a PSA for anyone who is confused by the panic over the UK heatwaves! ☀️
the UK has an amber warning declared for a heatwave this weekend, where temperatures will reach above 30C (86F). to many, especially Americans, this doesn't seem like a notable temperature, and i've seen many ignorant posts mocking UK residents who are worried about how they and their loved ones will be affected by the temperatures.
i'd like to explain why heatwaves in the UK are different than other parts of the world, and why they cause such a panic:
🔥 because we are an island nation, our heat isn't dry: it's horrendously humid. high humidity means that your lungs need to work harder to breathe, and it's much harder for your sweat to evaporate in the air. sweating is how your body regulates its temperature, and you sweat more in humid environments. when sweat doesn't evaporate it remains on the skin, leaving you feeling hot, sticky, and ill.
🔥 our homes and buildings are built to retain heat. because the UK is so cold and rainy for the vast majority of the year, our homes are supposed to trap heat, not let it out. not only are our homes smaller on average, but between double glazing, cavity wall insulation and loft insulation, when heat hits a British home, it causes a greenhouse effect. heat just sits in our homes, and it doesn't dissipate at night, meaning we are unable to sleep.
🔥 we have no air conditioning. i have never been in a home with air-con, and very few public buildings have it (except some shops). because of the aforementioned cold, rainy conditions that affect the UK for the vast majority of the year, air-con has never received a significant roll-out here. this means that we have little to no relief from being inside buildings besides being in the shade, and few homes even have fans.
🔥 our city centres are packed and highly urbanised, which causes heat traps. because our streets and homes are often stacked tightly together, including rows of houses/buildings/etc., heat in densely packed areas has nowhere to go, and will simply sit. trying to walk through a city during a heatwave will leave you sweating and exhausted in minutes. likewise, there are limited spaces to go to cool off during these temperatures: people will literally go to the shops to stand in the fridge/freezer aisles.
🔥 our infrastructure is not built to cope with heat. during heatwaves, our tarmac melts. the rails which hold our trains bend and warp. our grass catches fire. a few years ago, airport runways cracked and lifted in the heat, halting flights. the UK is brought to a standstill during high temperatures because our cities and towns are built for colder, wetter temperatures. add in the 16 hours of daylight we get during the summer, and you have a recipe for disaster.
🔥 the hottest temperature ever recorded in the UK is 40C (104F). this was in England, and in other UK countries, it's even lower: in Wales, it was 37.1C (98.78F); in Scotland, it was 34.8C (94.64F), and in Northern Ireland, it was 31.3C (88.3F). because these are our highest temperatures, many of us are unused to the symptoms which signify heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
i need to emphasise: people die during heatwaves. i highly encourage people to read about the 2022 UK heatwaves, which saw the deaths of nearly 3000 people (many of whom were elderly). we could do nothing but hunker down and survive the heat during this time, and it was especially dreadful for anyone who is older, disabled, and/or neurodivergent. so while 30C is not unheard of in the UK, any heatwave poses significant risks, including illness, disruption to transport, wildfires, and even death.
thanks for reading, and to everyone from outside the UK who's provided useful advice on keeping cool! i'm sure we'll be alright, but i'm hoping folks won't parrot misinformation about us just 'not being able to cope with the heat' 💔
[EDIT] If you're an American who wants to reply with 'why don't you just get AC?' or 'that heat is common in X state', this post is for you.
Tw: mentions of illness, vil seems to be on edge and frayed, reader is slightly oblivious, yan themes to come, a overblot vil, mirrors used as portals, monster/non human, horror, vil and reader are married, this is set after nrc so reader didnt go back yo their world. uhh this is just the prologue/intro
Let me know if you want to be tagged
tag list: …..
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Your humming filled the air as you poured the heated water into a beautifully painted porcelain cup. You placed the kettle gently back on the stove making sure it was off before stirring the cup a bit. You then made sure the rose petals were seeped into the water. You placed some sakura flowers after and stirred slowly again. You looked for the small strawberry and blueberry brioche that you had made earlier.
You knew vil wasn't one for sweets so you tried your best to include things that were healthy. Using almond flour and organic things, it was a small puff so even then it wouldn't cause too much harm....Vil always ate your food so surely he would take just a bite! AND if he didn't want it you were more than willing to eat this sweet dessert.
