(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
The cardigan was out again. Its diamond pattern was worn soft at the elbows, and it hung over the back of the chair by the window—the one where she always wrote. She must have taken it off sometime that morning, somewhere between her second and third cup of coffee.
One sleeve had slipped halfway off the seat, dragging the floor. It looked forgotten, but not discarded. As if she’d stood up mid-thought and never looked back. That was how I knew she was more here now. She hadn’t slept in the spare room in weeks. The hum of her laptop came from our bedroom again. Some mornings she was steady. Others, less so.
Two nights ago, I woke up to the cold space beside me. The blanket had been pushed back. I waited—listening. No faucet. No footsteps.
She was in the living room, sitting on the edge of the couch with her arms wrapped around herself. Her chest rose too fast—short breaths that never landed. Her skin was flushed in irregular patches of red: jaw, collarbone, and further down. It always started like that—heat first, then tremor.
I knelt beside her, careful not to come too close.
“Kerry,” I said.
Her hands were clenched into fists, pressed into the cushion. Her breathing stayed shallow. I placed one hand on her upper arm, just above her elbow, and the other between her shoulder blades—flat, steady.
“I’ve got you,” I said. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”
I felt her breathe when she started to cry. She folded forward slowly, one arm crossing her stomach, the other steadying her against the cushion. Her shoulders shook once—tight, contained. A breath hitched. Then another. The tears came in a steady stream.
After a while, she said, “It happened again. I didn’t feel it coming.”
I reached behind her, pulled the blanket off the back of the couch, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then I lifted her—one arm under her knees, careful of the left. She didn’t resist.
She rested in my arms, her weight familiar, her body quiet but not yet at ease. I carried her to our room, her chest against mine, legs unmoving. I pulled the blanket around her and held her close—one arm still, the other moving gently along her spine in slow, almost absent patterns.
Her breathing slowed. Then she whispered, “I’m so sorry.” Her breathing began to steady. She shifted closer. One arm draped across my ribs.
“I don’t understand these episodes,” she said. “I thought I would. You’ve seen it—panic attacks, adrenaline spikes. All of it.”
I didn’t answer right away. My arm tightened slightly around her.
“I’ve sat with a lot of people mid-episode,” I said quietly. “Sometimes on the subway. Sometimes in their kitchen. No warning. Just… like a fuse blown. I used to think if you could name the cause, you could fix it. That’s what I liked about the medic work—respond, stabilize, move.”
The medic shifts were part-time now—just enough to help when the city fell short.
You can’t rehearse how to talk to a woman who just realized her husband’s gone in the next room. There were nights we waited with the body in back longer than we should have, because the ER had no space.
I saw more hands go still in three months than I had in years. Eventually, you stop counting. You start memorizing other things instead—door codes, the names of children left behind.
After shift, I would sit in the car with the windows down. I would take the long way home. Not because I liked the drive—but because I didn’t want to open the door and bring any of it in with me.
It’s part of me now—worn in places no one sees. So when she told me she loved me, it wasn’t simple. I had seen too much to take the words at face value. I kissed her forehead
“Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
By the time I came downstairs, the coffee was already brewing. She stood at the stove, making eggs.
“Can you give me a hand?” she asked without turning.
I crossed the kitchen. She eased the pan off the burner, each movement measured. When I stepped in, she turned. I started to steady her, but she moved first—kissed me, light and brief, then leaned in, her arms around me, barely there and trembling.
“Thanks for making breakfast,” I said. “I’ve got shift today.” She pulled back just enough. Her expression shifted—barely—but enough to catch.
“You’re already somewhere else,” she said. “You’ve been somewhere else since you got back.”
I hesitated. “There’s not much to say.”
“Bullshit,” She said. The word landed hard, heavier than her breath. Her hand hovered at her side, fingers twitching, like she wasn’t sure whether to reach for me or let go.
I exhaled. “A patient reminded me of you,” I said quietly. “And she died.”
The space between us filled with everything we weren’t saying. I left the room without finishing my coffee. Later, I heard her and the misstep—the soft thud of movement, then the crash of plate and food hitting tile.
I silently got the broom, cleaned the mess, and walked out the door.
The day before, Jake was already at the rig, rubbing sanitizer between his palms like he hoped it might work from the inside out. We ran three calls before noon.
The third was Leah—a patient in a third-floor walk-up. COVID-positive. Possibly long COVID. She was slumped against the couch, legs angled awkwardly inward, fingers twitching.
“My legs just… stopped working.”
It wasn’t fatigue but something else—loss of control. Fasciculations moved down her arms, small involuntary muscle flickers. No reflexes. Her voice barely carried.
