Chapter 18 Henry #3
Jamison studied me for a long moment, then sat down, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and helped me sit the rest of the way up.
When I was upright, he leaned forward to pick up the plate and set it on my lap without releasing me with his other arm, which actually tightened a bit.
“Eat,” he said gently, nudging the plate at me.
Might as well. I picked up the sandwich, which appeared to be chicken and tomato, and took a bite.
The flavors hit my tongue like ambrosia, and I realized just how hungry I was.
Within a minute, I’d demolished three-quarters of the sandwich.
I took a break to down the glass of water he picked up off the coffee table and handed me, then went back to eating the rest of the sandwich.
When it was gone, I heaved out a breath and let my head fall against him.
“That was…impressive,” he said, a smile in his voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you scarf down food like that before.” He kissed my temple. “No more skipping meals, ok? No matter how upset you are.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I protested. “I was just…it didn’t occur to me. My brain was busy with…you know, the other stuff.” Other stuff. What a euphemism.
“Well,” he said, tightening his arm around me, “now you have me to talk the other stuff over with rather than just having it go in circles in your brain. So…you want to talk about it now?”
Not really. I’d much prefer to just go back in time and not know again. Not that not knowing would fix anything. I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
I felt his head move, and I guessed by his tone that he’d cocked it questioningly. “For what?”
I shrugged. Everything? Nothing? “Freaking out and scaring you. Making you take care of me.” I swallowed. “Maybe giving you AIDS.”
“Ok, first of all.” He set me away from him a little, just enough so that we could see each other’s faces while he could still keep his arm around me.
“It’s a boyfriend’s job to be there when you’re freaking out and need support.
I’m glad you called for me. And I’m happy to take care of you, though of course I wish it wasn’t necessary at all. As for the last one…bullshit.”
“What?”
“You don’t know you gave me anything, even if you were the one who came into that night carrying.
My test results aren’t back yet, and I was on PrEP.
Odds are very, very good that I’m perfectly fine.
And second of all, even if you did bring it in and transmit it to me, you know very well that you didn’t give me ‘AIDS’.
At worst, you gave me HIV, which is a treatable chronic illness that can be managed for a long lifetime. ”
I knew that, logically. It didn’t really help the emotional storm, though. There was a whole lot of societal fear conditioning lurking inside my brain that screamed the worst. “But…” I began.
“Nope.” He gave me a gentle shake. “We’re not going to go in circles on this just because your lizard brain is running around screaming.”
That was quite the mental image. Now I was picturing one of those frilled lizards running around on two legs, shrieking bloody murder. Like a panicked little dinosaur. I snorted a reluctant laugh.
He grinned at me. “There, got you laughing. Now, I say this knowing that saying it is pretty much useless, but I’m gonna say it anyway: you need to let it go.
Stop worrying about blaming yourself - or me, for that matter,” he added, smile turning self-deprecating.
“Stop worrying about the worst-case scenario, or how we’re all gonna die.
Hell, stop worrying about feeding the cats, because I’ve got that for now.
Whatever’s got you freaking out, let it go for a while.
There’s nothing you can do until you talk to your doctor tomorrow, and even then there’s not going to be a lot you can do other than take her advice. ”
“But -” I began.
He shook his head. “Seriously, Hen. What is more freaking out going to accomplish, right here and right now?”
Logic. More logic. Didn’t he get it? “You don’t understand,” I sighed.
“I can know that logically, but that doesn’t stop my brain.
Nothing stops my brain except knocking it out with a benzo.
And then I just go to sleep and am useless, and the problem’s still there when the benzo wears off and I wake up. ”
“Hmm.” He took the empty plate from my hands, which, as it turned out, had been clutching it a little too hard, and set it on the coffee table.
“I do know that, intellectually, about anxiety, from Charlie, but I guess it’s hard for me to conceptualize myself into that headspace because that’s not my brain’s style of malfunctioning.
” He sighed and ran a hand through my hair, and I wasn’t sure anymore whether he did it to soothe me, or himself.
“Do you want to take a benzo and sleep this off, then?”
I shook my head immediately. “No. I try to save those for when I’m having physical panic symptoms, and I think I’m through those now.
Benzos are too addictive to fuck around with otherwise, and honestly, I’d just have to deal with the same thoughts in the morning instead. At least right now I have you here.”
“Ok first of all -” His hand tightened a little in my hair, holding me to him.
“- I am happy to stay for as long as you need me and I’m welcome.
Don’t worry that I’m going to sneak out if you fall asleep.
I have plenty of sick time stored up, plus I brought my laptop, so I can do some work from here. ”
He went quiet, and after a second, I blinked up at him. “And second of all?”
“What?”
“You said ‘first of all’. So I was waiting for the ‘second of all’, but you didn’t say anything.”
