Chapter 13
They’re barely two feet into the sheriff’s station, but Nora’s been vibrating with anger the whole way here. It even outweighed her fear of the polar bear, which is saying something considering she’d been certain they were both about to join the pile of the dead it ripped apart.
It takes everything in her not to explode the moment the door shuts and to wait until they’ve cleared the area of any threats.
Thankfully, it takes all of thirty seconds to check the main portions in the front and back and find it clear.
She’s never been more grateful for pint-sized buildings because it frees up her attention to erupt at Theo as the heat starts to waft over them both and she sheds her outer layers.
“Why the hell would you do that?” she yells.
Theo squints, the finger of one glove between his teeth, about to be pulled off. “Do what?”
“I didn’t ask you to attempt to sacrifice yourself for me.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I dunno what I was thinking. What a rude, inconsiderate, selfish thing that was.”
His deadpan delivery rakes across her nerves as she gets stuck inside her coat, struggling to remove her arms from it, seething all the while. “When you say it like that, it makes me sound like the asshole. You know that isn’t what I mean.”
“What do you mean, then?”
She grumbles under her breath, losing her composure as her struggle inside the coat continues. He offers help to pry it off, only to be shrugged away as she explodes in a whirlwind of motion that finally flings the offending garment across the room.
It must be slightly comical because Theo is already trying to suppress a laugh. That just upsets her more. Can’t he see that she’s terrified of losing him? Can’t he see that he almost died out there for her, and she isn’t worth that? Not by a long shot.
“We do this together. All of it. That’s been the plan this whole time,” she replies, with nothing but false calm. “You can’t put yourself at risk like that. You’re not disposable. We make it together or we don’t make it.”
His gaze softens in a mixture of affection and puzzled confusion. “You’re growing fond of me.”
“Oh my god. That fondness is dissipating with every additional word coming out of your mouth.”
That’s a lie. She is more than fond of him, and his delighted half smile when he voiced his realization is already melting her rage despite her resistance.
“I’m not going to let you die if I can stop it,” he says evenly.
“And if that ends up getting you killed? That’s just fine?”
“Not fine, but…if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”
Her eyes prickle, but she shoves the emotion down deep until it strangles her. “I don’t want you to do that. Promise me you won’t again.”
“I can’t make that promise.”
“Theo…” she shakes her head, turning away to pace the small office, wincing when the blood in her toes and thighs starts circulating again, squeezing her muscles.
“I’m not worth your life. And I need you.
I won’t make it out here alone anyway, so…
.if you want to keep me safe, then that means you stick around to make sure I am. ”
“I think you’ve got more survival skills than you give yourself credit for. You’d be fine.”
“No. This is the deal. Take it or leave it.”
He raises a brow in a mock challenge, his voice repeating her earlier words with less of the sting. “Or what? You’ll leave me behind?”
She huffs with a roll of her eyes. “Well, aside from the fact that leaving you behind would only force the problem we’re trying to avoid…fuck, maybe. Yes. Yes, I’ll leave your ass behind in the snow with only a polar bear for company and a helicopter you obnoxiously cannot fly.”
His persistent smile washes away all her seething annoyance so fast that she would be irritated by that alone if he weren’t so damn handsome while doing it.
“Not letting go of the helicopter thing, are ya?”
“Nope.”
“Listen, I can’t make grand promises, but that’s always been the plan, you’re right. We make it together.” He goes quiet for a moment, shucking his final outer layer, leaving him in only a long-sleeve shirt, while he peels off his shoes to rub painfully at his toes. “An heir and a spare.”
She tilts her head. “Hmm?”
“That’s what my father used to say about me and Oliver, only despite being the older one, I was the spare. You might be the only person who’s ever thought I wasn’t disposable. It’s one of those things that feels like a genetic trait.”
She’s about to reply, with what she isn’t sure, but before she can, he grips the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Headache?”
“It’s fine. I’ll be okay. Not that bad.”
Whatever anger she held fades quickly in the wake of Theo paling three shades lighter and his pupils dilating. She guides him to a chair in front of an old desk. “Sit down, I’ll look around for some pain meds, there’s gotta be something.”
“We need what’s in that pharmacy, but not with the bear still out there.”
Her gut drops, both because there might be medication he needs blocked by an angry animal, and because there might be medication she wants in that same place.
Nora has been clean for a long time. The cravings are manageable.
She goes whole days and even a week or more sometimes without thinking of a fix, but she also hasn’t put herself in any situations to test her strength.
She isn’t sure she can be let loose in a pharmacy still stocked with supplies and be trusted not to swallow something she absolutely should not.
She rifles through the desk drawers and employee lockers, finding a few snacks here and there but nothing remotely useful for his migraines.
“I swear I’m not usually so fucking fragile,” he groans. “I don’t get them this often.”
“You’ve been under a lot more stress than usual out here. I’m not surprised they’re hitting you back-to-back.”
In any other situation, she might poke at him or tease.
Make some mild insult about how his fragility is offending her, but he looks utterly miserable already, and she doesn’t have it in her to contribute to his pain.
She slams one of the desk drawers without thinking, frustrated at the lack of anything helpful, and he jumps a mile.
“Okay, okay, let’s get you on one of those cots in the back,” she says softly, spotting him doubled over in the chair, shoulders hunched up as he clutches at his hair.
