"Piper?" I can't find a damn thing in this house. I always thought having more space would make things easier, but my wife and I have very different ideas of where things should go. I lost every one of those arguments when we moved here. She stayed up all night unpacking after I went to bed, and, by default, got to establish the locations of items in the new house."Yeah?" she calls to me from across the house before appearing in the doorway to the master bedroom."Where's the aspirin?" My head is pounding and the frustration I'm feeling toward having to search for it is only exacerbating the problem.Walking toward me, she says, "Does your head still hurt? How long has this been going on now? Two days?" She continues past me to the closet at the end of the hall. "This makes day three, and yes, it still hurts."She hands me the bottle. "Do you think you should see a doctor?"Tapping two pills into my palm, I hand the bottle back to her. The rattling of the pills inside the
With my first client meeting me at six this morning, we arrive at the gym early, meaning I get to watch Piper. The definition starting to show in her arms and back is sexy as hell. It's not overly muscular, she's simply elongating what was already there. It's becoming leaner. I don't care if she ever works out. I didn't push her to come, but when she asked me to teach her, I have to admit it excited me. Seeing her doing it on her own makes me proud as hell. I enjoy watching men approach her-she's oblivious to her appeal, and therefore doesn't recognize they're flirtatious advances.She'll help people on machines, and if men ask her questions she doesn't know the answer to, she always comes to find me and bring me back to answer correctly. The look on a man's face when she shows up with me in tow, introducing me as her husband, is priceless. It never fails, she'll kiss me on the cheek, leaving me with the muscle head who doesn't need help and was simply hitting on my wife, while sh
I shouldn't have lied to her, but I don't want her worrying. One of us doing that's enough. She has plenty on her plate without thinking about how I feel. The truth is my head has continued to pound and has become a blinding migraine. I've never had a migraine before but based on what I just read on the Internet, I have to assume this is one. Sensitivity to light is an understatement; it's more like piercing daggers in my eyes over and over. If I throw up one more time, I may find my stomach in the toilet, but I refuse to bail on my clients. I won't allow Piper to carry any more of the financial load than she already does. If I'm not working with people, then I'm not earning any money. If I have idle time here, there's no paycheck.I'm on staff, so I get a free membership as does Piper. That includes unlimited classes. I don't use them, but she does. I also get health insurance, a huge plus because most gyms don't offer those types of benefits to their employees, but Core does. Th
My alarm blares through the silence signaling it's time to start the day. If I could reach it, I would throw it against a wall. Unfortunately, I have strategically placed it on the other side of the room to avoid such incidents. By the time I get up and cross the room to silence it, I refuse to allow myself the comfort of my bed again.With Moby at the gym on Tuesday mornings, I'm here alone. There's no one to ensure I don't oversleep, and while Cam loves me, she does not approve of anyone being late to work for any reason. She's a slave driver, but I love working with her almost as much as I love working at Healing Wings. Cam and Dax started the foundation after her attack. They wanted to provide a place for victims of sexual abuse to find the help they need for healing. It took them quite some time to get it up and running, but now the facility offers medical resources, mental health care, and music therapy to anyone regardless of their ability to pay. There's very few of us act
She's starting to freak me out. No, I don't feel normal, something's definitely off kilter, but I don't think it's cause for alarm. I can tell she's nervous, biting the side of her lip, but whatever's going on in that pretty little head of hers, she's not sharing. Piper's quiet for most of the ride, so I don't push. I understand my wife's fear. I get it. "Moby, when did you start feeling bad?""I've had a headache for a couple days.""Is that it? Just the headache?""I don't know. I guess. Last night I felt weird. There were a couple times I got really dizzy like I'd stood up too fast, but it passed as quickly as it came, so I didn't think much about it.""Anything else?" I hesitate-this is like the Spanish Inquisition. I know I'm about to piss her off, but she was sick. "Last night after you went to bed my hand started to tingle, kind of like it was asleep. I couldn't get it to stop."She glares at me, giving me serious stink eye, before turning back to the road. "Why
The numbers on the screen don't mean anything to Moby, but two hundred and twenty-one over one hundred and sixty, my husband is actively stroking. I have never seen it firsthand, but my mother educated me for years after watching her mother die from repeat strokes. It never dawned on me those constant reminders of visual clues would come in handy-the slurred speech, facial distortion, motor function loss-I knew but hoped I was wrong. I wish now I was oblivious to the reality we're about to face, but I'm not. I'm all too aware of just how bad this truly is. In an instant, there's a flurry of people and alarms going off on the machines tracking my husband's heart. They quickly transfer him to a bed and start an IV. With only one of us allowed to go back to the room, my dad turns to leave.I grab his arm in panic. "Daddy, will you keep trying to call Moby's parents and Cam? She doesn't know I'm going to be late, so at this point, I think it's safe to tell her I won't be in at all. Be
I heard the words Piper said, but can't really wrap my mind around the possibility of a stroke. It didn't take a genius to notice the nurse didn't correct her assumption. I can't fathom how the hell I could be having a stroke. My head is throbbing, but I'm completely lucid. I'm young, in great shape, eat a healthy diet; this only happens to grossly obese people my age, not healthy, thirty-two-year-old men. My limited knowledge of stroke symptoms, patients, and the like is zilch, but the point is it shouldn't be me. I don't smoke, and I rarely drink. I just married my wife for the love of God. What the fuck is Piper going to do with what's left of me?Lying on this bed, unable to talk to my wife, the emotions seize me, Heather steps to my side. She doesn't speak. She places her hand on my forearm while we wait for the nurse to usher us in for the CT scan. The warmth of her touch grounds me and reminds me I'm not alone. When the doors finally open, signaling our turn, she gives me a ge
Heather comes in an hour or so later to prepare Moby for his move to ICU. I ask if she heard the results from the CT scan, but the radiology department is really behind, and since Moby's blood pressure hasn't dropped much, they're going to go ahead and go. I climb off the bed and see the trepidation in my husband's eyes. "I need to go tell everyone what's going on, are you going to be okay for a bit by yourself?"He nods his response, but I can tell he doesn't want me to go."I'll be right back, I promise.""Actually, why don't you just meet us in ICU." Heather looks at the chart in her hand before turning her eyes back to me. "Seventh floor, room two."After kissing Moby's forehead, I make the long walk through the winding maze of the ER to share what little information I have with our friends and family. It breaks my heart to leave him, but it's not fair to all the people closest to us to wait without periodic updates. The truth is, it's only mid-afternoon, and I'm exhaust