You finished cleaning everything and wiping down the counter. You were placing everything on a tray and getting ready to finally give this to Vil. Carrying the tray with both hands, you started to walk out the kitchen and into this long corridor. As you walked, the pictures of you and vil along with other friends littered the wall. Next to them small mirrors and ones of various sizes adorned the light floral wallpaper.
You caught your reflection in one mirror and leaned in, you thought you saw some black on your eyelid. You can't be looking shabby while you're going to see vil! Your soft steps echoed in the hall with the occasional creek. The silence filled the house, it was almost ironically loud. You finally reached the door to vils makeup room and knocked on the polished door. No reply came so you slowly opened the door with a soft creek.
There you saw Vil sprawled over his desk-this was a stark contrast to his normal well postured self. His hair was curled around him and his stressed sleeping face was pressed against some magazines. What really drew your attention was the curled up piece of tissue near his hand.
It was stained with what you could only describe as ink…but it had a thicker substance like tar? You turned to look closer at vil and noticed a bit of that substance near the bottom of his lip. Was he coughing this up? I mean that would explain why he had coughing fits but you were sure this wasn't normal.
When you slowly took the handkerchief and opened it to see more-the substance slightly stained your own fingers and made you shiver in disgust. How had Vil kept this from you for so long? Wait, why was he keeping this from you in the first place? Was he ashamed of being ill pherhaps?
You quickly but carefully placed the cloth back into his hand but before you could retract your hand vil’s fingers wrapped around yours. You let out a soft shriek-you assumed he didn't want you finding out about this…uhm situation of his.
Before words could leave your mouth as excuses Vil's soft sleepy voice snapped you back to reality. It was so faint you had to take a moment to process what he had said but when you did—your face paled and your heart beat faster. He had muffled something about it taking you away…
You didn't quite understand what he was saying but the way he said it made your skin crawl, you gently held his hand and leaned down near his face before kissing his temple and quietly heading out the room. You hurriedly rushed out to the library hoping to find some answers to this.
If you had paid a bit more attention to your surroundings you would have found a small pool of that tar near a mirror, and in that mirror a shadow was cast leaving no room for the light.
Lessons In Vulnerability | Jack Abbot x Fem! Reader | Masterlist
Characters: Jack Abbot x Fem!Reader
Rating: 18+ | MDNI
Summary: Where you learn that you don’t have to face the unknown alone. When life alternating news hits your bubble, something within you breaks. When you don’t have the strength to keep up the web of lies you entangle yourself in, you learn to accept help, even when it takes almost losing everything. Jack helps you see that the dark is less scary when you have him to lean on.
TW/CW: Serious illness, parent cancer diagnosis, medical emergency involving a parent, anticipatory grief/loss, heavy emotional themes, disordered eating behaviors, vomiting, anxiety/panic, mental health struggles, and deception/ withholding major life information from a partner
"Pride and Prejudice" poll: What is the reason for Kitty's apparent sickliness?
None: sickly sisters were just a fact of life before vaccines and antibiotics
An outward symbol of her weak-willed, high-strung personality
The cause of her weak-willed, high-strung personality
A trope subversion: you think she'd die, or at least fall ill, but she doesn't
Several or all of the above
Other
Voting ended onSep 30, 2025
Kitty is introduced coughing, is described as slight and delicate, tires more easily than her sisters do, gets motion sickness in a carriage with drawn curtains, is deemed too frail to help nurse her mother when the latter takes to her bed after Lydia's elopement, and claims Aunt Phillips has told her that a trip to the seaside would do her good.
Fictional characters are normally in perfect health unless there's a plot reason for an illness. So why does Jane Austen paint Kitty as being sickly, when (a) she doesn't die, (b) she never has any health crisis, and (c) her sickliness doesn't define her character, the way it does, for example, with what little we see of Anne de Bourgh?
Is it just realism, because so many people were chronically sickly in the days before modern medicine? Is it an outward symbol of her personality? Or is it her "Freudian Excuse" (as TV Tropes would say) for her personality, explaining why she's such a hanger-on to her robust and strong-willed sister Lydia? Or since Jane Austen loved to subvert literary tropes, is this another case of it: introducing a frail, coughing girl, whom you'd think would either die or almost die by the end, only to make her state of health completely irrelevant both to the general plot and to her own storyline?
