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In those tough times, our savior came in the form of the boy from the building. The one who saved me. The one who seemed to pick up on the problems without my saying it, so food showed up at the door. So did candles.
I hadn’t stayed naive for long about how he made that money—working for one of the local crime syndicates. And while I knew I should have rejected goods bought with dirty money, it was funny how much a hungry stomach could make you forget your morals.
I didn’t know at the time that the reason she had good and bad spells was because there were times when she could, and times when she couldn’t, afford to get treatment.
On a limited income and not quite old enough to receive her social security, there was just no money for health insurance. And if there was no health insurance, out-of-pocket medical expenses were astronomical.
And my grandma was very unwell.
I didn’t know all her diagnoses until I was in my teens, but then I learned it was hypertension, diabetes, kidney failure, and cardiovascular disease.
Uninsured, her dialysis would run several hundreds of dollars per visit. And when she was already struggling to pay for her insulin, yeah, she skipped those treatments as much as possible.
As the years went on, all of her conditions worsened. She got horrific, festering wounds on her feet and legs from her diabetes that required constant care and attention—things I learned to give her since she couldn’t afford to go to the clinic all the time to get dressing changes.
In those days in my teens, though, I got babysitting jobs on the weekends and after school, earning as much as I possibly could, and using pretty much every penny of it toward her treatments. And Seeley, the good guy he was, pitched in as well. While we all pretended we didn’t care where the money came from.
None of it was easy.
And, sometimes, the only reason I was sure I made it through was because of Seeley. Because he was there to keep things light, to lift me up when I was down, to give me a reason to smile and laugh and hope for the future.
“Maybe you’re going to grow up and find a better cure for her conditions.”
That was what he would say when I felt hopeless, when I wondered what was the point of going to medical school, of spending that much time and energy on a career where many people died, despite our best efforts.
While I wanted it to be the case that I could cure her, the rational part of me knew that there was no way I was going to finish school and spend years in the field looking for answers, then find one, before, eventually, she would pass from one or more complications from her chronic conditions.
I understood quite well that my time with my grandmother was limited. It was why I didn’t have much of a life outside of school and caring for her.
Seeley was in my life because he forced his way in, because he was okay just hanging out at our apartment, watching movies and helping me study, because his friendship wasn’t based on how many wild and crazy situations we could get into together.
It was an easy, no pressure friendship.
Though, honestly, as the time went on, it definitely started to become something more for me.
Actually, it took an almost embarrassingly long time for me to recognize the sensations for what they truly were. Especially because I studied human anatomy and the body and all of its workings, so I could be ahead when I got to medical school.
Yet, yeah, I somehow mistook some of the milder signs of affection I felt for him as just… friendly.
It wasn’t until, one particularly rough night with my gran, making me get up from my bed over and over to check on her, leaving me to climb back in when Seeley was already passed out, and I guess not expecting me, he sort of shifted in his sleep and his head rested on my chest right above my breast, that I finally recognized it for what it was.
Because there were… other sensations.
I even followed through on the urge to rest one of my hands on his head, and the other around his waist, holding him to me as I drifted off to sleep.
In the weeks following that, the attraction got harder and harder to ignore. Especially when we got the rare chance when my gran was doing okay and I didn’t have a babysitting job, to go to the beach, and he stripped out of his shirt.
Yeah.
Let’s just say the feelings I felt toward Seeley then were definitely more than friendly.
But I never said anything, never wanted to ruin the friendship, since he was clearly happy with things the way they were.
The absolute last thing in the world I wanted was to tell him, have him not return the feelings, and then screw up the most important relationship I had in my life.
Though, admittedly, as that spring and early summer waged on, it was getting harder and harder not to act on it.
Whenever he looked at me with that cocky smirk. When he gave me a rare, brilliant smile. The kind he only ever seemed to share with me. When he dropped over with a book he picked up just because he thought I would like it. Or when he dropped off chocolate when he knew I was PMSing. Or when some part of his body just casually brushed up against mine.
