THEY FINALLY leave late at night, not before Ziggy does. She made herself scarce when my family first arrived to give us some space. They tend to be less judgmental when she’s around, probably because she takes the brunt of it.
Now they’re gone and Ziggy’s packing up her stuff. She always carries this ridiculous bag with her, as if she always has to be prepared to be on the move. She somehow also manages to use it, so it’s always packed to the brim, and she always manages to unload wherever as if she had just arrived somewhere on holiday.
I mean, it’s kind of nice, because you can count on her to always have gum or whatever, but I do tease her a lot for it.
She’s picking up the last of her things when someone knocks quietly on the door. I look up and see Levi standing at the door. I must say his name because Ziggy is looking at me like I’ve just let something slip and Levi is looking at his feet.
“Hey,” he says. “I thought I’d call in before it was too late.”
Ziggy raises her eyebrows at me. I look away from her and at Levi.
“Hello,” I reply. “Thank you for calling Ziggy. You’ve met, right?”
“Yes,” Ziggy replies. “I was in Professor Arkwright’s class a couple of semesters ago.”
“Right,” Levi says, smiling at her. “Of course. I remember that. How are you doing, Ziggy? How’s your dissertation going?”
She laughs and stuffs a book in her bag, her face covered by her curly hair when she speaks. “I’m good except for that. Anyway I better leave you to it. Thank you, again, for calling me.”
“Of course,” he says, nodding.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ziggy says and kisses me on the cheek.
“I’ll be gone tomorrow!”
She shakes her head. “We’ll see about that.”
We watch her walk out in silence. She turns back and waves, so we both wave at her. As soon as she’s out of sight, Levi sits on the chair next to me and sighs.
“She knows,” he says.
I nod. “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t tell her.”
“Yeah,” he says, grabbing my hand. “I know. Do you think she’ll tell anyone?”
I shake my head. “She’s not like that. She’s got my back.”
“Alright,” he replies, though he doesn’t sound convinced. “If you’re sure.”
I look at him and smile. He actually looks pretty bad and I wonder how long he has been waiting to come see me. Did he know my family was here? Anyway I guess it doesn’t matter now. I squeeze his hand. “I’ll talk to her.”
He smiles a little thinly but at least it’s something. “Okay,” he says before he exhales again, this time seeming a little more relieved. He brings my hand to his lips and grazes my skin with them, though he doesn’t quite kiss me. He closes his eyes. “Damien, are you okay? You scared me.”
“I’m okay,” I say, probably for the fifth time. “Really. This is more like, I don’t know, a formality.”
Levi cocks his head and raises one eyebrow. “Being in hospital is hardly a formality.”
“Really,” I reply. “Think of it as a fast track to seeing my epileptologist. If I wasn’t hospitalized, this would take longer, like, maybe a few months. Because I’ve had a seizure and I’m here, I can see her more quickly. Though, honestly it hardly seems necessary.”
“Your epileptologist,” he repeats. “You say that as if everyone has one.”
I smile at him. “You don’t have one?”
He doesn’t smile back. I know seeing a seizure can be scarring, so I want to make sure he’s okay, but it feels a bit odd to ask him how he’s holding up when I’m the one in the hospital bed. I’ve learnt, over time, people rarely seem to appreciate that.
He leans back in the chair. “What is an epileptologist? What does she do?”
“She’s basically a neurologist that specializes in epilepsy,” I say. “So, like, she was the person who prescribed the drugs that made it possible for me to go without a seizure for two years. But it took a long time to find the right ones.”
He frowns. “You told me you had epilepsy, but you never said it was bad.”
“When’s epilepsy good?”
“You just kind of, I don’t know, brushed it off. I thought you had it under control.”
I shrug. I don’t really understand why he expects me to have told him how bad it used to be. It’s not like it’s ever really come up before. “Well, it wasn’t, not when we met. It was well managed. But, like, I told you about that gap year, right?”
“Yeah,” he replies.
“I was supposed to spend it in Sri Lanka or something, building houses for underprivileged children. That’s what all my friends were doing and it’s what I wanted to do.”
He nods. This feels weird. I rarely tell people about this and I don’t want him to think I expect him to take care of me, because I don’t. I don’t expect anyone to. I also don’t want to spook him, but I guess if an actual seizure didn’t do it, this won’t.
Or maybe it’ll just seal the deal and he’ll never want to see me again.
“Damien,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”
I nod, swallowing. This is actually taking a lot more effort than I thought it would. “Okay, so like, I’m planning to do this. They’re all buying tickets and finding accommodation and my parents are trying to talk me out of it, saying I’m not well enough, whatever. I’m stressed but I think they’re just being overprotective. It’s, you know, well managed. A seizure or two a year. Nothing I can’t deal with.”
Levi doesn’t say anything. I can feel the tears pooling in my eyes. I tilt my head back and try to stop myself from crying. I don’t think I’ve ever cried in front of Levi, and I definitely don’t want the first time to be over something as stupid as this.
He waits for me, not saying anything, still holding my hand in front of his face.
“Anyway, I’m walking home one night after a friend’s leaving party and it starts. I know it’s going to happen, my friends know what’s going to happen, but we’re all drunk and we kind of think it may be the drink, so they tell me to walk it off. Which I do, until I’m sure it’s happening, but by then I’m next to this kind of, I guess concrete bench, you know the ones by the library?”
He nods.
“Yeah, these, like, thick concrete benches. Anyway, so I fall, my friends are too drunk to catch me and I hit my head. Well, it’s not really my head, I guess, it’s the bit between my head and my neck. And it’s—apparently it’s pretty bad.”
He nods again, swallowing. I watch his throat working. His eyes widen as I tell him this, but he’s still trying very hard to keep his composure, even though he won’t stop tapping his foot on the floor. I appreciate he’s trying to make this easy for me, and I want to kiss him and thank him and tell him to just forget about it.