Heyya, I have comeback with an idea. I'm sure you'll like it too. Still I will bring this guy up, but you can add your favorite .
So Yuu got sick, heavily sick. The boys sometimes comes to visit and take care of Yuu. i also found out that when someone got sick, they crave sweet and carbs. So imagine Yuu heavily sick, walking down the stair of their own dorm craving sweet. Just to get sweet jam and bread and they seemed to be a brink of passing out, unless they got their sweet jam bread.
As always I bring Silver, but you can add your own favorite character too if you want.
- 🎵 anon
silver & malleus with a sick!reader ✧･ﾟ
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Hello anon! I am so sorry this took me so long! My health and uni work always takes precedence but I do love writing for this blog even if I lack the time to do so... ^^
I like writing for Diasomnia, they're silly xD Malleus is my favorite but I love them all sm. I added Lillia as a guest star only but was tempted to make him his own scenario... Maybe next time.
Thank you for requesting!!!
Note for everyone that I have a few requests left from earlier to get done before the close of the year and then everything else sent from here on will not be posted until 2025 January. Please keep this in mind, thank you for supporting me!
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Summary: The reader gets taken care of by Silver/Malleus when sick.
TW/CW: mentions of illness/symptoms
Notes: pre-relationship, the reader is Ramshackle Prefect/Yuu, they/them pronouns for the reader, Malleus' "incident" is from canon
Guest Stars: Lilia Vanrouge. Grim
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Silver
Silver has been sick a few times when he was young.
However, he quickly built a strong immune system from having to eat Lilia's cooking and train as a child.
The last time Silver was especially sick was when he was 8 or 9.
Because of his experience with humanity, he knows a bit about treating illnesses. Still, he would rather ask someone to be sure.
Unsure of whether the school nurse would be busy or not, he selects his father (Lilia) to ask. Father is very knowledgeable.
Between Lilia's advice and his own knowledge, Silver is prepared enough and manages to be a help not a hindrance.
He does get into a small spat with Grim, though, for invading Grim's territory.
Silver wasn't sure what was happening, but the pot hadn't boiled over even with his nodding off. Still, he was surprised that the kitchen was still usable. At first, he had planned to tough it out himself when [Name] got sick but he now had the help of his father and Grim (though Grim had initially tried to burn Silver for entering his esteemed territory).
"Isn't it easier to work together?" Silver asked, directing his question to Grim who huffed despite agreeing with the white-haired boy.
"Myaa, I guess so."
Grim's tail flicked in annoyance with the situation. He had become even more irritable since finding that he was not allowed to be a glutton with the soup they were making. It wasn't for him and Grim seemed offended by that fact.
"Silver," Lilia said a moment later, "Are you sure I can't add things to this? I know of some hearty things sure to get [Name] back to good health."
Lilia held up something that Silver trusted less than he'd trust Sebek with a chainsaw. It was a vibrant purple and somehow also a neon green and smelled strange, reminding Silver of the strange things he had eaten as a child whenever he was sick. Lilia cared, surely, but those plants were... bitter and sometimes nauseating to even imagine.
He shook his head. That could not be fed to an already-sick [Name].
They would get sicker!
"No, you know how I feel about your soup. I just needed help chopping things since [Name] might be sick for a while."
Lilia shrugged.
"More for me later then~" he told Silver.
Silver did not ask about that comment.
"Are they going to be okay?" Grim asked, pawing Silver.
"Certainly," the boy assured, "They just seem to have something that will take some time and rest to recover from."
"If you say so..."
Silver wished he was better with words and could reassure Grim of [Name]'s safety. However, he wasn't sure what to say or how to explain it. He was focusing so intently on the soup and on staying awake that little else could enter his mind.
The room filled with the gentle aroma of the homemade soup as the recipe was completed. Silver turned off the burner.
"And I can't have some?" Grim asked, whining.
"You can have some of my veggies~" Lilia told him with a smirk.
"NO! THAT'S POISON!" Grim shouted, ducking behind Silver for protection from the feared veggies Lilia held.
"Surely, it isn't. I promise," Lilia chuckled darkly.
"Father, don't harass Grim," Silver chided the old fae, "And Grim, you can have some but most of it is for [Name] if we want them to recover well."
