Chapter 39
Natalia
I threw up.
I’d told Hunter I needed to go to the bathroom because I’d felt the familiar burn in my esophagus that happens right before. My vision was still blurry from tears as my head hung in the toilet, staring down at the water.
The bathroom door clicked open, but I couldn’t lift my head. Hunter sat on the floor and wrapped his body around mine. The warmth of his chest enveloped me like a heated blanket. I leaned my head against his shoulder and let it all out.
He held me tight for a long time, rocking us and silently stroking my hair. When our eyes met, he spoke low. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew my results.”
“Were you even planning on telling me if the result was positive?”
He didn’t have to speak his answer. His look said it all. I wiped my nose. “Well, then I’m glad Garrett finally had a use. How did you know I was at my mother’s anyway? I hadn’t even told Anna yet.”
“Izzy told me when I went by your place.”
I leaned up. “You saw Garrett?”
“Yep.”
“How did that go?”
“He tried to make me think you were there with him, together.”
I exhaled. “Such an asshole. I hate leaving Izzy there with him, but I knew she wanted to spend time with him, even if she’d never admit it. She loves her father, and they have a lot of work to do to fix their relationship.”
Hunter nodded. He went quiet for a while after that.
“What are you thinking about right now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know if I did the right thing telling you. This was really selfish of me. We can’t be together if it’s positive.”
“What do you mean we can’t be together if it’s positive?”
“I’m not going to subject you to that so that you can wind up being my nurse. I flew to New York because I’m a jealous asshole. I told you because I owed you the truth. The men in your life have all disrespected you with lies, and I couldn’t do that. But I won’t put you through watching what I saw happen to my brother.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
Hunter closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he said, “There’s no point arguing over it now. I’ll have the results in two days.”
“Fine.” I needed a few days for it all to sink in and to formulate an answer to every one of the arguments he would make against us being together if, God forbid, the test was positive.
We sat on the bathroom floor for another hour while Hunter answered my questions about the disease. He was clearly well educated on the genetics and statistics, along with having experienced it first-hand with his mother and brother. The one positive thing I learned was that Hunter was past the age that would be considered early-onset, which was when symptoms occurred before the age of twenty. Adult-onset generally hit between the ages of thirty and fifty, but could strike even as late as eighty, and the progression of the disease was much longer—taking from ten to thirty years to cause death.
“Come on.” Hunter finally stood and helped me up. “Let’s get out of this little bathroom.”
“I have appointments today that I need to call and cancel.”
“You don’t have to do that. I need to find a place to stay and crash for a little bit. I’ve been up since yesterday morning.”
“How long are you staying?”
“Not sure yet. At least the next two or three days.”
“Stay here at Mom’s with me.”
“Does she have one of those metal things you use to grind up meat?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Yeah. Why?”
“No reason. She makes good meatballs. But I’d rather get a hotel, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay.”
Even though I’d already taken a bath, I took a quick shower hoping it would help clear my head while Hunter went on my laptop to find a hotel near Mom’s house. When I finished getting ready, I found him sitting up on the couch, but sound asleep. I took a moment to appreciate the man and consider how difficult the decision must have been to tell me. He hadn’t told anyone except his lifelong best friend since finding out more than ten years ago. That was a lot for one person to hold in. I decided I wanted to show him how much I appreciated him being honest with me, so I straddled his hips and woke him with my lips pressed to his.
“Mmmm…” he groaned, coming to life.
I might’ve started the kiss, but he certainly took over fast enough. Hunter wrapped both of his hands in my hair and used it to keep me in place while his talented tongue led mine in a tantalizing dance. When I attempted to break the kiss, he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and tugged.
“Where you trying to go? I could get used to being woken up like this.”
I rubbed my nose with his. “When I was a little girl, whenever my sisters and I wouldn’t confess to doing something wrong, my mom would promise no punishment for telling the truth and say, ‘Honesty is always rewarded.’ Then when we came clean for whatever we were hiding, she’d give us a lollipop or something as a reward.”
