22. Elena
Elena
By the end of the first week, time stops behaving properly.
It doesn’t move in days anymore, or mornings or evenings, but in smaller, stranger units.
Intervals marked by the quiet click of the monitor, by the shift of his weight in the chair, by the steady, almost metronomic rhythm of being checked, adjusted, corrected.
Everything narrows until the only thing that really matters is whether the baby is still okay, and whether I am still stable enough to carry that forward into the next hour.
Everything else rearranges itself around that.
Including him .
Cormac is… constant. Not in a suffocating way, which would be easier to push against, easier to resent.
He doesn’t hover or crowd or insert himself where he doesn’t need to be.
If anything, he gives me just enough space that I can pretend, briefly, that I still have some control over what’s happening here.
But he never leaves. That’s the part that matters.
He’s in the chair beside the bed, reading or writing or watching the monitor like it holds the answer to something only he can see.
He’s on the sofa when I wake in the middle of the night, a quiet shift of movement confirming he’s been there the entire time.
He’s in the kitchen making tea I didn’t ask for and setting it down within reach as if it’s just another item on a list I didn’t realize existed.
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He checks. He doesn’t ask what I need. He tells me.
“Sit back.”
“Drink that.”
“Not yet.”
“Breathe properly.”
And the worst part is that I listen. Not because I have to—although, technically, I do—but because there’s something about the way he says it that leaves no room for argument.
No hesitation. No uncertainty. Like everything has already been decided, measured, accounted for, and all I have to do is follow the line he’s drawn.
It should irritate me. It doesn’t.
Which is, frankly, more irritating than if it did. Because the result is always the same: I’m okay, the baby is okay, and the panic that’s been sitting just under my skin since the bleeding started never quite gets the chance to take over completely.
That should be enough, and it almost is.
The first time I notice the shift, it’s so small that I almost miss it.
He’s helping me back from the bathroom, his hand steady at my elbow the way it always is.
Exactly as much contact as necessary and nothing more.
We’ve done this enough times now that it’s routine. Predictable. Almost impersonal.
Except his thumb moves. Just slightly. A subtle shift of pressure against my arm as he steadies me toward the bed.
It’s nothing. It has to be nothing. The kind of incidental contact that happens when you’re guiding someone who isn’t supposed to be walking around in the first place.
Except it doesn’t feel like nothing. It lingers. Not physically—he lets go the second I’m settled—but somewhere else. Somewhere more inconvenient, where I can’t just file it under “clinical” and move on.
I still feel it when I pull the blanket up. When I shift against the pillows he arranged. When he turns away like absolutely nothing has happened.
But I still feel it.
* * *
By the second week, I know Cormac’s patterns better than I want to admit. He’s always there, and when someone is always there, you start noticing things about them whether you intend to or not.
He checks the monitor before he speaks. Always. Data first, then me.
He doesn’t sit fully back in the chair unless I’m asleep. When I’m awake, he leans slightly forward, like he’s ready to move the second something changes.
He notices everything. My breathing, my posture, the way I shift half an inch before I even realize I’m uncomfortable.
“Stop thinking.”
I open my eyes and find him already looking at me. “How do you know I’m thinking?”
“Your breathing changed.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is.”
I give him a look. “It’s invasive.”
“It’s accurate.”
Same thing, but he doesn’t bother responding to that. Just goes back to whatever he’s writing, like the conversation has already run its course.
For him, it probably has. For me, it remains. Because there’s something about being seen so intimately that I don’t quite know what to do with.
* * *
By the third week, it stops being possible to pretend this is just about recovery.
Cormac is still here. Technically, everything is clinical, managed, justified, a clean line of logic that would stand up to anyone looking too closely.
And yet it doesn’t feel neutral anymore.
Not the way his hand settles at my back when I shift, steadying me before I even ask.
Not the way he adjusts the pillows, fingers brushing the edge of my shoulder just long enough to be necessary.
Not the way his voice drops when I’m half asleep and he’s checking my pulse, quiet enough to make the rest of the world irrelevant.
None of it crosses a line, which is the problem. I can’t call it out. I can’t object. I can’t even explain it without sounding insane, inventing something that isn’t there. It’s not him. It’s me. I know that.
Which should make it easier to shut down.
It doesn’t. Because knowing something is wrong doesn’t make it stop.
Because what this feels like is safe. Not soft.
Not gentle. Not something I would have chosen if you’d asked me three months ago.
But safe in a way that burrows under your skin, quiet, stubborn, impossible to argue with.
Safe in the way that comes from knowing nothing escapes him.
That when something goes wrong, he doesn’t hesitate—he moves.
Liam never felt like that.
I close my eyes and try not to remember dinner two years ago. Liam, talking too much, filling every silence like he was afraid of it, and Cormac sitting across the table, saying almost nothing, watching everything. Not like this. Not wanting. Just noticing. The wrong kind of noticing.
I ignored it then. I chose Liam. And now I’m here, in what is technically Cormac’s apartment, in his bed, letting him tell me when to move, when to stay still, when to breathe, and feeling safer than I ever did with the man I once chose.
“What happens when this is over?” The words slip out before I can stop them.
Cormac doesn’t answer immediately, which makes me look at him. “When what is over?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“So answer.”
He closes the chart slowly, lifts his gaze, steady, unflinching. “For now, you remain here.”
“That’s not what I asked. What about you?”
A pause. “I return to the clinic. As a father.”
Clean. Simple. Like nothing about this dynamic between us has shifted.
I look away before he can read my face. “Right.”
I should feel relieved. I don’t. I just feel hollow, exposed, too aware that he’s leaving the space we’ve built, even if it’s just the apartment and not me.
The check at the end of the third week is different. Not anything he’s doing. What it means. I watch his face instead of the monitor, searching for an answer he isn’t offering.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It’s not meant to be.”
My fingers tighten in the sheet. “Cormac.”
He looks at me properly then. The kind of look that stops your own thoughts in mid-air. “Answer me.”
A beat. “It’s stable.”
“And the risk?”
“Reduced.”
Not gone. Just less. I exhale, tension slipping in a way I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Okay.”
He finishes the check, resetting everything like it’s routine. “You can resume modified activity.”
I sit up slowly, my body unfamiliar after weeks of stillness, and watch him start packing things away. The deliberate, meticulous movements of someone who knows everything that matters in this space, even when he’s leaving it.
“You’ll leave,” I say before I can stop myself.
He pauses, looks at me. “That depends.”
“On what?”
His gaze holds mine, steady, precise, unyielding. “Do you want me to leave?”
And there it is. Not a command. Not a decision already made. A question. The kind you can’t dodge.
Yes. Of course yes.
I should want space back. Independence. Distance. I should want him gone. It’s the correct answer.
But it just isn’t true.
Because I don’t want the chair empty. I don’t want the quiet. I don’t want to wake up and not know he’s in the next room. I don’t want to lose whatever this has become, even if I can’t name it without sounding desperate.
I look at him, trying to say something that makes sense. “I…”
Nothing comes. A first, because I always have something to say. But this isn’t something I can frame neatly. The answer to his question is yes, and no.
But mostly no.
He watches me closely, as if measuring the shape of my indecision. And then, like he’s decided not to push, he leans just slightly closer.
“Rest,” he says.
Back to routine. Back to safety. Back to something all too familiar. Like the question never existed.
I lie back slowly, turning my face away because looking at him now feels like giving something away I won’t get back. The room settles, and it’s quiet again.
And for the first time since this started, I wish he hadn’t asked.