Would he ever open up to me? It was a stupid question really, one my heart shouldn’t be wondering right now.
His face tightened. “This is different.”
“Is it?”
“Your heart stopped beating.” His voice cracked slightly on the last word. “So, yes, this is very different.”
That was fair. Childhood trauma wasn’t exactly the same thing as listing medical symptoms.
“I’m sure you have more important things to do right now than listen to my medical history. Can’t a nurse get it from me?”
“I prefer to do it myself,” Blake replied.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Whyyou? You’re getting paged, you probably have a hundred patients to attend to, so why would you waste time with something as mundane as taking my medical history?”
“Tessa, for nearly two years, I’ve wondered if you were okay. Now I know you weren’t, and nothing else in my life matters until I understand why.”
Heat bloomed across my skin.
“I can’t focus on anything else. I can’t help any other patient. I can’t even breathe right until I know what’s been happening to you.”
Warmth spread to my neck and flooded my cheeks.
“Now, we can dance around this all night, but I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
Once again, I had to remind my stupid lungs to keep breathing. If I fainted one more time, he’d probably admit me for a year.
“I don’t want Ryker knowing about this,” I clarified.
His dark eyebrows shot up. “You’ve kept this from him?”
“That’s why I changed my emergency contact. He’s not my keeper, but he still acts like he is.”
He scratched the side of his face. “Yeah, Ryker would probably set up a medical command center in your living room.”
That pulled a genuine smile from me.
“There’s another reason you don’t want to tell me.” Blake eyed my twisting fingers. “What is it?”
It took me a second to find the right words.
“Once people find out that you’re not feeling well, it becomes all they see. Every conversation starts with: How’s that going? What are the doctors saying? What’s the next step? It’s like your whole life gets put on hold and these medical questions define who you are.”
And if Blake and I had any chance of rekindling our friendship, I didn’t want my illness to be the excuse for our speaking terms. I wanted our friendship to be genuine, not reborn out of pity or obligation.
“I found that out quickly with Eli.”
Blake’s slight flinch at the name didn’t escape me.
“He meant well, but his constant questions and passionate opinions about what I should do …” I trailed off, remembering the suffocation of constant concern that snuffed the life out ofour relationship. “Sometimes, you need to compartmentalize. Put the dark stuff in a box under the bed and just … be normal. Laugh about movies or books. But the minute people know something’s wrong, you lose that privilege forever.”
Blake’s shoulders rose with a deep breath.
“I don’t wantyouto look at me differently.” My voice came out smaller than intended.