“Oh.” He paused, looking introspective. “I don’t think I actually had a ‘second of all’. It just sounded emphatic and I wanted emphasis.”
I couldn’t suppress the chuckle that found its way out of my depths at that.
Even while I was making the noise, I was amazed that it had been in there, a laugh in the face of this horror and sadness and fear.
Surely that was a good sign? “Well, consider your point duly emphasized. You won’t leave me.
And I appreciate that. But you really don’t have to -”
“Mm-mm.” He laid a finger over my lips, stopping me. “I didn’t say I ‘had’ to anything. I said I was ‘happy’ to. Big difference.”
“But -” I mumbled around his finger.
“Do you want me to come with you to the doctor tomorrow?” he interrupted my protest. “I can wait in the waiting room or come into the examination room with you, whichever you prefer. But I just thought that maybe you’d like to not do it alone, in some fashion.”
I pictured myself alone in the doctor’s waiting room and felt my anxiety - and my blood pressure - spike.
Then I pictured myself there with Jamison’s soothing presence alongside me, perhaps with his warm hand wrapped around mine, and I could breathe again.
“Yeah,” I managed. “Yeah, I think I would.” It would be better. And if he was willing…why not?
His finger drew a lock of my hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear affectionately. “I’m glad. What time is the appointment?”
“First thing. Eight thirty.” I blew out a breath. “Probably a good thing, to get it over with before I have a whole day to ramp up the anxiety in advance.”
“Probably,” he agreed, then tipped his wrist so he could look down at his watch. “It’s five twenty-eight. As much as I have a nearly uncontrollable urge to tuck you into bed, it’s probably a little early for that, huh?”
I mustered up a weak smile of agreement for him.
“I have my Kindle in my backpack,” he said. “What do you say we cuddle and read for a while? Maybe the cats will grace us with their presence, even. And then in an hour or two, we can think about ordering in some dinner, and then I’ll put you to bed. Possibly with a benzo on board.”
“I don’t -”
“We’ll see,” he said before I could complete my protest. “Possibly you won’t need it.
But just keep it in mind as an option if you start getting up in your head.
This is a really stressful situation and it would be totally reasonable to need to deploy the emergency medication.
I don’t want you to not use the tools you have available to you because you get anxious about using them for your anxiety. ”
Hmph. How dare he have a point. “Fine,” I acknowledged. “You sound like you’ve had this conversation before.”
“Charlie,” he said with a nod. “Like I’ve said, you’re not my first rodeo.”
I couldn’t decide if I really wanted to meet Jamison’s sister, or if I was terrified of meeting her.
I had the feeling she’d see into my brain effortlessly, which could be either really good or really bad, depending on whether she intended to use her powers for good or evil.
And depending on how protective she was of her brother.
Hell, she probably already hated me for putting her beloved brother at risk of HIV; if she found out I was positive now? Yikes.
I decided on the spot I didn’t want to meet her.
“You’re thinking hard,” he said, gently laying me against the back of my couch and standing up to retrieve his Kindle and the book I had dog-eared on the coffee table for me. “I know I keep telling you to relax, but, well…relax.”
I rolled my eyes at that. And depressed people should just be happy, and diabetic people should just think their blood sugar to normal levels.
Uh-huh. Sometimes it was very clear that as much as Jamison had experience with his sister’s anxiety, he didn’t have experience living anxiety.
It would be mean to point that out, though, so I just accepted the book he passed me without comment and opened it to the page I’d left folded over.
Yes, I knew that dog-earing my pages made me basically Satan's minion. Fuck everyone; it was my book and I’d disrespect it if it made my life easier, and god knew I could never lay hands on a bookmark when I needed one. So dog-earing it was.
Jamison shot me a side-eye as he settled back on the couch, but said nothing about my page recall method.
Instead, he settled back against the arm of the couch and wrapped his arm around my shoulders again, gently drawing me down into his lap until I could pillow my head there.
I sank in with a sigh and focused on the page I’d left off on.
I spent the next hour alternating being lost in the book and then periodically surfacing back to reality and a fast-beating heart as the real-life situation popped back into my head.
Every time, my breathing would speed up and my heart would start to pound, and every time, without looking up from his reading, Jamison would increase the weight of the arm he had laying across my chest and start stroking his fingers soothingly across my shirt.
It was like he knew. And hell, maybe he did.
My breathing was probably far from silent.
But he didn’t comment, and he didn’t remind me to (ugh) relax.
We didn’t talk about my anxiety or about the situation.
We just…existed together. It was wonderful, as much as anything shot through with anxiety could be wonderful.
At some point, without me noticing it was happening, I dozed off again.
A while later, he managed to wake me up enough to get some takeout into me, and then I immediately passed out again, this time with my head pillowed on his thigh.
He woke me up a second time an unknown amount of time later to haul me to my bed, and out I went again, with no need for the dreaded Xanax.
I slept until the following morning.