Page 105 of Ellie Hayes and the Himbos
I stick out my lower lip in sympathy. The pregnancy had been a happy surprise, but Helen found out a few days after we’d spent a lunch detailing our respective medical histories. She had been so delicate in telling me that she was expecting, it was practically an apology. I appreciated her sensitivity, but at this point, whether my body is up to the task of reproducing is the last thing on my mind.
“So, rest easy about the success of the first annual Firehouse Fitness holiday party, and tell me.” He half smiles. “Whatareyou doing up here?”
“My eyeliner. I have to angle the cabinet mirrors to see my right side, and it takes forever to get the wings symmetrical.” I frown. “I hate having to relearn it every relapse. You’d think I’d have the muscle memory by now.”
I grimace the moment the complaint is out of my mouth. Ian gives me a reassuring squeeze, but I sigh. “I’m an asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I’m griping abouteyeliner. There are people with this who can’t walk or see or live independently, and I’m bitching about nailing a cat eye.”
“Your MS isyourMS. It isn’t a competition.”
He’s right, but I sigh again, anyway.
Dr. Hartman had gotten me in first thing that nightmare morning, and an MRI and spinal tap confirmed my condition. Relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. I experience flare-ups, during which my immune system attacks the myelin protecting my nerve cells, as well as the nerve fibers within. This interrupts signals from getting to the parts of my body where they need to go, my optic nerve evidently being the go-to, though new symptoms may pop up. This can last days or weeks, which has been my experience so far, or longer, and then I go into remission, where, again, so far, the symptoms go away. As with all things MS, this is simply a matter of luck; I could be symptomatic even outside of an attack. I just get to wait and see.
Ian takes my hands, squeezing them and running his thumbs from my knuckles to my wrists. “Are your hands behaving?”
I shrug. My eye might be my body’s preferred victim, but this relapse, a tingling has picked up in my hands. It’s maddening, pins and needles dancing along my fingers and palms. I end upwiggling my fingers or curling and relaxing them to relieve the sensation. Five days into this flare-up, and I don’t even notice I’m doing it. But Ian does.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I just didn’t do enough with them today.”
As ever, movement is my savior. Beyond the relief I get from simply keeping my hands active, the tingles are hard to focus on when I’m cursing workouts like Barbara, which, as per its namesake, really does suck. For now, I’m going as hard as I reasonably can for as long as I reasonably can. The only change is that the guys spot me during overhead movements, especially with this flare-up’s twitchy fingers, and I’m expressly forbidden from rope climbs without Ian and the crash pads below me, which, c’mon—don’t threatenmewith a good time.
I curl my fingers around his. Unfiltered honesty has gotten a lot easier now that I have nothing to hide, but admitting weakness still grates my pride. “I don’t like that there’s a new symptom. It feels too soon for something new. And I feel guilty because…I should be so lucky that it’s just something really, really, annoying and not debilitating. And I’m scared. Because the next symptom might be.”
Ian opens his mouth, doubtless to say something reassuring, but I shake my head.
“I know that it isn’t likely. Not now. But even with my medication, it is the eventuality.” The vast majority of RRMS patients transition to a progressive form of the condition, where the relapses stop being relapses and become their life, the symptoms permanent. In most cases, that takes time, ten to twenty-five years, and that’s not nothing. One can fit a lot of living into that, and I’m going to.
“But whether it’s a decade before that happens, or two,or,” I emphasize, leaning on the still-tender hope I’ve been nurturing, “MS is miraculously cured in the meantime, now is all I can depend on anyway.” I smirk. “I could get hit by a truck tomorrow, regardless of my MS progression.”
“Let’s not do that though, okay? This is Texas. There are a lot of trucks.”
“Good point.” I slip my hands around his sides, squeezing his waist with my legs. “It’s a crappy part of my life, but still only part of it. It’s not all that I am. I can still apply eyeliner. And walk. And run. And climb a rope. And move stupid heavy shit and have stimmy sex with you after—” I shrug, smiling as his hands slide up my back. “For now, that’s pretty damn good.”
“I agree,” he says, and leans down, brushing his lips to mine.
I nip at his lower lip. “And I can be helpful, too, if those brats will let me.”
“This isforyou,” he reminds me.
I let out a huff, and Ian laughs, jostling me at every point of contact. The feeling revives Break Me, which was really justme, anyway, and I squeeze him between my thighs with a little more intention.
“We still have a few minutes?” I ask, and he nods, his smile growing lascivious. “Excellent.” I tiptoe my fingers down to his rear. “Let’s put these fingers to use.”
“Okay!” Diego’s excited voice comes from my left, accompanied by the faint tinkle of jingle bells. I bite in my smile, imagining him in the little Santa hat he was wearing for the Built Boxholiday video we recorded this morning. It was the first kit he’d designed, courtesy of the nutrition training he’s taken on, and one of many kits and features of his extended contract with Built Box. “We’ll count down, and then you can look! Guys, start fromthree!”
On his cue, a masculine chorus chants, “Three, two, one!”
I open my eyes and gasp, immediately blinking back tears. Erected in the lobby between one of the boxy armchairs and the couch is a monstrous fir tree. I’d smelled it the moment Ian guided me out of the stairwell, my eyes closed, as per request, but in no way was I prepared for the sight of it, even at 50 percent functionality.
It is, without a doubt, the most poorly decorated tree ever to have been adorned. It is a crime; it could be used to support an argument against ever cutting down a tree for Christmas consumption.
And I love it.
Before I can fully process the cacophony of contrasting elements the poor tree has been subjected to, Grant steps forward. He gestures to the cluster of balls and paper chains that have been more or less thrown at the lower limbs. “I let the kiddos do this part,” he says. “They’ve been making ornaments during the childcare hours the past couple of weeks. The chains, too,” he adds, begrudgingly. “It wasTom’sidea.”
