Chapter 22
FLETCHER
The two days at the cabin are not nearly enough.
They slip through my fingers too fast, leaving behind the echo of quiet mornings and the illusion that we could stay suspended there a little longer—away from schedules, doctors, and expectations. Away from the world that keeps asking Vince to measure himself in losses.
We get home late Sunday night, unloading the car in near silence, moving around each other with the tired familiarity of people who don’t want the weekend to officially end.
There isn’t time to ease back into reality.
Just enough time to shower, crawl into bed, and pretend for a few hours that tomorrow isn’t waiting.
Vince has Monday off. I don’t.
I wish I did. Not because I need the rest, but because I can already see his thoughts drifting—his mind slipping back into that place where questions stack up faster than answers, where hope feels conditional.
The cabin gave us room to breathe, but it didn’t erase the truth waiting for us here.
We didn’t escape it nearly as much as we needed to.
I’d also hoped—stupidly, maybe—that the weekend would give me clarity.
That somewhere between the slow mornings and the honest conversations, I’d know where I stand with him.
That I’d come home with something solid to hold onto.
Instead, I got honesty. Careful words. A few maybes.
Talk of a future that only exists in hypotheticals, fragile enough that neither of us wanted to press too hard.
Will today always be enough for you?
The question still echoes, lodged somewhere in my chest. I’m not sure why it hurt as much as it did—only that it did.
Maybe because underneath it all is the fear I try not to name.
That Vince is already halfway gone. That he’s quietly preparing for a future where I choose differently.
Where I wake up one day and decide loving him costs too much.
I see it in the way he counts things now.
Symptoms. Appointments. Bad days. He stacks them all against us like proof, like evidence he’s building a case I never asked for.
The fear of losing mobility sits at the center of it all, heavy and unspoken, like it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the final reason.
Vince believes he’s a burden to me.
I don’t know how to convince him he’s not—how to make him see that he’s made my life easier, not harder. Fuller. Brighter in ways I didn’t know I was missing. The idea of losing him doesn’t feel hypothetical at all.
It feels crushing.
Monday evening I order us takeout for dinner and we eat in silence. On Tuesday, the day of the appointment, Vince wakes up long before I do. I find him in the kitchen, staring out the window. All the lights are off, and his attention is on something unseen.
I want to go to him. Wrap my arms around him and try to absorb some of his anxiety. But if I’ve learned anything about Vince, it’s that sometimes he needs space to feel things before he can say them out loud. So I give him room and try to believe he’ll come to me when he’s ready.
I cling to his vague promise of today while we pull our jackets on.
I cling to it while we get in the truck.
I cling to it when his knee bounces the entire drive to the doctor’s office.
I cling to it as we ride the elevator to the fourth floor.
And I let it wash over me again as we enter the empty waiting room. It smells of disinfectant and artificial lavender, making my stomach churn, the way it always does in places where bad news lives.
An older woman with ruby red glasses checks us in, and we sit together under a window.
Vince’s shoulders are tight as he fills out the paperwork, his jaw locked.
I spend the next fifteen minutes watching him instead of my phone, cataloging the signs of his illness the way I’ve learned to—whether I wanted to or not.
How his fingers flex like the nerves are misfiring, how he shifts his weight every few seconds, and the heat pouring off him.
Each symptom is worse today, more evident. It’s as though stress is an amplifier.
After turning in the clipboard, he slips away to use the restroom.
I pull out my phone and add a few things to the list I’ve been creating since December.
Vince doesn’t know about the list. I’m not sure how he’d feel if he did.
I started it after his stay in the hospital, as a way of looking for patterns more than anything else.
It’s nearly forty bullet points long now, which doesn’t feel like enough, but hopefully it’ll be useful.
Has Vince been cataloguing his symptoms too? Or has he simply been living through them, drifting from one moment of relief to another?
If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t want to keep a list—a physical log of how frequently my body betrayed me. It would only make the fear worse. I’d want to forget it, try to pretend it wasn’t happening.
I give him a reassuring smile as he returns, tucking my phone away. I want so desperately to hold his hand but settle for wrapping an arm across the back of his seat instead.
