EIGHTEEN
JORDIE
There’s something deeply existential about watching your own blood swirl down the drain. Like, hello, mortality. Fancy seeing you here. Again.
Maybe I would be alarmed if I weren’t so painfully used to it.
The only shocking thing now is that I haven’t started charging my uterus rent.
The shower’s scalding, steam curling around me. I’m hunched on my pink shower stool, arms around my knees, watching the water spiral red and telling myself this is fine.
It’s not fine.
The cramps are medieval. Deep, twisting things, like my insides are being wrung out by an angry Victorian laundress.
Dizziness washes over me again. I close my eyes, breathing through it like I’m in labor with a gremlin’s baby. My limbs feel like they’ve been dipped in wet concrete. I brace one hand against the wall just as a fresh wave hits. I gasp, fingernails slipping down the tile.
Get up, I tell myself. If I can just get up, get out, take my meds—
Then, I hear wood dragging against wood.
I freeze.
It’s the door. Swollen from the cyclone. Needs a shove. I meant to fix it. Sand it down, oil the hinges, all that functional-adult stuff. I didn’t.
My brain immediately selects the most rational conclusion: home invasion. With my luck, the damn power will probably go out too—again. It’s been temperamental since the cyclone. And now, I’m one masked serial killer away from being a horror movie punchline.
I reach for the razor with the misplaced optimism of someone who thinks a $6 Venus blade will hold off a murderer.
“Jordie?” someone calls.
“. . . Leith?”
A pause.
“No. It’s Callum.”
Callum?
“Jordie? Are you alright? I’m coming in, okay?”
The bathroom door creaks open a fraction. My pulse spikes, but I’m too lightheaded to do anything except stare.
“What the hell, Mitchell.” His voice lands hard and low, equal parts fear and fury.
Before I can form a single coherent thought, he’s kneeling in front of me.
“Jordie, you’re—” He stops, pressing his fingers to the side of my neck, feeling for my pulse. “How long have you been like this?”
I blink slowly, trying to string words together. “This is normal.”
His gaze snaps to mine. “This is not normal.”
Yeah. Tell that to my try-this-herbal-tea mother and eight other doctors.
“What—” My throat is raw. “How—?”
He braces a hand on my shoulder, the other tilting my chin, thumb brushing beneath my eye as he studies the pink rim on my lid.
“Leith called me,” Callum says, voice clipped.
Oh, I’m going to murder that snitch. If I don’t keel over first from the soul-crushing humiliation.
“He said you weren’t answering your phone,” Callum continues. “He was worried.”
“I’m fine,” I rasp, attempting a smirk. It doesn’t land.
“I’m calling an ambulance and—”
“No!”
It comes out instinctively, before he’s even finished speaking. A gut reaction, a refusal built into my bones after years of the same exhausting cycle.
“Jordie.” His voice is lower now, steadier. “Your pulse is through the roof. You need—”
“Just no, Callum,” I say. Stronger. A steel thread in a frayed rope.
His nostrils flare. I can see the struggle in him. The push and pull between doctor and person, between what he knows is medically necessary and what I’m stubbornly refusing to do.
“Please,” I beg.
He exhales, the fight in him shifting. “Fine. No hospital. But you have to let me help.”
I nod, the motion is small, barely a dip of my chin.
He moves, reaching for a towel. “Okay, let’s get you sorted.”
He turns the shower off, leaving only the sound of my too-fast breathing and the steady drip of water. The air is thick with steam, but underneath it all, the sharp, metallic scent of blood lingers.
Callum crouches and wraps a towel around my shoulders. His eyes flick to my abdomen. Thin, silver lines etched low across my stomach. Then his eyes snag on my thighs, where fresh blood streaks down my skin, pooling dark on the tiles.
I press my thighs together, as if that could undo the fact that I’m sitting here, naked, bleeding out like some pathetic, helpless thing. My throat burns. My skin prickles. I want to disappear. I want to climb out of my own fucking body.
Tears sting behind my eyes. I swallow hard, forcing my voice out, small and scratchy. “Can you—” I gesture vaguely toward the counter, unable to bring myself to say it.
His eyes follow, landing on the purple-packaged overnight pads and my panties. A split-second pause, just enough to register, but then he grabs them, kneels again, and tears the pad open with the same focused precision I’ve seen him use in theaters.
Except now he’s holding a sanitary pad. And studying it as if it were an unsolved medical mystery.
“. . . which way does this go?” he asks.
Callum—Dr. Han, expert in neuraxial anesthesia and high-stakes intubation—doesn’t know how to put a pad on panties.
His lips twitch. “Is there a wrong way?”
“Yes, Callum. There is definitely a wrong way.”
He huffs. “They didn’t cover this in med school.”
“I’ll be sure to add it to your CPD hours.”
I reach for it, fumble with the pad, fingers clumsy with exhaustion. My limbs are dead weight, every movement sluggish and uncoordinated.
Callum helps me into my oversized shirt first, guiding my arms through the sleeves before tugging it over my head.
He crouches and holds my underwear open at my feet.
“I can do it,” I say, though my voice lacks conviction.
“Humor me,” he mutters, as I slip one shaky leg in, then the other.
I grip his forearm for balance, my fingers pressing into tense muscle.
“Alright. Up,” he instructs.
The moment I stand, my knees buckle.
“Whoa—” Callum catches me before I hit the floor. His arms lock around me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him actually startled before. “Okay,” he mutters as he hooks an arm around my waist, grip tight. “Lean on me. I’ve got you.”
Callum adjusts his stance, taking more of my weight as we move. One step. Then another.
He steers me to the base of the stairs. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“No,” I say, squeezing his forearm. “Fold-out couch. I stay downstairs when it’s bad. Easier. Less . . . distance to everything.”
Callum pauses, taking that in. Wanting to argue. Doesn’t.
“Alright. Couch,” he says. Then, quieter. Final. Not up for debate. “But I’m staying.”
I stiffen. “You don’t have to—”
“I’m not leaving you like this.” His voice is mild, but there’s steel beneath it.
“I’ll be—”
“I’m staying,” he says again. “No arguments.”
I’m too damn exhausted to offer one.
By the time we make it to the couch, my legs are noodles. Callum lowers me down gently, making sure I don’t topple sideways. I groan and drop my head back.
He grabs a blanket and drapes it over me.
“Stay here. Don’t move,” he instructs.
“Can’t, even if I wanted to,” I rasp.
He sighs, dragging a hand over his face. He looks . . . tense. But he doesn’t say anything as he heads toward the kitchen, opening the fridge and cupboards, moving with the quiet efficiency of someone who has decided to fix this.
I close my eyes and let my body go limp against the couch.
I don’t want to think about how bad this got. About how Callum’s here. About how he’s seen too much.
Instead, I focus on the distant sound of pots clattering in my kitchen, the cabinets opening, and the machine in my laundry room whirring to life.
Suddenly, there’s a horrifying realization that Callum Han is washing my bloody sheets.