Chapter 36 Sloan
Sloan
Then - Seattle
Our bed has navy sheets.
But I ordered a seafoam-green set today and bought a plant because I read online that calming colours have a soothing effect, and houseplants don’t just purify your air, they’re supposed to promote a sense of vitality.
All things that, according to this one blog I found, promote a positive and harmonious environment in accordance with feng shui principles, and might help to reduce migraine frequency and severity.
I’m not a stranger to an internet rabbit hole—I’ve spent a lot of my life researching things that someone else might find irrelevant.
But today, I might be the deepest I’ve ever been in one.
No one’s come to my office hours, and usually that would bother me. But I can’t imagine someone would stay if they did try to walk in and see me—hunched over my laptop, eyes bloodshot from the screen and the tiny text.
I might buy an acupressure mat, too. Or, a gift card to this traditional Chinese medicine practice not too far from our house. There’s this one study from the Journal of Naturopathic Medicine I found that had some promising figures.
And that entire text I read last night about ancient remedies and practices dating back to 100 BC.
Maybe I’ll buy both.
I’m about to click through my cart—a consultation and three sessions should be enough to get started—when there’s a gentle knock on the door.
My supervisor stands there, dark hair pulled back, tiny threads of grey interspersed and visible in her ponytail. She has her arms crossed, casual, and a kind smile on her face. “Sloan.”
“Dr. Amore.” I slam the laptop shut, sitting up straight and blinking a bit too much. “I was just doing a bit of research. It’s been quiet today.”
“For your proposal?”
It’s what I should be researching.
But I haven’t picked up my proposal for my dissertation since the day Bohdan got injured. If it were real and on paper, not stuffed in a folder on my computer, it’d be covered in three months’ worth of dust.
“Oh. No. Sorry—I know I’m late on it, I just—”
She shakes her head softly, her smile moving from kind to a sort of patient understanding that makes me feel like shrinking down beneath my desk.
“It’s okay, Sloan. You can take as long as you need. You’ve got a lot going on.”
Sympathy flashes in her eyes.
I swallow, nodding, and start tapping my fingers on the desk. “I’ll be back on top of it soon. Bohdan just needs—”
“How’s he feeling?” she interrupts, but it’s not unkind. It’s laced with the same pity living in her eyes. “I saw he retired.”
He did. Sort of.
He announced he wouldn’t be playing the rest of the season at a press conference a few weeks ago.
Those were the words his publicist gave him, anyway. That he’d be focused on conditioning and his health so he could try to come back next season.
The words weren’t written like a death sentence. But when he said them out loud, wincing under all those bright lights and against the flashing cameras, and when he stumbled over the word try—they sounded like one.
Like someone was ringing a bell in an old town square, welcoming the world to his execution.
“He’s just taking a break. For the rest of the season.” I force a smile, my throat burns, and the tapping of my fingers increases.
Dr. Amore’s eyes cut down to my hands, a crease sketches between her brow, and she nods. “I’m sorry, I misspoke. And how are you doing?”
“Me?” I blink. There’s a funny sort of irony to her question.
I’ve spent my whole life thinking about myself—how rotten, how bad, how maybe secretly evil I must be—and the only thing that’s ever rewritten the story was Bohdan’s injury.
His headaches are my intrusive thoughts.
The blood in his brain that cleared up on its own is what haunts me when I look in the mirror.
Bohdan. Bohdan. Bohdan.
And everything I can do to make him feel better.
To fix him the way he fixed me when he picked me out of a crowd of thousands of people and made me feel like I was worthy for the first time in my life.
I blink again with a shake of my head. “I’m okay. I’ve learned a lot about alternative therapies for migraines. Acupuncture. Feng shui—I just bought some new sheets. They’re a light green. It’s supposed to be soothing. I thought it might help.”
She looks at me like she feels a bit sorry for me.
But she shouldn’t, he’s going to love them.
And it’s not that he doesn’t.
He might, I can’t be sure.
Bohdan never talked much before, but he certainly doesn’t talk much now.
I sit, propped up in our bed, the new seafoam-green sheets pooling around my legs—the navy ones are buried in the closet—a text on herbal remedies open against my knees instead of anything else I should be reading.
I have a perfect view from here of Bohdan stepping out of the shower in the en suite. He dries his hair, wincing only a little when the towel touches his head, and he moves through the prescription bottles on the counter in the order they sit.
The first antidepressant.
The extra-strength ibuprofen prescribed to him.
He skips over the triptans—a good sign his head might not be bothering him too much—but he does take a sleeping pill.
His eyes used to find me first in any room, but he sort of looks right through me—probably through everything, actually—and he drops to his side of the bed.
“Do you like them?” I ask, tugging on the sheets.
Bohdan blinks, scrubbing his face and wincing slightly when his fingertips graze the cut along his forehead, still raised and pink against usually golden skin. “Like what?”
“The sheets.” I tug the sheet up again, trying to smile.
His eyes skip over those, too, and he shrugs, dropping his head against the pillow. “Didn’t even notice them.”
“They sort of match the new plant in the windowsill.” I point half-heartedly towards the pothos draped across the ledge, leaves curled outwards, waiting for the morning sun.
He presses his eyes shut, fingers finding the bridge of his nose. “What plant?”
He’s not being rude, and even though he falls asleep right beside me, even though I watch his breathing, the way his eyes flick under his closed eyelids, tracking something that I hope might be a good dream, he’s just . . . not really there anymore.