Page 129 of Under the Mistletoe with You

‘He’s not even a bear.’

‘So?You love Paddington.’

‘I do but I like names that make sense too.He’s not evenbrown.’

‘He doesn’t even have a suitcase, Nash,’ Nash says in a now rather uncanny version of Christopher’s voice.

‘Hang on, you can actually do my accent?’

‘Yeah, of course I can.I just prefer doing the bad one that annoys you.’

‘Well, what if I started going on about ...I don’t know ...moose.Moose and Tim Hortons.And lumberjacks.Or smoothies and wellness cults.’It turns out that his frame of references for both LA and the entirety of Canada are a little thin on the ground.

On Christopher’s lap, the cat is sat right up, head tilted looking over to Nash, who, for some reason, doesn’t spar back.Perhaps he crossed a line somewhere?

‘Nash?’

Something is clearly not quite right.And not just because Nash isn’t making fun of him.

His face has this kind of minutely slack quality to it that Christopher has never seen before.He looks distant.As if he’s left for just a moment.

‘Nash?’

No response.Only a few blinks.Christopher pulls out his phone and sets a timer.The cat looks up at Christopher as if to sayis this what he normally doesand he gives the cat a little pet on the head for realising what was going on far before he did.

‘I’m here,’ he whispers, as Nash’s brain quietly misfires in its own private way, his systems rebooting.It’s strange to see him gone, though of course he is stilltherephysically.

Nash is such a big presence in this tiny flat, and his life.His personality and self seem to take up all the space, in a way that Christopher finds he has grown remarkably used to.

He shuffles along the couch so he’s sitting alongside Nash, and slings his arm around the top of the couch, just in case he needs to catch him.He doesn’t want to touch him while he’s out – they didn’t talk about whether that was something he wanted or not.

He’s propped up safely and Christopher is pretty sure that he said he didn’t convulse, but still, there’s nothing hecan hurt himself on.Just to be safe, Christopher pushes the coffee table away with a foot.

Hopefully he knows, in some quiet part of his brain, that Christopher is here.That he isn’t alone.The cat gently pads its paws on Nash’s thighs and wiggles its whiskers, clearly thinking the same thing.

‘I’m here, Nash,’ he says softly.‘We’re here.It’s okay.You can come back when you’re ready.’

* * *

Nash

It all tastes like metal.

That’s usually a big warning sign that something is wrong, and sometimes it happens early enough that he can tell someone, but today everything comes rushing at him like a truck.First metal, then smoke in his nose, followed by the slow slide away as speech and movement stop being things his brain can do.

It’s like a blink of nothingness that he falls into.

And then, very slowly, things start to come back.It’s a strange feeling to know he’s been gone, while also not knowing how long he was seizing.Has he been out for seconds or minutes?

The fog clears, and his brain latches onto Christopher sitting beside him.His huge eyes are startlingly blue in the low light.

The cat is still on Christopher’s lap, its paws padding gently on Nash’s leg.

He goes to speak but the connection isn’t there yet.The muscles don’t know what he’s trying to tell them to do, that he’s trying to speak.The words in his head are staccato attempts at sentences that die off quickly.

This part always feels like an age to him.Not surprisingly, really, that he had a seizure given all the change and stress of the last few days.All the rushing around and probably not sleeping enough.The big emotions and decisions.It’s like a checklist of all his triggers.His neurologist would probably call it a melting pot of micro stresses or something.The exact kind of jumble of messes he tries to avoid just to keep his brain going.

And yet, Christopher sits here, watching like a guard on duty.An ache swirls through his stomach as the anxiety of what happens next manages to brew up, even though his brain is still coming back online.