Chapter Twenty-Seven Nomi
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NOMI
There are two main states in Crohn’s disease—being sick or fear of being sick—and they’re both disruptive to living my life.
But it’s the rare third state that devastates me most. When I go long enough without a flare that I start to wonder if I’m cured.
Maybe that expensive probiotic actually worked.
Maybe I grew out of it. Maybe I never had Crohn’s at all.
But then some mysterious internal switch is flipped, and I realize I’ve been standing on a trapdoor the whole time.
The floor opens beneath me, and I fall back into my illness, spending the next day, week, month in pain, wondering if I’ll ever crawl out again.
Crohn’s is a trickster, a disruptor, a reverse deus ex machina where suddenly, out of nowhere, your plans blow up for no reason at all.
It turns my body against me. It whispers why bother as it forces me to bow out of the life I’ve tried to build.
And I’m so fucking tired of it.
I roll onto my side, tears trickling over my nose, wetting my hair and pillow.
I hate how I left things with Julian yesterday.
But how can I make him understand that I can’t be there for him when I can’t even be here for myself?
That loving me means empty seats beside him at family gatherings and plans canceled last minute.
Lost deposits, late arrivals, and trips never taken.
It means pain and a level of helplessness to stop it I’m not sure he can handle.
He deserves someone who fits neatly into his high-achieving world, with as much ambition as he has.
Not a sick, sad stoner puffing away at her vape in the bathroom stall, broken and unfixable.
As angry as his words made me yesterday, I don’t blame him for preferring the Nomi who still believed she could have whatever she wanted.
I don’t miss her priorities, but do I miss her optimism.
I’ll get through this flare, and then I’ll explain everything to him.
Let him down as easily as I can. My body feels like it doesn’t belong to me, I imagine saying to his disappointed face.
And I didn’t tell you because I don’t want it to be true.
Until then I’ll hide out here, confined to my green, velvet bedroom like a consumptive Victorian invalid with the shits.
The distinctive whir of an expensive vehicle stops outside. I squint through the narrow sliver of window and see Julian’s Volvo parked out front.
My eyes widen as he shoulders several bags up to my door and knocks, guts clenching on cue, a warning not to engage. You belong to pain right now.
“Nomi?” He knocks again. “Can we talk?”
Fuck! I stagger to my feet, feeling a rush of lightheadedness. I haven’t eaten today and couldn’t manage much yesterday, either. Still wearing the funeral makeup, too, though it’s smeared from tears and sleep. I’m a mess, but I guess he already knows that. I reach the front door as he knocks again.
“Julian, it’s not a good time.”
“Just hear me out,” he pleads. “You don’t even need to open the door.”
This isn’t how I want to have this conversation. I close my eyes, exhaling to the ceiling, and let my body slump against the wall. “Okay.”
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I need you to know I’m so incredibly sorry.
You don’t need to go to Yale or pharmacy school or do anything, to earn my love or respect because you already have both, just for existing, just for being you.
I’m a better doctor and a better person because of you, and if I’m able to rescue my career from the ledge I pushed it to, that’s because of you, too. ”
There’s a soft sound on the other side of the door, like a palm pressed flat against wood. I place my hand against it, an ache growing in my throat.
“It can be so humbling, to be understood by someone else. And terrifying, to see yourself through their eyes. But when you look at me, I think that maybe, for the first time in my life, I could learn to love myself. You teach me more about who I am and who I want to be every day. And now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to be known by you, seen by you, touched by you, I can’t go back to my life before, Nomi. It doesn’t fit me anymore.”
His ardent words travel through the wood, around the door, through the cracks, and find me. Reach me. Pulse through my veins like blood.
“You are the smartest, funniest, most incomprehensibly beautiful woman I’ve ever known. You mean everything to me. I haven’t earned your trust yet, but I want to, Nomi. If you let me try, I’ll start right now.”
“Julian.” I rest my forehead against the door, wishing it was him.
His chest. “It’s not just trust. I didn’t want to tell you about my illness because every time I tell someone, it becomes part of my identity to them.
And I don’t want this to be my identity.
I don’t want it to be true. And more than anything, I don’t want to be your patient, Julian, but I’m scared you’ll make me into one. ”
“I understand, and I promise you that’s not why I’m here.”
