I shake my head. "How muchtimedo you have left?"
And that's when the understanding hits.
Frankie understands what I mean by those words and the look on her face has me understanding I did, in fact, already know the answer.
Fuck.
Custom Made
"Frankie, tell me. How much time do you have left?"
I blink as my stomach drops to my toes.
This was definitely not what I expected to walk into this afternoon.
Nope, I was hoping for a little light conversation about our day, probably tell Zan about how Opal shit all over Milos's bare chest while Casey laughed so hard she peed her pants, then suggest we try out the new tub, see if it was big enough for us to have sex in before we got ready for dinner with Vok and Cora.
I absolutely did not plan on coming home to the man I'm so in love with that it fucking hurts like fucking hell to discuss my very permanent fucking deadline.
My eyes flick to Thor as he comes trotting out of his little house, then comes up to me and basically begs for snuggles. So I prolong my answer a little and pick him up.
“Frankie." Zan narrows his eyes. "Answer me."
I arch a brow and give our baby some love. "Did you Google a bunch of shit?"
"Do not respond with another question."
"Did you?"
Zan sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. "I searched for answers to the few questions I have not had the courage to ask, yes."
“Great," I deadpan. "So now you've read all kinds of shit about how quickly HD kills people and you're all stressed out over it."
"I stayed on the sites you suggested for me before, but they all said the same. Individuals diagnosed with Juvenile Huntington's Disease typically have ten years from emergence and since you have gone almost twenty I want to know what the fuck that means for your time left."
I glare fucking hard because I don't want to talk about that with him.
I don't want to tell Zan that I'm probably looking at maybe a month before my symptoms get so bad I need someone to help me take a shit. I don't want to tell him that it may be only a few more weeks before I can't dress myself or feed myself, that my mood swings might become daily and the hallucinations will go from occasional auditory to regular auditory and visual. I don't want to talk to him about how, in maybe only a month or two I won't be the person he knows now. I won't be the person anyone knows and will basically be a five-foot-eleven infant he'll probably have to take care of until my heart gives out or I catch something like pneumonia when the weather changes and it kills me.
And I definitely don't want to talk to him about my plan; what I'm going to do and what I wish his role would be. I don't want to talk about my will and everything I've changed in it.
I don't want to do any of that, not now or ever, but the look on his face, his emotions, I feel just like they're my own. Fuck, I can't not talk to him about it either.
"There isn't much of it, if that's what you're asking.” I kiss Thor's head a couple times then set him down by his food. "I mean, that's what you want to know, right? If we're talking days or weeks, months even?"
“Yes," Zan spits. "I want to know exactly how much time you have left and why you were not going to tell me."
I scowl. "Before we get into the last of the secrets webothhave, ‘cause yeah, I know you're still hiding something from me too, Zan, there is no exact timeline, no solid end with something like this."
"So you could live another, say, ten years just as you have been?"
His question isn't hopeful, isn't some desperate plea. No, it's as if Zan is already calling me on my bullshit because he knows that's not a possibility.
And fuck all if that doesn't piss me off.
"Fine. If you want to turn this into a fight, so be it. I hadn't been to the doctor pretty much since Granny got sick, but the last year before she passed, my symptoms started to progress. I ignored them until about six or seven months ago when I was riding my bike through the country and wound up bucking myself off of it during a turn. I ended up blacking out after I hit my head and gave myself a concussion. Then I laid on the side of the road covered in road rash for about an hour before anyone found me.”
I dig through my camera bag for a joint and light it. "My doctor was called from the ER because when they pulled up my chart they saw my diagnosis and she wanted to run a million tests, but I chose not to do them. A few months later, I had another bad day in front of one of Granny's nurses. I was in the middle of it when he arrived actually, and he called 9-1-1 when he got there because I had all but destroyed our kitchen.” I inhale deep and roll my shoulders, trying to stop any of the symptoms from starting. "They thought it was a home invasion I walked in on, but that wasn't the case, obviously, so they took me in for an evaluation and once again my doctor was called. This time she ran her fucking tests and the day Granny died was the day I got the results back."
