Page 285 of The Fall
My fatigue is so terrible I can barely lift my head, and thick, agonizing fog replaces my thoughts. Dr. Lin warned about these setbacks, but knowing they’re lurking and waiting to pounce doesn’t make enduring them any easier.
“Hey.” Blair sits carefully beside me in bed. “Scale of one to ten?”
“Twelve.” The word takes effort. “Maybe thirteen.”
“Want me to read?”
We discovered early on that his voice helps when my head gets this bad. It’s a low, steady rumble that cuts through the static in my skull.
The smallest nod is all the answer he needs.
He pulls out the novel we’ve been working through. Blair’s not much of a reader, but he’s become excellent over these past few months. He settles close enough that his warmth seeps into me and begins where we left off.
I feel his voice more than hear it at first, his steady cadence pulling me through the worst of the pain. My thoughts drift in and out, tide pools filling and emptying as he reads. His voice becomes the thread I follow when everything else is chaos.
The pain recedes incrementally with each page turned. I focus on his thumb absently stroking my arm, the way he pauses occasionally to check that I’m still with him.
“Keep going,” I whisper when he stops to check on me.
My body unclenches, muscle by muscle. He reads through two chapters, and gradually the crushing pain eases enough to let me surface from the agony.
“Better?” he asks when my eyes focus properly again.
“Yeah.” I catch his hand, bring it to my lips. “Thank you.”
“Always.”
The nightmare comes for Blair at three a.m., leaving him screaming, then gasping. He’s thrashing against invisible water and screaming when he doesn’t reach me in time. I hear my name torn out of his throat. I hear him shout, hear him roar and sob and break.
“I’m here,” I reach for him. “Blair, I’m here.”
His eyes find consciousness like a drowning man finds air, desperate and disoriented, but seeing me snaps him free from his terror’s hold. He clings to me with shaking hands and drags himself close, wrapping around me. “You’re okay,” he whispers. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay. We’re both okay.” I wait, giving him time to return to the present.
“You were in my arms, and you weren’t breathing.”
“I’m here.” I guide his hand to my chest and let him feel my heartbeat.
Blair’s nightmares follow the same theme: me lost, dead, or dying, always beyond his reach. Sometimes he never reaches the Escalade. Sometimes he can never break the window to get me out. Sometimes I never draw in that ragged, gasping breath I did on the bank, the one that brought me back to life while he roared my name, over and over and over.
One night, after a bad nightmare left him sobbing, I told him how I fought to stay conscious in that cold, dark water and how his name was the last thing on my lips before everything went black. I told him that I heard him calling my name, somehow. He kept me there. He kept me here.
Tonight, I lay him on me so my heartbeat is a steady rhythm against his ear. His therapist says the nightmares will fade, but for now we weather them together. I run a hand through his hair until his breathing evens out.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
“Don’t.” I drop a kiss to his temple. “Don’t apologize. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
He holds me tighter, and I match my breathing to his. Outside, a gentle rain has started, droplets tapping against the bedroom’s glass sliding door.
“What time is it?” he asks eventually.
I glance at the bedside clock. “Nearly five.”
“Might as well get up.”
“Want to swim?” The pool has become our sanctuary. The water supports my body, gives me freedom of movement I can’t find on land, and it cradles Blair when he needs the world to slow down.