Grim nodded slowly.
"Fine..."
Silver ignored the continued bickering between his father and Grim as he ladled soup into a bowl. It was warm and filled with all kinds of [normal] vegetables. It should help them!
"YOU JUST WANNA SEE ME GAG ON THAT PLANT!"
"No, no, it's good for you."
"IS NOT!"
"You won't know unless you try it."
Silver placed the bowl onto a wooden tray that [Name] had in a drawer in the kitchen. This would be easy to carry up the stairs to [Name]'s room. Holding a bowl of hot soup might... hurt. It was rather hot, but hot food was good for someone who was sick.
He considered asking Grim to come with him but when he turned to head towards the bedroom, both Grim and his father were gone. Where had they gotten off to? Were they fighting? If they were fighting he might try and stop them...
But he needed to focus on [Name]'s health.
He knocked on the door.
"[Name]? Are you awake?" he asked but he only heard some coughing in return, "Alright, well I'm coming inside."
He pushed the door open and walked up to the bed. There sat [Name], coughing softly with a flushed face and sweaty forehead.
"Hey, Sil," they managed after the coughing subsided, "Is that for me?"
They looked curiously at the tray and he leaned forward to set it on their lap, balancing it so it wouldn't spill and then pulling away.
"I made you some soup to quicken your recovery," he told them.
[Name] looked at the bowl and then at Silver.
"Aww, thank you," they said, coughing a few times because of the strain on their vocal cords, "That's really sweet... of you."
"I hope that it helps, I don't like to see you so uncomfortable."
"You made this for me so it'll help me for sure," they told him with a smile, "I appreciate this."
[Name] tried not to think of the implications of being cared for by someone like this... It was so domestic.
"Ah, well, I'm glad."
Silver offered them a soft smile which they returned.
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Malleus Draconia
Malleus thinks that humans are very fragile. Too much so.
He hates to think that an illness could take [Name] from him.
This fae is also unfamiliar with human illnesses and remedies.
He consults Lilia on the proper way to heal a human.
However, in his inexperience with human technology... some things are lost in translation and what Malleus ends up doing is far from what Lilia meant or what would have helped.
Malleus considers that he should have asked Silver.
[Name], sick as they are, may have to explain what they need to Malleus even if it takes them some energy to do so.
Once he has a clear explanation of what to do... he will do it.
Even if his crazy OP magic ability gets in the way somewhat.
Somehow, through this, Ramshackle is not destroyed.
Malleus wasn't sure if this was right. Looking at the kitchen around him, he feared he might have made things more difficult for [Name]. What would they think when they awoke? The kitchen was in utter disarray, there were pots in the sink and ingredients on the floor.
This was all because of that damned thing.
Truly, Malleus did not have any of the patience needed for these human contraptions. What in the world did they invent them for if they didn't work? He sighed to himself as he imagined how easy this might have been otherwise.
Still, he was a respectful fae and he had promised [Name] weeks before to follow one rule when at Ramshackle: no giant shows of fae magic. At first, he had been insulted, but [Name] (and Lilia) had pointed out that his magic was strong and he could destroy the dorm. It pained him to imagine making them sad, so he had agreed.
"I'd best contact Lilia..." Malleus said to himself, knowing he was the only person in the dorm besides the illness-ridden [Name], Grim, and the ghosts who seemed frightened of him still.
Malleus: Lilia.
Lilia: hmm? what's up, malleus? :3
Malleus: [Name] is sick. What should I do?
Lilia: You can try to make some soup for them.
Lilia: Soup helps when humans are sick.
Lilia: I used to make some fire ones for Silver when he was a boy.
Malleus: Fire? Flames?
Lilia: Human slang. It means "good."
Clicking the picture Lilia had sent of his hand-written list, Malleus noted that these were all what was deemed as "healthy." Was this all supposed to go into the soup? Malleus wasn't sure. Some of it seemed like it wouldn't be the best-tasting soup if it were combined with the other things on Lilia's list.
Pumpkin sardine strawberry liver soup?
As Malleus continued to look through the list, his phone shut the app he was using accidentally. It must have crashed. Fiddling with the phone, Malleus tried but was unsuccessful in bringing the list back up. His frustrations crushed the phone to bits.
Well, isn't that just great? Another one is dead. Always difficult creatures, cell phones.
