Chapter 20: Stay

The second cycle put me on my parents' bathroom floor at three in the morning.

My forehead was against the cold tub.

I had been sick for four hours, and nothing was left to bring up.

A hand gathered my hair back from my neck and held it.

"Don't look at me," I said into the porcelain.

"I've seen worse before breakfast," Giles said. "Last Thursday a man threw up an entire birthday cake on my shoes."

"That's not funny."

"It's slightly funny."

I laughed, and it turned into dry heaving, and he waited.

He had driven up after his shift without telling me.

My mother had let him in the back door in her bathrobe and pointed at the stairs.

He wet a washcloth and wiped my face with it.

I let him, because I was too tired to be proud.

"I hate this," I said.

"I know."

"I hate that you have to see it."

"Geneva." He sat down on the tile with his back against the wall and pulled me against his side.

"I'm a doctor, and this is the most ordinary thing in the world to me," he said. "What I can't stand is how scared you look."

"I'm scared of the scan."

"I know."

"Monday morning."

"I'll be in the chair next to you," he said. "Whatever it says."

I fell asleep there, with my head on his shoulder and a washcloth in my fist.

He carried me to bed, and I woke at eleven in the morning with the sun in my face.

It was Saturday.

Downstairs, a child was singing something that had no tune.

Stewart stood in the kitchen doorway with Junie's overnight bag in his hand.

He held himself stiffly.

"I wasn't sure," he said. "You're sick. You can say no."

"Give me my daughter."