I was at a prestigious residency at NYU Medical Center, learning under the best heart surgeon on the planet. Roberto García had performed over two thousand open heart procedures, and he’d taken me under his wing. Everything was going fine.

On September 11th, 2001, that all fell apart.

I was on the morning shift when I was called down to emergency. Caked in filth, encased in equipment, burned, screaming, the horror of it all revealed in bones and blood. I wasn’t training as an ER surgeon, but they needed me, so I became one. The nurses were spectacular. They helped me get a handle on the sudden situation. I locked off any feelings about what was happening while I did the job.

Between crises, I tried to call my parents. The cellular lines were jammed. No one was getting through. There was talk of other cities. Other planes. The entire system was shut down. Nothing flying. Nothing landing.

The world was chaos, but inside myself, I did what I had to. I cut. I sewed. I made decisions. For twenty-four insane hours, I was order inside madness.

A nurse named Lola dumped a bag of ice into the metal sink and turned on the water.

“Thank you,” I said, but she was already gone.

The parade of casualties had slowed, but no one had time for niceties when the world was falling apart. My eyes were burning. My knees were painfully swollen. When the sink was full, I stuck my head in it. The cold shocked my mind clear.

When I pulled my head out of the ice water, someone put a towel in my hands. I assumed it was Lola, but then he spoke with his deep Mexican accent.

“Stay still.”

Fingers on the inside of my wrist.

“I’m fine, Roberto.”

He didn’t answer while he counted. The bright fluorescents had a density all their own, and the sage green of the tile walls was loud against the soft blues of the linoleum floor. Outside the scrub room, staff ran past the windows. I needed to help them.

“You’re tachy,” he said, letting go of my wrist. “But better than I expected.”

I ran the towel through my hair. Dr. García was five foot five with a head of thick black hair. He had the wide cheeks and full lips of his Mixtec ancestors.

“I’m fine. How many are in triage?”

“You need to rest.”

“I told you I was fine.”

“No one bathes in ice water when they’re fine.” I was about to argue, but he cut me off. “Go take a nap before I write you up. And then we’re going to talk about your future.”

He had the power to fail me out. He wouldn’t, but I was tired and my face must have registered shock or disappointment, because he responded.

“You’re too good at this, St. John. Cardiac surgery is a waste of your talent.”

“What? Wait.”

My beeper went off, startling me. I tilted it to see the grey-and-black screen. It was my parents’ house, but not the code they used for emergencies.

“My mother.”

“We can talk next week.” García said, snapping the towel out of my hands. He tossed the towel into the hamper on his way out.

I flipped open my phone and called her. For the first time in dozens of tries, it connected.

“Caden.”

It wasn’t my mother.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Kent. I’m your father’s financial advisor twenty years now.”

I scanned my memory. I’d met him. Business dinners at the house. Holiday cocktails. He’d tried to get me to buy term life insurance. “Why are you in my parents’ house?”

“I have all the keys…”

“Where’s my mother?” I recognized the hum of the refrigerator in the background, but only when it clicked off.

“I called from my number, but you weren’t picking up.” Kent Whoever had a desperate edge to his voice.

“I asked you a question. Where’s my mother?”

Someone else murmured in my kitchen.

“We don’t know,” Kent said. “We were wondering if you’d seen them.”

“We?” I didn’t know why I latched onto the pronoun. Nothing could have been less important, but that was the most comprehensible straw to grasp, because as far as I was concerned, my father was somewhere in the city, sewing people back together, and my mother was home, on 87th Street, far away from the fallen towers.

More murmurs from my kitchen. Their kitchen. The kitchen I thought of when I thought of home. I was ten steps behind, still wrestling with taking a nap or demanding Garcia tell me what the fuck he meant about my future.

“My… we…” Kent shook the shit out of his head. “It doesn’t matter. I have… I had an office in the North Tower.”

I don’t care why is he telling me this why isn’t he dead but he’s in the house…

“And I was late,” Kent continued. “But your parents were on time.”

“Of course they were on fucking time.” I snapped up this lonely coherent straw, but that was the last one I’d get. “And you were late, so you’re in their house calling me to tell me what?”

“Have you heard from them since the attack?”

“No. The lines are jammed.”

“There’s no need to panic.”

“I’m not panicked, Kent.”

“There are posters all over the city.”

I hadn’t been outside the hospital in thirty hours. Something was happening. Something inky black, dropping into my clear mind, was curling into the calm waters, wider and wider. Soon, there would be no discrete color in the solution. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Can you check admitting lists?”

“For—”

—who?

The reality of the world clicked with the state of my little life. My parents. Kent’s office. The call from their house. I knew who I was checking the other hospitals’ lists for, and I knew why.

