Page 195 of In Somnis

At least I spent the two days reading every peer-reviewed paper on PCOS I could find, which means I am now, conservatively, more informed on the subject than most general practitioners. I know the hormonal cascade, the insulin resistance, the chronic inflammation, the cruelty of a condition that is both common and routinely dismissed. I know what it does to the body over the years and what it does to a person’s relationship with that body over the same years.

I did this because it felt productive.

It was not, in any measurable way, productive.

She still hasn’t texted.

“I can’t find⁠—”

“Help me.”

I run faster.

She asked for slow, so that’s what I will give her. I will give her whatever she needs, in whatever increments she can accept. I can do that.

What I cannot do is lose her.

For five years, I dreamed I would kill her, and then I found her, and hit her with my car—my nightmare made real, except she survived, which leaves the question of what this new nightmare means I’ve had for two nights now.

She’s trapped.

Someone takes her from me.

I don’t know if it’s fear dressed up as vision or a vision dressed up as fear.

I don’t know which answer I’m more afraid of.

I run another half mile before I let myself think about what I’m going to say when I text her. By the time I’m home, showered, and dressed, I’ve mostly stopped hearing her voice. That’s the best I can reasonably hope for at seven in the morning.

I stand at the kitchen window with my coffee, look at the garden, which needs tending, and spend a couple of minutes thinking about nothing before I pick up my phone. Then I text Renée, because texting her is easier than texting Lennon, and I still don’t know what I want to say to Lennon.

Won’t make breakfast this morning. Sorry.

Her response comes back within two minutes.

Renée

Are you not feeling well? Do you need anything?

All fine. Just an early start today. But thanks.

I set the phone face down on the counter.

Nothing is fine. My hands are not entirely steady, and I lied to my sister-in-law over a text, which is a new low, even by the standards of the last two days. But Renée will hear it in my voice if I call, and I don’t have the bandwidth to be managed right now. I just need to work.

I pick up my bag and keys, and then reach for my phone, putting it in my bag without opening the thread with Lennon, and go out to my bike.

The Vaughn house is quiet when I arrive. I lock my bike at the gate and come up the path. The front door opens before I’ve reached it.

Nora Vaughn looks at me with the sharpness she always has, that assessing quality that I’ve come to understand is not unfriendliness but simply the expression of a woman who has spent twelve years watching for changes in things that mostly don’t change.

Then she looks at me more carefully. “Paul,” she says. Not Dr. Bennett. Just Paul for the first time in six years of this arrangement. The shift is small enough that someone else might not notice it.

I notice it.

“You’re early today. Are you all right?”

“I’m trying to be.”