“Remind me to call Declan after this,” he murmurs. “He wanted an update.”
“I will.”
I’ll be the one calling Declan. Vince is going to crash after this. I can already feel myself bracing for it.
The door opens, and a nurse steps out holding an iPad. “Vincent Mercer?”
Ice-cold dread washes over him. I can see it in his eyes.
I stand without thinking. There’s no discussion about whether I’m coming with him. I just do. Just like I did with him at his MRI. It’s what I’m here for.
The exam room is small. Too bright. The posters are intimidating and downright scary, portraying the exact future that Vince has been trying not to imagine for months, with canes and wheelchairs and invasive medical exams. He keeps his attention on the floor, expression blank, like he’s focused on a mission.
My palms are clammy when the doctor finally comes in. I sit up straighter, tugging my shirt. Vince barely moves.
Dr. Benson wastes no time opening Vince’s file. Before he starts, I pull out a small silver device from my pocket.
“I’m sorry, but do you mind if we record this? Just so we can revisit things later? Since this is Vince’s first appointment, I mean. I just thought it might be overwhelming.”
The doctor smiles behind his small spectacles. “Of course.”
Vince turns to me, expression completely blank. I can’t tell what he’s thinking as I hit the button and set it on the counter. Maybe I should’ve asked him about it. Shit, what if I’m overstepping again?
I chew my lip and rub my hands together.
The doctor goes over the MRI scan, his most recent bloodwork, and a million other things. A lot of it goes over my head, but there are some things I recognize from the dozens of articles I’ve read on multiple sclerosis—lesions, inflammation, progression.
Still, it’s one thing to read about the illness, and another to witness someone you love experiencing it.
Every symptom he describes, every possibility feels like a glimpse into the life Vince has been fearing.
It physically hurts me to think about him going through spinal taps and other tests.
Or losing his vision. Dr. Benson even said paralysis is possible in extreme cases.
He talks about his future like it’s a checklist of appointments, gradual breakdowns, and general inevitabilities—and each thing seems to hit Vince harder than the last.
“Are you okay?” Dr. Benson asks.
Vince doesn’t reply, attention on his hand, which is shaking against his leg. “Y-yeah,” he says. “It’s just a lot.”
Dr. Benson leans forward. “I know. I wish I could sugarcoat some of this, but it wouldn’t help you.”
His tone isn’t rude—not even a little. He’s patient and kind.
Vince answers every question, nodding like he’s grasping what the doctor is saying, but I can see he’s half checked out—his mind protecting him from all the awful scenarios.
There are some things that even hit me like a sledgehammer, no matter how much I’d prepared myself to hear them.
“There’s no clear timeline.”
“Everyone’s MS progresses differently.”
“We’ll monitor things closely and adjust medications as needed.”
“Wait and see.”
Vince visibly flinches at that one. Wait and see.
As if waiting all these months hasn’t been torture enough!
The walls of the room seem to close in. I flatten a hand on my stomach, feeling a little sick. Not for me—for Vince. For the weight settling into his future.
This was supposed to give him answers, and it’s not.
I shift a little closer to Vince. He’s staring at his hands, rubbing his thumb into his palm. I can tell from his expression that they’re tingling. How badly I want to take it away… take all of this away so he doesn’t have to suffer.
“There are some other tests we need to discuss, and as I already mentioned we’ll need to schedule another MRI in six months. We’ll continue this for two years,” the doctor continues. “It’ll make it clear how fast the multiple sclerosis is progressing.”
“Actually.” I sit up. “I might be able to help with that too.” Pulling my phone out, I swipe to the Notes app. “I’ve been keeping track of some of his symptoms since his hospital stay. These are from December 10th until now.”
Vince blinks at me. “You… what?”
“Yeah, I made a log of them. Dates and any details I could think of. When you’re sore. When you’re more tired than usual.” I hesitate, then add, “Even… other stuff. How things have been between us, um, physically. Anything I noticed, I tried to write down.”
His breath catches.
For one horrifying second, I can’t tell if he’s relieved or angry.
I show him the list. “It’s not everything of course, and I know it’s kind of messy because I mostly logged them in a rush. But I tried to be thorough, especially on your harder days.”