“Yes. I’ll take care of it.” I knew how to do that. I had it under control, and if I wanted to keep it that way, I had to make it a point to look forward, not down. If I looked down, I’d be afraid to fall. “Don’t worry,” I said to him, but really, to me. “I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You were always a good kid.”

I hung up and let myself have hope. A shining light of a dream the good kid always had, but kept to himself because it was uncomfortable.

I hoped that my father was dead and my mother was alive.

---

Ronin’s experimental bullshit wouldn’t come up until we were out of options.

The day after Jenn’s gallery opening, when I told Greyson I thought I was going crazy, she canceled two morning sessions.

Before we sat down, I’d considered a dozen things I could claim I wanted to talk to her about. Moving out of New York. Having a baby. Divorce. Anything. I would rather have made up a story about cheating on her than admit I was convinced I was being stalked by a… what? Force? Entity? Ghost? Demon? A rogue piece of my own mind? And that after pushing her limits the first time, this Thing had disappeared, only to resurface until I bent her over a banquet table?

It was insane.

But I stood at the kitchen island, across from her seat, and pretended I was someone else. I said it. All of it. The way the Thing folded into the shadows and laced itself inside sounds. The pressure to get rid of it. The raging jealousy the more I sensed it wanted her. The method I’d used to get rid of it twice.

“And you’re okay now? Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?”

“I didn’t want to tell you in front of it.”

She nodded, finishing her tea, thinking for a long time.

I hadn’t wanted to tell her, and even though that last admission was the craziest, it had come more easily than the first because of who she was. Greyson accepted me at face value. She listened. Always. If she thought I was losing my mind, she didn’t show it. There was no judgment in her.

Thank God for her. A lesser woman would have done so much more damage.

Finally, she spoke. “I think your reaction is very sane.”

“My reaction to losing my mind?”

“Those types of phrases aren’t helpful.”

“Let’s not do this.”

“Do what?”

“I need you to not be a psychiatrist about it.”

She brought her teacup to the sink. “That’s hard. But all right. I won’t monitor your words.”

“Thank you.”

“So obviously it’s a form of PTSD. Is it affecting your work?”

“Not at all.”

“How is that possible?” She got a notepad from a drawer and plucked a pencil from a cup of them.

“Compartmentalization, baby.”

She smiled and leaned her hip against the counter with her pencil hovering over the paper. “Sure. All right. When did this start?”

I took the pencil and pad away and put them aside. “You’re not doing an intake form on me.”

“It helps me think if I write it down.”

I gathered her in my arms and kissed her neck. “But it makes me uncomfortable. I only want to tell my wife.”

She exhaled deeply in my arms. “When did it start?”

“It started soon after you got back, but I think it’s been with me the whole time. Since the war. I brought it back from Iraq.”

“Are you sure?”

I let her go.

“Could it be September eleventh?” she asked.

I sat on the stool and faced her, letting our legs tangle between us. “I wasn’t exactly looking for it. So I don’t know.”

“And what is it like, this Thing?”

“It’s… inside things. I hear it in ambient noise and in the shadows.”

“In your peripheral vision?”

“No. Looking straight at it or not, it’s there. Sometimes there’s nothing to see, but I know it’s there.”

“Hm. So it’s an it, not a who?”

“It’s not a person, but it has a personality.”

“Can you describe it?”

I laughed a little at myself. “I know there’s no intake form, but man, it seems like there is.”

“Please?” She ran her hands down my arms, giving her plea a warmth and need she wouldn’t have given a patient.

“It’s nice.”

“Nice?”

“It’s a nice personality. Not charming or interesting. Compassionate. Gentle. Kindhearted. The only person in the world it hates is me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re mine. Every time you’re in the room, it gets stronger. Every time I think of you, it comes out a little more.” I pressed my lips together and breathed deeply. “It’s making me not want to think of you, and that’s unacceptable. Trying to keep away from you? I thought I could starve it out, but if I starve it out, I starve you out. I won’t let it do that to me.”

I laid her palm on mine. Her nails were short and clean. Unpolished, yet delicate.

“I stuff all my feelings away, because it feeds on them. You’d be sick to your stomach if you knew how easy it is for me to do that. It gets easier every day, and when I can’t anymore, I fuck you hard because it hates that. It hides so it doesn’t have to watch. Then there’s this spinning sensation, like my mind is being flipped and spun… then it’s gone until next time.”

She put her hand on my face. I kissed her palm.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You didn’t know you were marrying into this mess.”

“Neither did you.”

“I wouldn’t want to go through it with anyone else, but at the same time, I’m sorry it’s you. You deserve better.”

“And you deserve the best, which is me.” She smiled and waggled her brows.

I laughed but cut it off. She meant it to be funny, but I wasn’t ready to laugh about this.

“Do you have to wait to hurt me? Wait until you’re all bottled up and stone-faced?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried it.”