But Malleus was not going to give up so easily. This illness would not take his Child of Man from him. No, it would not. Putting what remained of his phone into his pocket (he would bother Lilia and Silver about it later), he turned back to the messy kitchen (all his own fault).
"I will make soup or die trying," he told himself, "I promise."
A few minutes passed and an explosion rang through the house.
"Mal... Malleus?? What are you doing?" [Name] asked, standing in the kitchen doorway and coughing from a mixture of sickness and inhaling the smoke from the (minor, in comparison to last time) explosion.
"Making your wellness soup."
Malleus said this as though it was obvious.
"Whatever soup it is, it's probably burnt," they told him, coughing again, "Cooking from scratch is hard, it's why I just have the canned stuff like Grim's tuna."
"Canned..." Malleus echoed.
That might have been easier, at least.
"Yeah, it's microwaveable," [Name] said, walking into the burnt kitchen to find the canned soup from the cupboard.
"Oh, I'm not allowed to touch those things. Lilia's orders."
Malleus disliked remembering that time.
"...What?" [Name] responded head in a cabinet.
Did they hear him right?
"There was an incident," Malleus said as an explanation.
It was not a very good explanation.
[Name] chose to ignore it and sighed. Must be a fae thing.
Holding the can, they opened it quickly and dumped the contents into a bowl in one motion, trying not to cough too much as they did so. If Malleus was going to blow up Ramshackle, it was probably better that they cooked for themselves.
Malleus seemed to be pouting in the background.
"..."
"You tried your best, I appreciate it," they told him.
"I am sorry about your kitchen."
"It's fine, Grim did worse trying to make a casserole with the ghosts. Something about it only needing 3 seconds in the oven if it was a certain temperature?"
[Name] laughed.
If they were smiling like that... How could Malleus stay upset? Besides, there was more he could do to help the sick human, right? Malleus was not going to leave [Name]'s side. Not now, not yet.
"That does make sense though. If it was hot enough would that not quicken the speed?"
[Name] gave the fae prince a look.
"Malleus Draconia, don't make me make a rule about no dragons cooking in my kitchen..."
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Warnings: Angst! So much angst, guys. Illness. Hospital visits. Possible inaccurate medical talk. Crying. Established relationship. Language (possibly). Whatever else I failed to mention.
Author’s Note: This is the third part on my ficmas list. Enjoy! I don’t own Top Gun Maverick. The franchise and its characters belong to their rightful owners. Similarly, I don’t own any of the gifs or pictures I use for my fics. All I own are the fic ideas.
Word Count: 2,555
Ficmas || Masterlist
It came out of nowhere.
At first, it was just the exhaustion—bone-deep and unrelenting, the kind that didn’t fade after a full night’s sleep. You told yourself it was work. Too many hours, too much stress, not enough rest. A simple imbalance. Easily fixed.
So you adjusted. Went to bed earlier. Cut back on caffeine. Ate cleaner, lighter meals. On your days off, you tried to rest instead of pushing through the fatigue, tried breathing exercises and long, quiet afternoons meant to reset your system.
Nothing helped.
If anything, it got worse.
Your limbs felt heavy, like they were moving through water. Headaches lingered just behind your eyes, dull and persistent. You caught yourself getting winded after things that had never bothered you before—climbing a single flight of stairs, standing too long, even talking for extended stretches. Your heart would sometimes flutter or race for no clear reason, leaving you vaguely lightheaded, unsettled.
Bob noticed.
He noticed the way your posture slowly collapsed inward, shoulders perpetually slumped as if holding yourself upright took too much effort. The way you rubbed at your temples more often, how your responses lagged, delayed by a second or two like your body was buffering. He noticed how your appetite faded, meals left half-finished, nausea occasionally replacing hunger altogether.
Most of all, he noticed your eyes.
They’d lost their brightness, that spark that usually cut through even your worst days. Now they looked dulled, unfocused—shadowed by something neither of you could name yet.
“Maybe you should take a day off,” he said one evening, voice careful, casual in the way people get when they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing.
He didn’t want to alarm you. Didn’t want to catastrophize what could still be explained away as burnout or a stubborn virus. But it had been two weeks now—two weeks of worsening fatigue, of low-grade malaise that never quite tipped into something diagnosable, never broke into a fever or resolved itself.
