“Animal meds are the same as human meds?”
“Not really, but it’s close enough.”
She shrugs, regretting the action. “Oh, okay then. I’m sure they won’t mind.”
Nora’s not worried about antibiotics. She’ll take whatever he wants to give her without question, so long as it’s not an opioid or narcotic. She accepts the pills he places into her palm and swallows them without any resistance.
He moves with a kind of mechanical wariness after that, laying out the rest of the supplies, opening boxes, reading labels by the dull light, and tracing the veterinary handwriting with a thumb as if it could tell him which bottles are safe for future use. His brows furrow in concentration as he tries to make this feel ordinary, no different than making coffee, but the way he lingers over each bottle gives him away. Then there’s a flicker of faint hesitation that makes her wonder if he’s merely distracting himself from other things.
“Listen to me, if you can’t take deep breaths, your risk of infection skyrockets. I’m not a doctor, obviously, but Oliver was on a cocktail of pain pills all so he could breathe as normally as possible.”
Ah, there it is. Agreeing with his logic doesn’t mean she’s willing or able to relent. “I can’t.”
“Hear me out—”
“I said I can’t.” Nora bites her lip, her inhales growing shallower by the second. “You don’t understand. I’ve been clean for so long now, so fucking long. I can’t be that person again, andit would be so easy, Theo. It’s who I am below the surface. It’s just waiting.”
“It isn’t who you are. It’s who someone forced you to be. You don’t have to suffer.”
Maybe I deserve to suffer, is what she only thinks instead of speaking aloud.
Her anxious worries land between them, and suddenly the room is full of the old ghosts she thought she’d fenced in. He doesn’t flinch away from them. Instead, he leans forward as if to catch her before she falls.
“This isn’t about getting high,” he continues. “It’s about staying alive. It’s not the same thing, and you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you the whole time. Just like you were with me.”
She only shakes her head, hating herself and her ex-husband, whom she would once again like to drag up from his grave to punish for rewiring her brain so much that she can’t give her body the best chance at survival. She pictures her past as a series of traps, each one having snagged a hook deep into her skin already. She isn’t willing to fall victim again. Her fingers clamp around the thin edge of the cot, her knuckles whitening as she tries to keep herself steady.
“I’m not trying to make you do something you don’t want to do,” he nearly whispers. “I swear I’m not. It’s just really hard to watch you suffer when I know we’ve got medication that can—”
“Then don’t watch,” she cuts in. All she wants is to be with him, yet here she is pushing him away.
“Hey, hey. I’m sorry. I won’t ask again.”
Her face cracks and breaks on a hard exhale. How does she explain how awful this choice is? How does she make him understand that the only thing as terrifying as losing him is succumbing to the addiction she thought she shook? “The last time I relapsed, it was the day I found out I lost my daughter. It wasn’t even right away, either. I resisted for a couple days, butit got me in the end. It always got me. The only reason I’m still sober now is because Gwen helped me get clean.”
The principle of the matter is as important as the practical. She has struggled so damn hard to resist all these years. Giving in now will make it all for nothing.
“If you’re worried about not being able to quit. Well, there’s good news about that. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There are no refills up here.”
He’s right, of course. She couldn’t maintain an addiction here even if she tried. Her ribs flare, and she shivers, shaking her head. Too damn stubborn to allow herself any relief. “Let me try to wait until tomorrow. It might ease on its own. We don’t know how bad it is. I stopped coughing up blood already, that has to be a good sign.”
“Alright,” he agrees, though she can see how it pains him to watch her writhe without any way to help.
“Just stay with me?”
“Always.”
Theo leans back in the chair, holding her hand that hangs over the edge of the cot while she tries and fails to rest. The penguin appears from somewhere else in the building, waddling over hesitantly as if he can tell that everyone is on edge. Theo pats his lap, and he jumps right up, letting him stroke dense, oil-slicked fur.
There is a ridiculous softness in that moment. The penguin’s contented cooing, the soft rustling of feathers against his clothes, all make the place feel less like a disaster zone and more like the only home either of them has left.
“Do you want to tell me about your daughter?” he asks softly. “We haven’t spoken much about her. Unless it hurts your ribs too much to talk.”
“I don’t talk about her because it hurts worse than my ribs.” It’s a practiced habit by now to shove every thought of her childinto a far-off box in her mind that never sees the light of day. It’s how she managed to keep going this whole time, by living in strict denial. Yet when faced with such an uncertain future, all she wants is to tell Theo about the daughter he’ll never meet. “I never wanted kids. I thought it was a terrible idea to bring one into that house. And then there she was, and I couldn’t remember life without her. Her father was an asshole, but she was kind and gentle. She liked picking flowers when I walked her to school, and counting the stars at night. She loved animals. She would lose it right now, being so close to a real-life penguin.”
Theo’s thumb caresses her hand, but he stays silent, letting her continue even as her voice catches.
“Then she was gone, and it felt like the best part of me died too. I was so apathetic about my own life afterward. I didn’t care what happened to me. When the plane was crashing, I almost welcomed it because I might see her again. I don’t even know if I believe in anything after, but in that moment, I was willing to hope. Crazy, right?”