“It’s been a year,” she said. “Worse since COVID last fall. They said it would fade.” A pause. Then, quieter: “It didn’t.”
Jake asked for the diagnosis: length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy. The longest nerves—those that reach the hands and feet—were damaged.
She looked like Kerry.
Jake said my name, twice.
“You alright, J—”
She wasn’t Kerry. I knew that.
Still, the resemblance lingered. Leah died on her second night in triage.
The house was dim and quiet when I got home. The latch clicked louder than it should’ve as the door closed behind me. The shift had been brutal—calls stacked on calls, no space to breathe.
My uniform clung to me, soaked in sweat, bleach, and a fatigue that settled deep. I wanted out of it. A hot shower. Clean clothes. Kerry.
I climbed the stairs, slow and aching. The hallway light caught the bedroom door. The bed was made—corners square, pillows smooth. Everything in place. Everything still.
I hadn’t seen her yet.
I peeled off my shirt and let it fall near the hamper, the cool air raising goosebumps along my arms. I reached for the top drawer—the one with my softest clothes—searching for the loose grey sweats she hated but always folded anyway.
The drawer jammed halfway. I yanked, then pulled harder, and the dresser shifted, its wooden legs dragging loudly across the floor. That’s when the photo fell. It was the one from last fall, the two of us wrapped in her scarf, cheeks pressed together, grinning like idiots.
The frame hit the hardwood and cracked from corner to corner, splitting us clean in half. I dropped to my knees, one hand pressed against the broken glass. Something inside me splintered. The sound that came out wasn’t clean or quiet—it was a sob, raw and sudden, torn from a place I’d kept sealed far too long.
“Julian?” I heard her voice in the hall. I tried to pull my voice steady. I knew she had heard the glass break.
“I’m fine,” I said.
She stepped in the room and didn’t ask what happened. She just bent down—slowly—and picked up the frame.
“The picture isn’t damaged,” she said. She set it upright on the dresser, crack and all.
Then she saw my hand. Blood was spreading across my palm rapidly.
“We need to take care of that,” she said.
The bathroom light buzzed overhead. She rinsed a cloth, setting the antiseptic and gauze beside it without a word.
“Let me see your hand,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the tub. The cut was clean, but deep—like everything else I hadn’t been able to stop. She cleaned it gently, small circles over torn skin. I didn’t flinch.
The physical pain was the only kind that made sense. The rest of it: Kerry’s body giving out, the patient who looked like her slipping away, that photo falling splitting us down the middle—had cracked something open I couldn’t name.
“Tell me what happened yesterday,” Kerry said.
She collapsed,” I said. “Her name was Leah.” I watched her wrap the bandage with practiced care, each movement precise. “She reminded me of you. The way she stood. The way her fingers curled without meaning to.” I hesitated, then added, “She died and she knew it was coming. That’s what undid me.”
The room felt heavier. “I came home.” I watched Kerry register that I was no longer talking about the present. “I came home and you weren’t there.” I looked at her. “You left our bed. You left me.”
“I did,” she said, the words barely audible. “I had to see if I could fall apart without you.”
I nodded, the response rising before I could stop it.
“I was angry. Not at your pain—but because you took it out of my hands. You decided for both of us.”
She looked down, saying nothing for a moment. “You didn’t think I’d make it.” She turned to the sink, rinsing the cloth with quiet precision. Then, almost to herself, “But I did.”
I watched her. She didn’t look at me as her fingers found mine, careful and light, like they’d never left.
Two months on, the pandemic hadn’t relented. The calls kept coming. Some mornings, her body still froze. Some nights, my hands trembled, though I didn’t know why.
The photo stayed on the dresser, the crack still running through it. We never replaced the glass. We learned to live with the fracture.
We stopped trying to get back what we’d lost. We found steadiness in the small things—folding laundry, passing coffee, letting silence settle. It wasn’t distance. It was trust. The tear between us never fully closed, but we stopped picking at the seam. We learned how to live on either side of it.
Author’s Note:
This story grew from conversations around invisible disability, recalibration, and the quiet negotiations that happen in the space between diagnosis and identity. While the characters are fictional, their experiences are shaped by lived realities—mine and others. If you’ve ever felt your body shift beneath you, or questioned how to stay present through that change, this piece is for you.
Note:The medical condition portrayed—length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy—is based on real diagnostic criteria, and while I’ve taken care to reflect both the physical and emotional impact with accuracy, this remains a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real individuals is purely coincidental.
If you would like to hear more about Kerry and Julian, feel free to leave a comment. Thank you for following www.wileyswalk.com! K.A. Wiley