She squats in front of him, peering down, trying to catch his eyes, having to pry his arms away to force him to look at her.
“Hey, tell me if lying down helps or hurts.”
“Helps. Sometimes.”
“Alright, let’s go. Lean on me if you need to.”
She hasn’t seen him this bad before. There have been a couple of headaches, but it hasn’t been anything that over the counter drugs couldn’t resolve, at least from her point of view.
Maybe it’s been building this whole time and she just hasn’t been privy to that information yet.
Her terror about what the hell they’re going to do if this spirals out of control festers in her nerves as she helps him into the back room and deposits him onto the cleanest looking cot in one of the cells.
He curls onto his side in her direction, mumbling that it’ll pass, but she isn’t so sure.
“What exactly do you usually take when it gets bad?” she asks.
“Lithium.”
“Fuck. We aren’t going to find that here. I dunno what’s in the pharmacy though. I can go look—”
“No!” He grabs her by the arm, clutching hard. “Not while the bear is out there. Please, please don’t go yet.”
She can’t just sit here and watch him suffer, but that’s exactly what he’s asking her to do while he degrades with every passing second.
She can’t help him if the bear tears her to pieces, though, so she relents with a sad nod, taking hold of his hand by slipping her palm under his and pulling it into her lap.
“I’ll be okay,” he says again. “It’ll pass.”
* * *
Having to pee when you’re responsible for keeping someone else from using the hunting knives on their own temples is a traitorous act by her body, but unless Nora wanted to let loose on the ground or in a trash can right in front of Theo while he writhed in bed, she had no choice but to duck quietly out the back of the building and squat in the snow.
She hurries back before anything outside can spot her, and hopefully before he rolls off the cot.
At least she was smart enough to put the weapons out of reach.
He’s gotten so much worse over the last couple of hours that she can hardly stand to be near him anymore without it ripping at her soul, but she can’t abandon him either.
He needs her. She couldn’t imagine forcing him to suffer alone, and he is absolutely suffering, that much is clear.
He’s stopped talking to her, stopped crying out or cursing.
Now he simply vibrates on the mattress while squeezing her hand in a vice grip, tears dripping down his face.
It’s enough to break her heart and have her feeling entirely useless.
“Theo?” she calls out, finding the cot empty.
Panic jolts through her until she rounds the threshold, then her gut twists, and a gasp catches in her throat. He is on the floor, clutching his head as he slams it into the wall, blood dripping down his temple. She was gone for all of three minutes and he’s already ten times worse.
If she didn’t know better, she would assume he had been attacked.
She freezes for a moment, horrified and uncertain of what to do.
Uncertain of her place. They are only new friends at best. She isn’t the one who should be here with him now.
But she is here, and when the sickening crack of his skull against the wall echoes again, she snaps out of her stupor.
Quickly, she bends down and reaches out a hand to slip her palm between his head and the wall, her voice a soothing half-whisper. “No, no, no. You’re hurting yourself, please stop.”
He must be so out of it that he barely registers her at all, still trying to knock himself out into oblivion even as her hold on him prevents it and his blood starts to seep onto her fingers.
“Okay, it’s okay. Lean the other way.” She sits on her knees on the cold tile, spreading them enough to allow him room and encouraging him to fall against her instead. “Lean on me. I’ve got you.”
Maybe the rhythm of that tapping against the wall lulled him into a false sense of tranquility because the moment he can’t cause more pain to cancel out the headache already deep inside, he screams.
What the fuck is she doing? He can’t sit here and suffer.
She can’t allow it. There is no one who can help, though, and leaving him even for a moment feels impossible, so she holds on as hard as she can as if he might splinter in half against her body.
His face tucks into her neck, and his tears wet her skin, prompting her own against her will.
It’s all she can do not to cry right along with him as he shivers in her arms. They can’t both fall apart. She can’t help him if she crumbles too.
There is a litany of mumbled requests spoken into her collarbone that beg her to make it stop, as if she has that sort of power.
“I can’t, sweetheart. I can’t. I’m here with you, just breathe.” It’s a frivolous request that is largely ignored in favor of twisting the back of her shirt into his fingers.
She does not overthink the random endearment that fell from her lips.
Of course she called him sweetheart. He’s in the middle of one of the worst moments of his life, if she had to hazard a guess at the severity of this situation.
The least she can do is whisper sweet nonsense in his ear.
That’s all it means, she reasons. All it can ever mean.
All at once, what she needs to do becomes clear. This isn’t going to stop on its own, at least not for a long time, and he may not last until then.
“I’ll be right back. You stay here. Do not slam your head against the wall while I’m gone. Do you hear me?”
The moment she shucks out of his grasp, helping him gently back up into bed again, he reaches for her, panicked as if she’ll never return.
She grabs his face between both hands, her voice stern. “Look at me! I’m going to get you something to help, I promise, but if I come back and I see you’ve bashed your head in, I will never forgive you. Do you understand? You better be in one fucking piece, or else.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he grinds out in reply, and the fact that he doesn’t ask her to stay or warn her against leaving the building is telling enough about the kind of misery he’s wallowing in.
She leaves quickly, or else she might lose her courage. Grabs her coat and gloves, a knife, and the gun, and slips out into the cold in the direction of the pharmacy.