Page 151 of Break Me

This is the first day I can see it.

And I know it won't be the last.

Raven

The house is quiet when we step inside, as if even the walls have begun to understand that something has changed.

Sam moves ahead of me without saying anything. I stand just inside the doorway for a moment and watch him reach for the cabinet, pull a pan from the stove, and open the refrigerator with the same calm focus he brings to everything. There’s something unbearable about how normal he makes it look. How he keeps life intact, all while I feel everything shifting beneath us.

It’s not a dramatic shift. I’m not stumbling or reaching for walls to hold me up. I’m not falling apart in some cinematic way. It’s smaller and more humiliating in a way. It’s there in the half-second hesitation before each step. In the way my body seems to renegotiate with me before agreeing to do what I ask of it.

“Sit,” Sam says, not looking at me yet as he sets the pan down on the stove. “I’ve got this.”

“I can help.”

He glances over, his eyes full of tenderness. “You can sit and rest,” he says.

On any other day I’d argue with him, but today I don’t have the energy for it. So, I do the only thing I can. I pull out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and carefully lower myself into it.

Sam moves around the kitchen quietly. Watching him doing something so domestic has always been one of my favorite things to do. The familiarity of it should comfort me, and in some ways it does, but the other part of me is too busy riding the waves of nausea and trying too hard to ignore the heaviness behind my eyes from the strange depth of this new exhaustion.

I rest my hands in my lap and stare at the grain of the table.

This is what frightens me the most. It’s not the diagnosis itself. The terror from that shock has already come and settled.

This is different.

It’s the knowing and experiencing of what’s always been ordinary parts of life, afternoons in the garage and making meals together, that my body now struggles to keep up with.

Sam sets a plate in front of me a few minutes later, scrambled eggs with cheese and toast, one of my favorites, something I’ve eaten a hundred times without thinking, something that shouldn’t feel impossible now.

“Try a little,” he coaxes gently.

My eyes find his. I don't say anything. I don't have to.

It matters to him.

And maybe it matters to me, too.

Because eating dinner shouldn't feel like something I have to fight for. Because I want there to be ordinary things I can still do, even if they're getting harder.

I wrap my fingers around the fork and take the first bite. It goes down easily enough. Perhaps this afternoon was nothing more than an off moment, and I’m already on the other side of it.

The second bite takes more effort.

By the third, nausea bubbles low in my stomach, and I have to force myself not to react to it. To not set the fork down too quickly or close my eyes or let any of this show on my face.

I keep my eyes on the plate. I chew. I swallow. I tell myself to keep going.

Across from me, Sam says nothing. That almost makes it harder.

If he pushed, if he questioned, if he watched me with too much of that careful attention he’s been giving me lately, maybe I could deflect it. I could get irritated and call him bossy and turn this into something playful and familiar. But he doesn’t do that. He leans against the counter with his arms folded loosely across his chest and lets me have the silence.

I take another bite, smaller this time, and almost immediately regret it. The food’s delicious, comforting, but my body’s decided it doesn’t want it there. There’s something maddening about the distance between the two realities. Between knowing I should eat and being able to eat are no longer the same thing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sam move. He doesn’t say anything. Just pushes off the counter and crosses the kitchen. By the time I set my fork down, he’s at the table. A small white pill appears beside my plate.

“You don’t have to force it,” Sam says quietly.