“Oh yeah? You saying you’re going to give me a lollipop for dumping my depressing truth on you?”
I pulled back enough so he could see my sinister smile. “Close. I was thinking you’d be the lollipop. I’ll go to my appointments; you go to your hotel, take a hot shower, and climb into bed naked. I’ll wake you with your honesty reward.”
***
Minnie was my last appointment for the day. It wasn’t professional to have favorite patients, but I’d come to visit her even if I didn’t get paid.
She stared at the elevator panel with stress lines etched all over her face as she waited for the car to arrive. She’d only checked the door lock three times before I urged her to walk to the elevator. Not checking the fourth time was killing her. Obsessive-compulsive behavior isn’t about not being able to resist the compulsion. It’s about the inability to stop thinking about the compulsion when you do resist it. She hadn’t needed to check that the door was locked a fourth time, but she was unable to stop thinking about checking it now. I attempted to distract her while we waited for her slow-as-shit elevator.
“So…Hunter is back.”
That did the trick. At least temporarily.
“Oh? I knew he’d come to his senses.”
I smiled. “That makes one of us.”
The elevator doors opened, and I had to put my hand on her shoulder to guide her to step inside. It wasn’t easy for her to leave the floor. But today we were going to go down to the lobby, step off the elevator, and wait for a new one before coming back up to check that the door was locked again. Breaking the pattern a little each week was working, albeit slowly.
“You were right, by the way. He had a secret he was trying to protect me from. He’s got a health condition. Well, it’s complicated, but he was afraid to get involved with me and drag me into what could amount to some rough years, medically.”
Minnie was quiet as we stepped off the elevator and waited for the next one to arrive. I knew from prior experience that focusing was difficult for her until she was on the upswing, heading back toward the relief of her stress. Today it was stepping into the elevator that alleviated some of her anxiety, knowing she’d soon be able to touch that door handle again.
Once the elevator doors closed, she let out an audible exhale and spoke. “Thirty years ago, when I was dealing with my condition alone, I pushed people away because I didn’t want them to try to make me stop what I was doing. I knew people would try to help me, but that would mean having to stop checking things, and, of course, that thought alone caused me stress. So I pushed people away rather than face my fears.”
I nodded. “I guess that’s what Hunter had been doing all these years. He didn’t get tested for a long time because he didn’t want to have to deal with the results. It was easier to push people away than be pressured to get the tests done when he wasn’t ready.”
The elevator doors opened on Minnie’s floor. She booked out and down the hall, which made me smile. Baby steps. I watched from the elevator bank as she checked the handle one more time and then walked back toward me. Her face showed marked relief.
I pressed the down button. “You good?”
She nodded. “Next stop Puff and Stuff.” Today we were running errands. While that sounded easy, it entailed working on a number of compulsions. In the cab, she would need to check the door lock four times, at the store there would be four segments of counting her change. I had a small plan for a break in each one. But for now, she was focused. We stepped onto the elevator together and resumed chatting as if an obsessive compulsion hadn’t just interrupted us.
“The only people I’ve kept in my life for the last thirty years are people who would accept me the way I am and not try to change how I wanted to live. I think you know how many people that amounts to.”
Minnie had one remaining sister and her mother. No friends or coworkers. She’d alienated the entire world so she wouldn’t be bugged to stop her obsessions. But since her mother was getting up in age and her sister had married and moved down to Georgia, she’d realized she was alone most days. That’s what drove her to finally seek therapy. She wanted to be able to have people in her life and choose them over her disease.
“Let me ask you something. Would you have pushed away people who never mentioned your checking and let you live the way you wanted to?”
She shrugged. “Probably not. But people can’t help themselves. They always want to fix me.”
It was like a light bulb went off in my head. I turned to her in the elevator and pulled her into a giant hug. “Minnie, your session is on me today. It’s the least I can do when you just solved my love-life problem.”