Two weeks of watching you decline.
Bob tried not to show it, but the worry sat heavy in his chest. He found himself listening to your breathing at night, noting its shallow rhythm. Watching your hands for tremors. Mentally cataloging symptoms he didn’t yet have names for.
And the worst part—the part he couldn’t shake—was the feeling that whatever this was, it wasn’t going away on its own.
Not this time.
* * *
The exhaustion didn’t hit all at once.
It crept in slowly that morning, heavier than usual, settling into your bones like wet cement. Your head throbbed dully, vision just a little too bright, the world feeling distant—muted. You told yourself to sit down. Just for a second. Let the dizziness pass.
It didn’t.
The room tilted sharply to the left. Your ears rang, a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else. When you tried to call out, your tongue felt thick, uncooperative.
“Bob,” you managed—barely above a breath.
He looked up instantly.
You saw the fear cross his face before your knees gave out.
The next moments blurred together. The sensation of falling, weightless and wrong. Bob shouting your name, hands gripping your arms too tightly, desperately. Then nothing at all.
You came to in fragments.
Harsh white light. The steady, rhythmic beep of a monitor. The taste of metal at the back of your throat. Your body felt foreign—heavy, numb, unresponsive.
Your eyes fluttered open.
“Oh—hey. Hey, you’re okay,” Bob said immediately, voice rough, like he’d been shouting or crying or both.
He was right there, seated beside the hospital bed, one hand gripping yours like a lifeline. He looked exhausted—dark circles under his eyes, jaw clenched so tightly it trembled.
Your throat burned when you tried to speak. “What…happened?”
“You passed out,” he said quietly. “Just—collapsed. Wouldn’t wake up. You were out for almost a minute.”
A minute.
“That’s not—” Your voice cracked, panic rising sharply in your chest. “That’s not normal.”
“I know,” Bob said. His thumb brushed over your knuckles, grounding, repetitive. “That’s why we’re here.”
The ER was a blur of motion and questions.
IV lines. Sticky electrodes on your chest. Blood pressure cuffs squeezing your arm until it ached. Someone asked you to rate your pain, asked if you’d been eating, sleeping, losing weight. Another nurse shone a light into your eyes, frowning faintly at the response.
Your vitals were off. Blood pressure low. Heart rate erratic when you tried to sit up. When they drew blood, you nearly passed out again.
Bob never left your side.
“I’m right here,” he kept saying, every time your breathing hitched or your vision swam. Like if he repeated it enough, he could make it true in a way that mattered.
Hours later, a doctor finally returned, tablet in hand, expression careful.
“Your labs are abnormal,” she said. “Not critically, but enough that we’re concerned. Elevated inflammatory markers. Some irregularities we can’t fully explain yet.”
“So what is it?” Bob asked, tension sharp in his voice.
The doctor hesitated.
“That’s the problem,” she said gently. “We’re not sure. There are a few possibilities—early autoimmune activity, post-viral complications, autonomic dysfunction. Right now, we can’t rule anything out.”
You felt something cold and heavy settle in your chest.
“Am I going to be okay?” you asked, barely holding it together.
The doctor met your eyes. “We’re going to admit you for observation. Monitor your heart. Run more tests. We need to see how this progresses.”
Progresses.
Bob’s grip tightened around your hand.
Later, alone in the hospital room, the weight of it all finally crushed you.
You stared at the ceiling, listening to the soft beeping of the monitor, your body aching in ways you couldn’t explain. Tears slipped silently down your temples, soaking into the pillow.
“I’m scared,” you whispered.
Bob leaned over the bed immediately, resting his forehead against yours. His breath shook.
“I know,” he said. “So am I.”
“I don’t feel like myself anymore,” you sobbed. “I feel like I’m disappearing.”
He closed his eyes, a tear slipping free despite his effort to hold it back.
“You’re still here,” he said fiercely. “And I’m not letting you go through this alone. Not for a second.”
But even as he said it, you both felt it—the uncertainty hanging thick in the air, the sense that something inside you was unraveling faster than anyone could stop it.
And this time, there was no pretending it would simply pass.
* * *
Days turned into nights, and nights into something indistinguishable from morning.
