Page 5 of Sick(ness)

There was a faint scrape, as if he shifted his weight closer to the door. Then, after a moment that stretched longer than it should have, he asked quietly,

“You’re not sick… are you?”

The question hung there, heavy as smoke.

Addy’s breath caught. For a heartbeat, she didn’t know how to answer. The words themselves shouldn’t have hurt, but something in his tone—careful, wary—made her chest tighten.

She swallowed hard, the dryness in her throat making it hard to form words. “No,” she said finally, too quickly. “No, I don’t think so.”

He didn’t respond right away. She could almost hear him thinking, weighing her voice, deciding if he believed her.

“I’m fine,” she added, softer this time, as if to convince them both. “I’ve been careful. Haven’t left since… since it started.”

A faint exhale filtered through the door, the kind that might’ve been relief—or possibly just exhaustion. “Good,” he said at last. “That’s good.”

She almost laughed, the sound thin and shaky. “You?”

A beat of silence, then: “Still breathing.”

Something about the way he said it made her throat ache. Not exactly reassurance, but the closest thing either of them had left.

The silence stretched again, thick and uncertain. She wanted to ask him if he’d seen the family down the hall, if he knew what was happening outside, if there was any plan—but the words wouldn’t come. It was as if a part of her was afraid that saying them out loud would make everything more real.

Instead, she asked the safest thing she could think of. “Do you… have water? Or food?”

There was a pause—a quiet hesitation, not nervous, just deliberate. Then his answer came, calm and steady, through the door.

“Yeah. Plenty.”

Addy blinked. The certainty in his voice surprised her. Everyone she knew had been scrambling—raiding stores, panicking over empty shelves—but Sawyer sounded… composed. Prepared.

“You stocked up?” she asked.

“Always do,” he said simply. “Keeps the surprises to a minimum.”

His tone wasn’t smug, just matter-of-fact. Like someone who had long accepted that the world could turn upside down at any time. She pictured him now—the quiet neighbor she’d only seen in passing, always carrying boxes or tools up the stairs, always alone. She’d barely noticed him before all this. He was the kind of man who moved through the world like a shadow, steady and unshaken.

“I’ve got water, canned goods, propane,” he went on. “Couple of months’ worth, if I stretch it.”

Addy shifted her weight, pressing her shoulder against the door. She’d only meant to ask if he had enough to get by, not for an inventory—but somehow hearing it helped. The practicality of it, the quiet order behind his words, like a candle in the dark.

“I’ve got a little food,” she said, trying to sound as if she wasn’t envious. “Not much.”

“Ration it,” he said. “Eat small, drink smaller. You can go longer than you think without a full meal. Not so much without water.”

The way he spoke—firm, detached—wasn’t comforting exactly, but it was grounding. Addy hadn’t realized how much she needed someone to sound sure about anything.

A faint crackle came through the wood. She frowned. “Is that—?”

“Radio,” he said. “Shortwave. Been picking up what I can. Mostly static now, but sometimes there’s chatter. Civil defense channels. They’re saying the worst of it’s hitting the cities—Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha. Doesn’t take long for things to fall apart when the grid goes down.”

Addy’s stomach knotted. “And here?”

“Quiet,” he said after a beat. “Honestly, too quiet. But that’s better than what’s coming from the cities.”

The words landed heavily. There was a strange comfort in his certainty, even if the truth behind it made her skin crawl.

“You were ready for this,” she said softly.