Page 87 of Roll With The Punches
But if he didn’t work, he couldn’t pay for his health insurance, which was paying for his medications and his doctor visits.
If he didn’t have the IV medicine, it was likely he might never beat the disease attacking his body. Unless he was somehow lucky enough, after a couple of years of fighting for it, to qualify for disability.
This fucking sucks.
After sitting there for ten minutes, he finally decided to go for it. Taking it easy and driving below the speed limit, he carefully worked his way home. Took him twenty minutes longer than it usually would, even with the traffic being light.
Brandon’s car and Stuart’s truck sat parked in the driveway when he pulled in, but Emma wasn’t home yet.
Maybe that’s for the best.
He hated her seeing him like this, because she would always go into mother hen mode. She was akid. She shouldn’t have to parent him. She already had one fuck-up as a parent, although to Tracey’s credit, she had turned things around by divorcing Pat.
Still, it was his job to help take care of Emma.
Em shouldn’t be responsible for taking care ofhim.
When he walked in, he smelled something delicious. He didn’t even have time to call out he was home before Stuart swooped in from somewhere to gently hug him. “Welcome home.”
“Hey.” That was something else he hated, how Stuart and Brandon now treated him like he was fragile. “Dinner smells good.”
“Pot roast. You’ve got time to take a shower.”
Brandon emerged from the master bedroom, looking like he’d just had a shower. “Hey. Thought I heard you. How you feeling?”
Lying was forbidden, but he didn’t want to tell them the truth. “I’m vertical.” The men followed him to the master bedroom, where he started stripping.
“We need to have a talk,” Brandon said, catching Jeff’s hands and making him look at him. “Stuart and I have already decided this, so itwillhappen. I’m going to marry you.”
Brandon could have slapped him in the face and it wouldn’t have stunned him more. “What?”
“Marry. You and me.”
He sank to the end of the bed. “Why?”
Brandon, still holding Jeff’s hands, knelt in front of him. “Because you need to go on my insurance.”
“I have insurance through work.”
“Correction—you willhaveto go on my insurance because you’re going to quit working because you’re going to get the IV drugs.”
“You’re serious?”
“We both are. The only other option you have is to ask that they transfer you into something other than being a service tech so you can get the IV port. If there’s even an available option. Like service writer. Or sales.”
“I’m not a salesman. I’d suck at that. And I don’t know if there’s any openings for a service writer.”
“Fine. Then you’ll stop working and focus on getting better. Your job will be doing as much as you comfortably can around here and healing. When you reach a point you can go back to work, and the doctors clear you to go back to work, then we’ll discuss it.”
Jeff wanted to feel happy about this, but he couldn’t. If anything, it made him feel worse. “I won’t be pulling my weight around here financially.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Stuart said. “You killing yourself trying to work doesn’t help us, either. Especially if you push yourself to the point you’re back in the hospital again. Nobody wants that. We love you, and we want you with us for life. That means you have to take care of yourself and let us help take care of you.”
“This sucks.”
“Would you be feeling like this if it was cancer?” Brandon asked. “What if it was me in your position? Or Stuart? How would you feel?”
“That’s different.”