I unlock the door and slowly open it a few inches. “Why are you here, then?”
“To be here for you. To love you.” Julian’s eyebrows knit together. “And install a bidet.”
A surprised sound huffs out of me. “What?”
“Can I come in?” Julian lifts the bags. “I’ve brought provisions.”
“I don’t know…” My voice comes out small. “I’m very sick, Julian.”
His soft, gentle smile wraps around my heart. “That doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
Despite the fear and shame telling me to withdraw, to retreat, to hide this embarrassing version of myself and deny it any exposure to air, I want to believe him. I want to be with him.
And dammit, I’ve always wanted a bidet.
I let him in.
He bustles to the kitchen, where he begins systematically emptying his bags and arranging the items on my table. Wawa chicken noodle soup and soft pretzels, a heating pad, electrolyte packets, bananas, more of the protein shakes I like, and no less than three types of toilet paper.
“I got you a range from no-nonsense to super soft. I didn’t know what you preferred.” He pulls out the fancy bidet next, then jogs to the car and returns with two sleek oscillating fans with remotes.
“What is all this, Julian?”
“I joined the sub-reddit for IBD and read up on people’s must-haves for bad flares.” He winces as my face falls. “The inflammation, your weight loss, the pain in your lower belly… it’s IBD, right?”
“You cracked the case. I have Crohn’s.” I smile ruefully, staring at the fans instead of him, feeling the truth in the words he said outside. It is humbling, to be seen and understood and then, loved anyway. “Why fans?”
“Many people experience hot flashes during bad flares, especially during cramping, so I bought a fan for your bathroom and one for wherever else you’d like it.
Maybe by your couch?” He waits for me to answer, and finally I nod, my brain processing all this on a three-second delay.
Then he’s off, setting up the fans as directed.
“How are you feeling right now?” He expertly fits the bidet onto the water line next. “Hungry? Crampy? Fatigued?”
“Bewildered, mostly.” I wrap my arms around myself in the doorway, watching him tighten everything with a wrench, my heart included.
The sight of tall, handsome Julian, sleeves rolled up and working on my toilet of all things, is so unexpectedly domestic, it’s like a vision of some happy future I can’t have. But… says who? Me? Or Crohn’s?
“How did you know to do all this? To be here for me in this way?”
“You once said that creature comforts are how you get by. I understand that more now.” Julian stops and pushes his glasses adorably up his nose. “I also know what it’s like when someone lives with chronic pain, and thanks to my mom, I know how to love them through it.”
My throat tightens painfully. “Your dad.”
Julian gives me a small, sad half-smile as he stands, then washes his hands.
“When he’d experience a bad pain flare, he’d isolate himself, usually out in our garage or in my parents’ bedroom.
I didn’t understand back then. I thought he didn’t want to see me, or didn’t want to work, or some other horseshit reason that made his pain seem like a personal failing, instead of what it really was—this relentless struggle he fought every day, on his own, to try and remain a part of our lives.
Mom understood that, and though she couldn’t take his pain away, she did whatever she could to make him feel less alone in it. ”
Julian approaches me, his hands cupping my face as he peers down into my eyes. His thumbs brush away the tears collecting on the tops of my cheekbones so gently that more fall.
“You’re going through the same thing, aren’t you? Feeling alone in your pain? Separating yourself from everyone else to spare them the burden of your illness?”
I can’t say anything, the words resolving into a single, choked sob. So, I nod. I nod, and Julian’s arms wrap around me, holding me to him.
“Spare me from nothing, Nomi. Every part of you deserves to be loved, and I want it all. When I imagine the best, happiest version of my own future, all I see is you.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” I whisper into his shoulder. “I wish I’d been brave enough.”
“Tell me now.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “Tell me everything.”
And so, I do. First at my table, then later, curled on my couch when the cramping hurts too much to sit.
I tell him when the symptoms began, how hard high school in Georgia was, how I’d started to improve in Sparrow Nook but took a sharp turn during the most competitive stretch of our debate team season.
I told him about going on Hospital-Homebound, and weird Ms. Middlecooks who’d come over with my assignments and proctor tests.
I told him how much I missed him, how I wished I could tell him why I’d disappeared.