The hospital room became your world—sterile white walls, the constant hum of machinery, the smell of antiseptic that never quite faded. At first, the doctors spoke in reassurances. Observation. Precautionary. Likely transient.
But your body kept slipping.
Your blood pressure dipped unpredictably, sometimes so low the nurses rushed in when the alarms sounded. Your heart rate spiked without warning, leaving you breathless and shaking, fingers numb and tingling. Standing was no longer an option. Even sitting upright left you dizzy, vision narrowing until the edges went black.
They ran test after test.
Autoimmune panels. Cardiac echoes. Neurological exams. Infectious disease consults. Each result came back the same way—abnormal, but not definitive. Something was wrong. No one could say exactly what.
“It’s…evolving,” one doctor said carefully, standing at the foot of your bed with a chart full of unanswered questions. “We’re seeing signs of systemic inflammation. We can’t rule out early-stage autoimmune disease.”
Early-stage. Can’t rule out.
The words felt like a slow suffocation.
Bob learned the language quickly. Too quickly. He asked about orthostatic hypotension, about inflammatory markers and arrhythmias, about why your body seemed unable to regulate itself anymore. He kept a notebook—symptoms, times, triggers—like if he tracked it closely enough, he could find the pattern everyone else was missing.
But patterns didn’t stop the decline.
You grew weaker by the day. Your hands shook constantly now, even at rest. Some mornings, you struggled to lift a cup of water without spilling it across the sheets. Your muscles burned with effort that shouldn’t have been effort at all.
And the brain fog—it terrified you most.
You forgot words mid-sentence. Lost your train of thought entirely. Once, you stared at Bob for a long, horrible moment, his name stuck somewhere out of reach, panic flooding your chest until it finally came back to you.
He smiled through it.
It was breaking him.
He tried to be steady. Tried to be normal.
He joked with the nurses. Thanked the doctors. Told you stories about anything and everything, filling the silence so you wouldn’t notice how scared he was.
But late at night, when the room was dark and the monitors were the only sound, you felt it—the way his grip on your hand tightened whenever your breathing faltered. The way he startled awake at the smallest alarm, already halfway to his feet.
Once, you woke to the sound of him whispering to himself.
“Please,” he murmured, head bowed over your hand. “Please, just let her be okay.”
Your chest cracked open.
“Bob,” you croaked.
He looked up, eyes red, face carefully neutral. “Hey. Sorry—I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You don’t have to pretend,” you said softly.
His composure faltered then—just for a second. His jaw clenched, breath stuttering before he could stop it.
“I don’t know how to help you,” he admitted quietly. “And that’s killing me.”
The diagnosis—if it could be called that—came in pieces.
Probable autoimmune involvement. Suspected autonomic nervous system dysfunction. A condition without a clear name yet, without a clear timeline, without a clear treatment plan.
“We need to monitor progression,” the specialist said. “Some patients stabilize. Others…don’t.”
You cried after that.
Not loud, not dramatic—just silent tears you couldn’t stop, face turned into Bob’s chest as he held you. The grief was strange and all-consuming, mourning a version of yourself that had existed only weeks ago.
“I don’t recognize my body anymore,” you whispered. “It doesn’t listen to me.”
“I know,” Bob said, voice breaking despite his best efforts. “I know.”
And the worst part—the part neither of you said out loud—was the fear that this wasn’t the bottom.
That there was still more to lose.
* * *
By the time they discharged you, nothing was better.
You went home with medications that only half-worked, with follow-up appointments stacked weeks apart, with instructions to take it easy like that was still possible. Bob set up the house like a sickroom—chairs placed strategically, lights dimmed, everything within reach.
He watched you constantly.
Every stumble. Every pause. Every wince.
Some nights, the pain was so bad you couldn’t sleep. Other nights, the exhaustion dragged you under so completely Bob had to check your breathing just to reassure himself.
“I’m still here,” you told him once, tears streaming down your face as he hovered over you in the dark.
“I know,” he said—but his voice wavered. “I just…need to see it.”
* * *
Time passed, and the decline became undeniable.
You stopped going out altogether. Needed help bathing. Needed help dressing. Needed help standing.
Bob never complained. Never snapped. But the strain showed—in the way he moved too carefully, spoke too gently, like he was afraid you might break. In the way he stared blankly at nothing sometimes, shoulders sagging under a weight he couldn’t set down.