She slid off the stool. “Do you feel it now? The Thing? So close after you chased it away?”

“It’s there but hiding. I can manage it.”

“Hurt me now,” she said thickly.

When I’d hurt her before, I was under the influence of whatever this sickness was. I could only see one path out, and it was through her pain. Any other time, it wouldn’t be right.

“Greyson.” I ran my fingers along her throat, feeling the bend of her tendons under soft skin. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” She put her lips to my cheek. “Hurt me.”

Her whisper turned my compassion into sex. I turned my mouth to her throat and bit it.

“Harder.”

I bit harder, sucking apples off her skin. She gasped. Her face tightened. She pushed my face into her throat, and I sucked and bit her, grabbing her by the waist, pulling skin between my teeth.

She groaned, and I tasted blood. I pulled away. A red spot had formed inside deep, tooth-shaped indents. Her brown eyes were wide and her pupils were dilated.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She put her hand to her new wound. “Yeah, I’m… did it go away?”

It had been faint before. I gave it my attention, feeling in the corners and behind the hiss of the water heater. “It’s there. Same as before.”

“Maybe you have to be fucking me?”

“It starts screaming and hiding before that. And I’d like to fuck you right now.” I put my hand up her shirt and found her nipple.

The red marks on her neck were getting brighter and angrier as blood flowed to the site. Seeing the mark made my blood flow as well. I’d done that, and painfully. She was mine. I pinched her nipple, watching her suck in a breath. I twisted it, and her eyelids fluttered.

Drawing my hands down her sides, I pushed her pants down. “Let me make you come.”

Before she could answer, I got two fingers on her clit and her reply turned into a groan. I guided one hand to the stool behind her and the other to the counter. She locked her left elbow and curved her back, thrusting her hips toward me.

“Would you stop if I said no?” I rotated my fingers on her nub, watching her try to maintain control over her questions. “While we’re doing it and you were hurting me? If I said stop, could you?”

We were down to calling roughness and domination “it.” I doubted Greyson missed the way we glossed it over when we weren’t in the moment.

“Probably.” I got two fingers into her, then drew them back over her clit so wet I barely had to touch it.

“I need something… I’m so close… more definite.”

Increasing the pressure, I brought her to the next level but reduced it to keep her on the edge. “I could.”

“Then we should keep doing it.”

“You like it.”

“I do. I do. God, let me come.”

Wiggling back under her shirt, I pinched her nipple again. This time, I made sure it hurt. Not for the Thing, which was too far away to perceive it, but because I couldn’t believe what she’d said until I tested it with a loving heart.

But it was true. She threw her head back and rotated her hips against me. Her clit was bloated and tight with blood. The harder I pinched her nipple, the more the pain kept her from going over the edge into orgasm. She hovered in my hand, under my control with no more than a few fingers.

“I’m going to let you come.”

“Yes. Please.”

I slowly increased the pressure on her clit, circling it with her rhythm until she arched her back, leaning on her left arm, stiffening over my hand. She let out an unh, then jerked away so forcefully her hair fell over her face. Her chest heaved.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, pushing the hair off her face.

“My pleasure.” I sucked the end of a slick finger.

She put her hands on my shoulders and pressed her body between my legs. “I have the rest of the morning off.”

“I don’t.” I kissed her and stood. “So we’ll reconvene tonight.”

“I’m going to call some people then.”

“Okay.” I untangled myself from her and pushed the stools in.

“Would you like a man or a woman?”

“Excuse me?”

“Therapist.”

“Whoa, there.”

“You need to work with someone else. Another professional. I can’t manage your treatment.”

I hadn’t regretted telling her until she suggested a stranger, but how could I be surprised? And how could I have avoided telling her? She was my wife and the target of my… whatever it was. Logically, I couldn’t have avoided this shitty situation. I knew it, but I didn’t have to like it.

“No.”

“Caden. Please.”

“You want me, a surgeon, to tell someone about this and expect them to let me continue working?”

“It’s not affecting your work.”

“I need to work. So no.”

“I won’t treat you. Period.” She crossed her arms. “I mean it. It’s not some arbitrary limit, because believe me, my instinct is to be your primary advocate. I’d step in front of anything for you. But I know, in the end, that won’t serve you.” She put her hands flat on my chest. “You’re everything to me. Everything. I’m too invested.”

Looking down at her, parallel lines of straight hair filtering one brown eye, the strands caught in her dark lashes, I accepted her love. Her professionalism was fine, but when she said she was doing it for me, I believed her.

“I don’t want to tell anyone else about this. Who’s not going to think I’m crazy?”

“Anyone in the field.”

“I’m not going on a hundred interviews.”

“I’ll find you someone right away. It’ll be easy.”

I kissed her temple. “All right.” I held her tight, resting my chin on her head.

“We’re going to be all right,” she said. “I promise.”

“So do I.”