Chapter 27 - Marco #2
He touched my face. “I know. You don’t want to need anyone. You don’t want to cost anyone. You don’t want to be the reason your family suffers again. I understand that.”
My eyes stung immediately.
“But you’re not making this decision alone anymore.”
I shook my head. “You don’t get to just—just take over everything.”
“No. I get to keep you alive.”
He picked up the papers from the bed again and held them out between us.
“I already called.”
“You what?”
“The doctor you’ve been seeing has been missing things for months. Or dismissing them. Either possibility makes him useless to me.” His voice remained calm. “I found someone better. You have an appointment tomorrow.”
My heart gave a small, panicked stutter. “Alexei—”
“Tomorrow,” he repeated. “And before you say no, understand that I’m not asking.”
I looked at him in disbelief. “You made me a doctor’s appointment without asking me?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t get how impossible you are.”
“I do. I simply don’t care.”
A small, involuntary laugh escaped me.
“There,” he murmured. “That’s better.”
“It’s not better,” I said, dropping my hands. “You’re terrifying.”
“You like that about me.”
I stared at him. Then I groaned softly and let myself fall sideways into his shoulder because arguing was useless. His arm came around me immediately.
“I mean it,” I muttered into his shirt. “I can’t afford some elite doctor.”
“You can’t,” he agreed, “but I can.”
My fingers curled into the fabric of his sleeve. “This is too much,” I whispered.
His hand smoothed slowly over my hair. “No,” he said. “This is the bare minimum.”
Alexei gave me a few minutes first.
Just enough that I could wash my face properly, brush my teeth, and stand in front of the bathroom mirror.
I looked wrecked, honestly. My lashes were clumped from crying, my curls were flattened on one side from sleep and damp at the edges from where I had splashed cold water onto my face.
By the time I came out, he was waiting for me just outside the bathroom door.
He looked me over immediately, not in the way he sometimes did that made heat crawl up my neck, but clinically, almost anxiously, as if checking to make sure I hadn’t dissolved in the last five minutes.
“You took longer than necessary.”
I blinked at him.
“Your face is less pale.”
“That is a terrifyingly specific thing to say before breakfast.”
He shook his head, then guided me downstairs with one hand at the small of my back.
The kitchen smelled like strawberries. Alexei pulled out a chair for me.
“We have to change your diet.”
I blinked. “Why?”
He set a plate in front of me. There were sliced strawberries arranged around something that looked like baked oats and Greek yogurt layered with crushed nuts and seeds. Next to it sat a glass of what looked like a strawberry smoothie, pale pink and much too healthy to be trusted.
“I read too much salt is bad. Processed food is bad. Excess sugar isn’t ideal. Fried food is bad. Energy drinks are obviously idiotic. Highly caffeinated garbage isn’t helping you. You need potassium, magnesium, better fats, better protein, more consistent meals, less skipping meals entirely.”
I just looked at him. He kept going.
“Also,” he said, “if your heart is already under strain, then starving yourself half the day and then eating whatever is nearest is no longer an option.”
“When,” I asked carefully, “did you read all of that?”
“This morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes.”
“When this morning?”
He gave me a flat look. “Between deciding your previous doctor was incompetent, making Ilya stalk your information, and ordering your breakfast.”
“When did you make the appointment?”
“Before dawn.”
“When did you decide my doctor was incompetent?”
“The moment I saw the dates you missed and the medication schedule he gave you.”
I sighed, then. He had already pulled a little cluster of pill bottles and blister packs from beside the table. My stomach dropped.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I read the information sheet on all of these.”
“Of course you did.”
“These five,” he pointed out, separating them with absurd precision, “need to be taken before your meal. The rest after. Correct?”
He had lined them up by dosage and timing.
“When,” I whispered, “did you have time to read that too?”
He looked faintly offended. “Marco.”
“I hate this part,” I muttered and then I picked up the first set and swallowed them one by one with water while he watched like a hawk making sure none of them disappeared mysteriously into a napkin. By the fourth one, my face had already twisted into a full grimace.
“You look like I’m poisoning you.”
“It feels like you’re poisoning me.”
“They are literally prescribed to keep you alive.”
“They still taste evil.”
“Like lemons?”
“Yeah..” I furrow my eyebrows “Wait, how do you know that?” He smiled and then shrugged.
When I swallowed the last one, I made an involuntary face so dramatic that even I could not defend it.
Alexei picked up a sliced strawberry from the plate and held it in front of my mouth.
“Open your mouth,” he said, and fed me the strawberry.
It was cold and sweet and perfectly ripe, and the medicinal bitterness in my mouth softened under the sugar.
Then he picked up his own coffee, took one sip, and said with complete seriousness, “You’ll get another one after the next set.”
I stared at him. “You’re reward-training me?”
“No.”
“You absolutely are.”
“No,” he repeated calmly. “I am making medication adherence less miserable.”
“With strawberries.”
“Yes.”
“That’s reward training.”
He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “Do you want the second strawberry or not?”
I shut my mouth immediately. He set the cup down with maddening satisfaction.
I took a bite of the baked oats and had to pause. It was actually good. “This tastes expensive.”
“It is.”
I sighed. “There is no winning with you.”
“That depends,” he said, thoughtful. “What exactly are you trying to win?”
I wasn’t trying to win, was I?
I was trying not to drown.
Trying not to cost too much.
Trying not to need too much.
He leaned back again, but only after reaching out and brushing one thumb lightly under my eye. “You look exhausted.”
“I feel exhausted.”
“You need to sleep more.”
I gave him a flat look. “That’s rich coming from the man who climbs through my window before dawn.”
Guilt flickered across his face. It was there and gone so fast I might have imagined it.