I exhale heavily through my nose before I grab his hand and put it on the nape of my neck, under my hair. “Hold your finger out,” I say.
He does. I move his finger across the scar. I’m still not used to it. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Levi’s touch makes me feel sick to my stomach, nauseous, dizzy. I move his hand away after a bit.
“Jesus,” he says. He’s pale now and staring at me.
“So that was, I don’t know, the seizure and then the head trauma, or whatever, and because I got brought to hospital with a bunch of drunk people, on a drunken night as a drunk kid, I was seen to as just, like, an intoxication case, which is probably fine most of the time, but they should have probably taken a closer look at my case. Not that I blame them. I don’t.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“So I get discharged and then, the next week, I have a seizure. And then the next week, and the next week, and the next week. And the thing is, it’s kind of rare for epileptic people to have lots of different types of seizures, right? As in, you have some, and then it kind of stays like that. So you either have the big ones or the partial ones or the ones that give you dizzy spells. For me, it was always the same two or three things, but after I fell, I was having a really awesome whole variety of things. So….”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I shrug. I’m not really sure what he’s sorry for. “So I had to cancel my plans. My parents were right after all, which sucked. And there—I mean, I couldn’t do anything, you know? Like I couldn’t go anywhere because it could happen whenever. I had to stop going out with my friends. I couldn’t even do things I liked by myself, like popping to the shop for a snack or going to get a cup of coffee by myself. Wasn’t even allowed to go for a walk. That kind of thing is—it’s honestly crushing really. I was seeing this guy for like a year and as soon as that started, he bailed. And I mean, it’s not like I can blame him, right? Like, who wants to see that shit? So I went on this clinical trial, but we were still prepping for surgery and—”
Oh God, I am crying now. I feel like such an idiot.
Before I can wipe the tears off my face, Levi’s hands are on me, all rough and soft at the same time, and he’s wiping them off for me and telling me that it’s okay, that I’m okay.
I don’t really notice he’s climbed into my bed, until his arm is around me and I put my head on his chest. I can hear his heartbeat.
He kisses the top of my head and holds me closer to him.
It’s hard to talk now because the tears have turned to sobbing. Full on ugly crying, which is what I wanted to avoid in the first place, but now I’m blubbering all over his nice shirt, getting spit and snot on him, and I keep apologizing and he keeps telling me that it’s okay and stroking the top of my head.
I don’t understand why I’m so upset at first—this happened over two years ago, I’m okay now, and—well, no. No, I’m not okay now, I’m right back to where I started. In the ER. With my family looking at me like I’m a burden, my brother sending me jokey gifts because it’s all he can do, and my best friend coming to my aid after a seizure. Again.
I need to pull myself together.
I move away from him and take a deep breath. I mean, if I hadn’t ruined it before, I certainly have now. I’m just going to try to enjoy this for a little bit while I still can. I listen to his breathing, which is slightly ragged, and wonder what exactly I’ve done to him.
“You said you were prepping for surgery,” he says, gently prodding me.
“Yeah,” I reply. “We were. But two things kind of happened at the same time. One was that I started smoking a lot of weed. That was for the anxiety, but I knew it could cause more seizures. I mean, it can help sometimes, and people do get prescriptions for it and stuff, but I was warned against it because we didn’t know how it would work for me. Still I had to. Brains are weird, and we don’t really understand them that much, so that kind of thing is always a risk, but I was seriously so on edge all the time. That seemed to help a bit. And then the other thing was that my doctor managed to get me into this clinical trial, which was actually super useful. So no need for surgery. Not, not back then, anyway.”
This heavy silence settles between us. I don’t know what he could say, but I wish he would say something. As it stands now, I can only listen to his heart, which is racing.
Well, I guess I better pull the plug.
I kiss him on the lips—which mustn’t be very pleasant since my face is still watery and puffy and gross—and he kisses me back. One last kiss for good measure.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have told you before. I just thought—I don’t know. I guess I just thought it was handled now, but—”
He shakes his head. He looks horrified. “Why are you apologizing?”
“Look,” I say. “I know, I know this is hard. And I can’t expect you to be with me after all this. Things are already hard enough because of, because of who we are, and like, you can’t even—and the—”
“Stop,” he says. “Stop. I should be apologizing to you. I’m sorry, I panicked.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I mean, you don’t have to deal with it now.”
“Damien,” he says. “What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t—it’s not easy, okay? I wouldn’t blame you for walking away. This is too hard and complicated and—”
And here come the waterworks. I’m handling this very maturely. At least this time it’s tears and not slobber, so I guess that’s a slight upgrade from last time.
“I’m not leaving you,” he says into my ear. “I’m definitely not walking away from you because you’re sick.”
“But Levi—”
“Hey,” he says. “You have enough to worry about right now, okay? You don’t need to worry about me too. I’m here. I’m here until you no longer need me to be here.”
I nod and swallow, feeling more warm tears sliding down my face.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I say. “I don’t know if I can go back to school. I don’t—”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t know if I can go back to work,” I say.
He narrows his eyes for a second, looking a little confused, but doesn’t say anything. “You should probably just get some rest now. Okay? You can finally get around to reading my book.”
I nod and try to smile. “I don’t know if I can. Rest. I swear I’ll get around to reading your book.”
“I’ll stay,” he says. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep. I’ll stay all night if you need me to.”
“I don’t know if the nurses will let you stay,” I say.
“I don’t give a shit about the nurses.”
I try to smile at him. I do want to smile at him, I’m just so tired and so afraid. But he seems to understand, and he smiles back at me, and that’s when I know for sure.
I’m definitely, definitely in love with him.