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At the first flicker of consciousness, he panicked. He sat up abruptly and pushed his legs over the side of the bed, mentally prepping for wave after wave of torment.

It didn’t come. He definitely had a headache, but it wasn’t intense yet. He had to breathe deeply to slow his heart rate and lower his adrenaline, but his stomach was fine. He could think clearly.

“You okay?” Eve mumbled from the other side of his bed.

“Yeah.”

“Is it bad?” She already sounded fully awake. She was pushing down the covers and sitting up.

“Not too bad yet. It just scared me for some reason, so I’m trying to calm down.”

“Okay. Good.” She reached over and rubbed his back. Gentle. Almost tentative.

He let out a long breath and relaxed into her touch.

She continued stroking him silently until his body finally released the panic. Then she asked, “You want me to get one of your pills?”

“It’s not that bad yet.”

“I know. But maybe if you take a pill now, it will never get really bad. It’s only three o’clock. You can sleep four or five more hours, and hopefully by the time you wake up, the headache will be gone and you can work. If the headache gets bad, you won’t be able to get any writing done.”

She made perfect sense. The rising of resistance inside him was utterly irrational—a small, stubborn part of himself that still refused to admit he was actually sick.

He needed to write. He needed to finish this book. And he wouldn’t be capable of working today if this headache got much worse. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks.”

Eve got up and went to the bathroom to get one of his pills. She handed it to him with water, and he swallowed it.

When he stayed sitting on the side of the bed, she sat down beside him. Reached over and squeezed one of his hands.

After a minute, she murmured, “You probably panicked because you were instinctively expecting the headache to be terrible like before.”

“Yeah.” She hadn’t yet pulled her hand back, so Jude held it with both of his, stroking her palm with his thumb.

“It was good it woke you up when it did so that it won’t get so bad this time.”

“Yeah.”

She was watching him closely in the dark room. He could feel her eyes on him. “Do you think you can lie back down and go to sleep again?”

“Y-yeah. Probably so.”

“What’s the matter, Jude?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. He was trapped in place. Couldn’t make himself move.

“We could put some music on? Or turn on the TV? Some sort of distraction? Would that help?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

After a few moments’ hesitation, Eve got up and grabbed the television remote and flipped it on, quickly finding a channel that was playing history documentaries with a steady, mellow narration.

“How’s that?”

“Good.” He sat for another minute, then got up to go to the bathroom, wash his hands, and splash water on his face.

When he returned to the bedroom, Eve was under the covers on her side. He climbed in beside her and closed his eyes, letting the soothing monotone of the documentary wash over him. He wasn’t listening to the words. He couldn’t have even said what the topic of the program was. But the background sound was better than listening to the thoughts in his own brain.

After a while, the pill started to take effect. A familiar grogginess blurred the pain in his head. He glanced over toward Eve and saw her eyes were on him. “I’m okay,” he told her.

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