Page 273 of The Fall

For all the things I thought I’d have to fight for, this moment isn’t one of them. “Of course I’ll have you,” I breathe.

His shoulders drop, tension bleeding out of him in one long exhale. His smile builds and builds until it transforms him, erasing exhaustion, erasing fear, and leaving only a brilliant, unfiltered joy.

“Torey.” He lifts our joined hands, turns mine over, and drops his lips to the center of my palm.

“Say it again,” he whispers against my skin.

“I’ll keep you. Today, tomorrow, always.”

His forehead drops to rest against mine. We breathe the same air, share the same space. This isn’t how I imagined this conversation—me in a hospital gown, him exhausted from days of vigil, my father about to return with takeout.

I thread my fingers through his and ease back against the pillow. Blair settles beside me, nose to nose. His smile makes me smile; I kiss him softly, and he nuzzles my cheek before he brushes a strand of hair from my forehead. Everything I want is right here, tangled up in his touch.

For the first time, I believe we’ll have all the tomorrows we want.

Fifty-Seven

In the morning,a neurosurgeon, Dr. Khatri, enters my hospital room with a file tucked under his arm. He’s tall with gray-streaked hair and glasses perched halfway down his nose. His face gives nothing away; it’s like trying to decipher a blank page. He has the steadiness of a man used to delivering life-altering news.

Blair sits up straighter beside me, his hand closing over mine. My father rises from his chair.

“We have your results,” he says, tapping the file against his palm. “I’d like to discuss them with you and your family.” He glances toward Blair and my father, who’ve been camped out in my room since dawn. “Dr. Lin will be joining us shortly.”

If I were fine, wouldn’t he tell me?

No one speaks as he turns to the computer and pulls up my records, including a series of brain scans that he casts to the monitor over my bed. My brain looks ghostly gray-blue with scattered bright spots that mean nothing to me.

Dr. Lin slips in, nodding to us before joining Dr. Khatri. They trade a few hushed words while my heart hammers, and before either can speak, I blurt out, “What’s wrong with me?”

Dr. Khatri moves to the monitor. “We’ve found a small lesion here, on your right temporal lobe.” His finger traces a bright spot on the scan. “This condition,” he continues, “is called temporal lobe epilepsy.”

The three words land in the sterile air of the room. My thoughts scatter, leaving only the echo of his voice. Epilepsy.

“I don’t understand,” my father says. “Wouldn’t we have known if Torey had epilepsy? There would have been seizures.”

“Not necessarily. TLE often manifests in less obvious ways than through convulsive seizures most people associate with epilepsy. Focal aware seizures are one hallmark of TLE, which can cause a variety of symptoms.”

“What symptoms?” Blair asks, his voice tight.

“They often begin subtly,” Dr. Lin says. “Headaches. Dizziness. Sometimes intense emotional experiences. Often, when a focal aware seizure occurs, the electrical impulses of the brain will create experiences that seem indistinguishable from reality. Patients with TLE describe familiarity with the unfamiliar, or complex experiences that have only taken place within their mind, during a seizure. And sometimes,” she continues, “patients experience more complex hallucinations, such as fully-formed memories of events that never happened.”

The sounds in the room drop away, leaving only Dr. Lin’s last words in the air.Fully-formed memories of events that never happened.

“To patients, the experience is completely real,” Dr. Khatri says.

I stare at Blair and my hands, clasped together on top of my blanket. A wave of light-headedness blurs my vision, and I panic. Is this— Another one? Happening right now? I force my eyes from our hands to his face, searching.

Was everything… misfiring synapses? Did a piece of damaged tissue lead me to Blair? Did these seizures build a world so real I almost died for it?

A muscle works in Blair’s jaw, a constant, small motion that betrays him.

He’s crumbling from the inside out, trying to hold himself together for me. Each breath he takes, each careful word he doesn’t say, screams louder than if he’d shattered completely. His terror becomes mine, doubled and reflected back.

“Blair…”

His eyes find mine, and for a split second, his mask slips. He’s drowning too.

“We also,” Dr. Khatri continues, oblivious to the earthquakes moving through me and pulling up another scan. “Found evidence of this lesion in your previous scans from Vancouver, after your first major concussion last year.”