science was the mystery. But to him...it was this.

And he had no way of knowing if this was just him, or if it was something that could be changed. Learned. If his mother had lived, would everything be different? Would he be...not a top medical scientist, not leading the field in research and development, not a billionaire, but a man. Who understood how to have a wife, who understood how to be a father.

Was it a lack of what he had been able to see and learn and experience that created these problems now?

All he knew was that he felt inadequate. Down to his very soul.

And for her part, she seemed happy. But what if she wasn’t? And what if he could never know? What if she was simply putting on a brave face? Or what if she was blinded? Blinded by the love that she claimed to feel for him. Hadn’t her parents kept her with them, kept her unhappy, likely because she was a child who had loved them?

He hated the idea of that. Truly.

And yet, she was...

She was the greatest thing in his life.