Page 79 of Hush, Little Baby

“‘Normal’ things?” the doctor questions.

Charlie bites at the inside of his cheek. “Yeah, like walking around a store or a park. Or carrying groceries.”

The doctor’s mouth scrunches, and I watch his gaze flick toward Charlie’s arms and hands, hunting for something—signs of muscle wasting, tremor, anything observable. “May I?” he asks, then leans forward with one palm out, waiting for permission.

Charlie extends his hand, fighting the urge to recoil. The doctor’s fingers are assured but gentle, guiding Charlie’s wrist through simple flexes, then instructing him to push back as he pushes against him.

Once he’s satisfied, he releases Charlie and reclines into the armchair again. “Your strength is quite reduced for your age and body type,” he says. “I imagine that’s frustrating.”

Charlie shrugs, eyes stubbornly fixed on a crack between the floorboards. “I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”

The doctor nods, then says, “I’d like to discuss what tests you’ve had done. I imagine you’ve had a rheumatoid panel?”

“Yes, um, I think I’ve had basically every kind of blood test. I was negative for Lupus, Epstein-Barr, Lyme—all the… I forget what they are, but like IgG, IgM—those are always fine. No HIV or anything. My white blood cell count is always over 11,000, but I don’t think it’s ever gotten to be above like 18,000. Every time I have an ANA test, it goes back and forth between being negative and positive. But my rheumatoid factor is always negative. Um… my CRP is always high… I’m trying to think if there’s anything else…”

The doctor nods again, making a small humming sound. “That’s a very good recall. CRP above normal—consistently?”

“Yeah. I think it’s usually around 16.”

“Any recent imaging?”

“Mhm. CTs and MRIs. Everything was normal besides some white lesions on my brain, but the doctor said that they were probably from my migraines. Oh, I’ve also had some thyroid testing done, with ultrasounds and biopsies, but everything was normal there.”

The doctor’s lips flatten as he continues to notate the conversation. “Any rashes?”

“Well, I get some really big red spots on my chest and arms, but I’m pretty sure that’s just eczema.”

“Have they ever explored any mast cell disorder?”

A blankness passes over Charlie’s face; he shakes his head. “No, I’m not really sure what that is.”

The doctor launches into a series of questions, and Charlie answers them, sometimes with a “no,” sometimes with a sheepish “maybe, but it doesn’t seem important.”

It takes nearly an hour.

I find myself tracking the way Charlie’s voice, exhausted by the effort, sometimes cracks and vanishes entirely, forcing silence into the room. The speed with which he apologizes for what sounds like “whining.” The deep, bone-deep trust it must take to let a stranger near his body, to let his sleeve be rolled up and his skin prodded and pressed and measured.

I watch with my hands squeezed into fists as the doctor takes what seems like a gallon of fucking blood from Charlie. The sight of blood vessels collapsing and filling, the sharp bite of the needle, Charlie’s hand clutching at the upholstery of the sofa while he shivers through it—it ignites something animal in me. An urge to leap between them, to erase every doctor who ever made him endure this for nothing.

He keeps his eyes shut tight, lips pressed hard enough to drain them of color, jaw trembling with the effort not to cry or, god forbid, vomit. I hold my own hands together tightly in my lap, and I do not move. He asked me not to intervene unless it was urgent, but for someone like him, the threshold for “urgent” feels bewilderingly high.

When it’s finally over, and the doctor steps away to pack and seal each vial, Charlie lets his head drop forward, posture folding inward so completely that his chin almost disappears into the collar of his shirt. I offer him a glass of water, already poured, which he receives wordlessly, hands shaking so badly that it’s a miracle he doesn’t spill it all over himself.

The silence that settles is heavy and exhausted. The doctor pulls on his coat and gathers the small pelican case containing Charlie’s blood, then gestures awkwardly. “I’ll be in touch once I have the results. We’ll go from there. For now, continue your current medication regimen, and please reach out if any new symptoms develop.” He sounds as if he means it, but Charlie just nods, gulping water as if trying to rinse himself of the past hour.

The door clicks shut behind the doctor, and the hush is immediate and absolute. I let it linger for as long as I can, waiting for Charlie to reassemble the fragments of himself that the appointment has scattered.

He raises the glass to his lips again, finishes the water in two gulps, then sets it on the edge of the coffee table. He doesn’t look up. His hands splay across his thighs, fingers opening and closing as if measuring the effort it would take to stand, to walk, to exist as a person who is not devastated by so much nothing.

He says, “You can say it.”

I am not sure what I’m supposed to say, but I know well enough to be silent. He tips his head back, eyes shut, and exhales with a shudder that is half sob, half surrender.

“I’m too much,” he says, and his voice is so faint that if I weren’t already listening for it, I might miss it entirely. “It’s okay if you don’t want me anymore. I’m sure you didn’t expect all this when you took me.”

I wait for him to say it again, to elaborate, to plead—because some hidden, wolfish part of me would savor it—but he just sits there, staring at a point somewhere a thousand miles below the coffee table, as if he might fall through the floor at any moment and never stop falling.

The urge to comfort him is so consuming that it almost reads as hunger. I put my hand over his, thumb stretching carefully across the trembling knuckles. He doesn’t flinch or pull away, but he doesn’t lean in, either. He sits, perfectly hollowed out, and lets me warm the bones of his hand for him.