One night, as he helped you into bed, you finally broke.
“I’m sorry,” you sobbed. “I’m ruining your life.”
He froze.
Then he knelt in front of you, hands firm on your knees, eyes blazing with emotion.
“Don’t ever say that,” he said, voice shaking. “You are not a burden. You are not ruining anything. I’m scared—yeah. I’m exhausted—yeah. But I love you. And I’m not leaving.”
You cried into him until your chest ached, until the fear burned itself out for a moment.
But even as he held you, even as he whispered promises into your hair, the truth lingered unspoken between you—
That love didn’t cure illness.
That answers still hadn’t come.
That whatever this was, it was changing both of you in ways neither of you had been prepared for.
And the waiting—God, the waiting—hurt almost as much as the sickness itself.
* * *
The house was quiet in a way it hadn’t been for weeks.
You lay curled beneath the blankets, body heavy and aching, breath shallow but steady. The medications dulled the worst of the symptoms, enough to make the days survivable, but they hadn’t given you back what you’d lost. Your muscles still trembled with effort. Your thoughts still came slowly, like they had to wade through fog before reaching the surface.
Bob sat beside you on the bed, back against the headboard, one hand resting over yours.
He’d stopped hovering as much.
Not because he wasn’t afraid—but because he’d learned that fear didn’t change anything. It only exhausted him faster.
“I used to think,” you said quietly, staring at the dim ceiling, “that if I just tried harder, I could fix this. Like it was something I was doing wrong.”
Bob didn’t answer right away. His thumb traced slow, familiar circles against your skin.
“I know,” he said softly.
“I don’t think that anymore.”
You turned your head to look at him. His face was tired—so deeply tired it seemed etched into him now—but gentle. Present.
“What do you think now?” he asked.
You swallowed. The truth sat heavy in your chest, fragile and terrifying all at once.
“I think this is my body now,” you said. “At least for a while. Maybe longer.”
Bob closed his eyes briefly, breath shuddering in through his nose. When he opened them again, they were wet—but steady.
“Okay,” he said.
Just that. No argument. No promises he couldn’t keep. No desperate insistence that things would get better.
Okay.
It hurt more than denial ever had.
You felt tears slip free, quiet and unstoppable. Bob leaned forward immediately, resting his forehead against yours, letting them fall without trying to stop them.
“I don’t know what the future looks like,” you whispered. “I don’t know how much worse this might get.”
“I don’t either,” he admitted.
“I’m scared I’ll disappear,” you said, voice breaking. “That one day I’ll wake up and not recognize myself at all.”
Bob’s hand tightened around yours—not desperate, not panicked. Anchoring.
“Then I’ll remember for you,” he said quietly. “I’ll hold onto everything you forget.”
You pressed your face into his shoulder, breath hitching as the weight of it all settled—no longer sharp and frantic, but heavy and constant. The kind of pain that didn’t scream anymore. It just existed.
Outside, the light shifted as evening gave way to night.
Bob reached up and turned off the lamp, plunging the room into soft darkness. He lay down beside you carefully, pulling you into his chest like he’d done a hundred times before, like it was muscle memory.
You fit there easily. Perfectly.
“Stay with me,” you murmured.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
The clock kept ticking. Your breathing stayed slow, uneven but real. Bob’s arm remained solid around you, his presence a quiet promise rather than a cure.
And in the darkness—between one breath and the next—you let yourself rest.
This will be the last update in regards to this situation.
Today, I saw my dad for the last time. When I saw him a few days ago, Sunday, I told him to remember to breathe. And he did. He kept breathing until today. I managed to sit with him and hold his hand. Give him a kiss to his cheek and forehead. I got to tell him that it was okay to let go. I got to tell him that I would be okay, and that my mom and I would figure things out and be alright. I sang to him, part of a song he loved. And told him that I was writing a song for him, that I would sing for him at some point. I thanked him for being my dad, and told him that he was the best dad I could have ever wanted. I didn't tell him goodbye. I told him "See you later." Very shortly after this, he passed away. All he needed to hear, was that it was okay for him to move on.
I'm not okay. I'm heartbroken. I don't feel adult enough to handle any of this. He only got a month and a half from the first symptoms, until he passed away. It was awful to bear witness to. But I'm glad that he didn't have to suffer for long.
