It’s another lie, but a half one. He either sleeps too much or not at all.
She nods, slow and thoughtful, and her hand finds mine, stilling my tapping fingers. “What’s that saying? You have to put your own oxygen mask on first?”
She doesn’t understand. Bohdan took care of me. He carried burdens and worries and horrible, ugly thoughts on his back with the promise of me returning the favour one day.
It’s my turn.
“I am. It’s on, I mean. My mask.” I make a vague gesture to my face. “I’m getting enough oxygen.” I force a smile. I think I feel the corners of my mouth crack, and if she’d just lean a little closer, she’d see what lives inside me—an entirely oxygen-deprived shell of someone who used to be loved.
Her palm flattens against the back of my hand with a reassuring pat, but I can feel what it’s really saying—I don’t believe you.
But she grabs her bag and pushes to stand. “I’ll give you another week’s extension. But it needs to be in by then, Sloan. Otherwise, you won’t be on track to finish on time.” She holds up her hands when my face falls, giving me away. “And that would be okay, you know. I don’t think a single PhD in the history of PhDs has been completed on time.”
I start to shake my head, fingers extending into space and desperate for something new to cling to—I certainly can’t count to three on my relationship, and not on this laptop holding the only thing I’m supposed to be good at—but she presses a hand to my shoulder with a reassuring squeeze.
“Take your time. Think about it. You can take a leave or a break if you need. You’re caregiving, after all.”
Dr. Amore leaves me in this crowded café with my shut laptop and those words that really just sound like failure.
You’re caregiving.
Not really. Not the way I think it should look.
I can’t be taking care of Bohdan—at least, not the way he took care of me.
He hardly speaks and when he does, it’s not reallytome, it’s just sort of these strung-together words that fall from the mouthI’ve loved since I was eighteen, not the person who used to live inside the body that’s become a shell.
I can’t be very good at it, if that’s what I’m doing.
It’s another thing I wasn’t enough for.
That new worry slides into my backpack, sitting haphazardly on the ground by my feet, and it nestles right in beside the ones I’ve carried since I was a child.
I feel the weight of them when I slide the straps onto my shoulders.
It makes my steps home slower.
My legs seem heavier when I get on the bus.
I’m thankful for the elevator in our building that takes me all the way to the top—to that glass-walled apartment that’s become a cage.
Maybe Jay was right all along.
Bohdan’s in our bedroom when I get home. All the curtains are drawn, and the last bits of sun peak out from underneath them when they flutter in the breeze.
There’s old game tape playing on the TV in the living room, and there’s an exercise mat on the floor.
None of those things are good signs.
His brain is horribly cruel on days his body doesn’t cooperate.
I gave up trying to tell him that I love him and the capabilities of his body don’t really factor in for me. I don’t think he was really listening, anyway.
I wouldn’t listen to me. I’m clearly not very good at much.
My backpack hits the floor by our door with this impossibly dull thud. It’s all those extra worries. All that baggage. All that not-enoughness that echoes through the empty apartment.
Before Bohdan got hurt, it’s not an echo you’d ever have been able to hear.
