Under Control.

chapter sixty one.

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'Hello?'

It'd been almost a full day and night since Julian had called — since the space between them, over oceans and phone lines, had flooded with doubts, and questions, and regrets.

Nora had curled around herself and let her worry wear her out last night, and then she'd fallen to sleep on Julian's side of the bed just as the morning had begun to peer through the darkness. She'd stayed there too long until too late and then fielded the real world after lunch, booking flights and making calls about going to Switzerland, and then maybe Miami, all while she avoided the knot of unease coiling sickeningly inside of her. She'd eaten and taken ibuprofen and drunk so much water that she had basically been made into a human tide. And between all of that and the rest of it, she'd settled restlessly into her wonderings, imaginings, and doubts, and then she had made it back, slowly but surely, to the middle ground in this, her very strange life.

Nora knew that she was loved. She could hear it in Julian's voice and feel it in the way he was with her — in the way he treated her, and cared. It lived on in the way he kept his word, and came home to her. And so, despite herself and beyond any reality she ever considered might be hers, Nora had decided to leave what existed outside of them where it was, to move on, and to keep on just like they had been, before.

And so when the phone rings, that's what she's thinking of — of Julian, and love, and forgiveness. But, Julian was not the one behind the voice that tumbled down the line.

'Hello?'

The voice-haver is calm, and authoritative, and wants to confirm who Nora is, the how's and what's when's and why's. They want her full name, her address, and to confirm how she knows Julian. They want to be sure that she is the person to whom they should be speaking, and then once they do — and only then — they go on.

Nora is void of breath, and dizzy. She thinks she might throw up, or fall down, or dissolve into a puddle on the floor. Her heart is in her throat and her pulse is echoing in her ears, and her skin was is fire. She hears the words 'stable', and 'overdose', and then she answers a run-on sequence of questions on instinct. She tries to take notes, but her hand is shaking and she can't stop it, and everything she writes keeps getting smudged by the salty tracks running from her face onto the paper.

She can't talk to him yet, but she'll be there soon. She's on the phone and her computer both at once, in the hospital and in the air and in the room all at the same time. She's out of her body but she sounds put together, even though she's the furtherest from it she has ever been. And, she thinks, the nurse must know that.

'I'll be there as soon as I can,' she says, the echo of her own words sounding foreign to her ears. And then the phone is down, but the room is still spinning, and the door is locked behind her.

She has nothing but the clothes on her back, and her purse.

Nothing matters.

She's in the cab and she can't think straight, and then she's in the airport, but she can't make sense of time, anymore.

Nothing matters.

She's in the air then and all she can think about is that they can't get to her here. She feels hopeless, and so she makes a list of people who she might need to call, but when she's done, she rips it into tiny little pieces, makes it a puzzle of unknowable names and numbers, and throws it away.

Because nothing matters.

He is hers, and she loves him. And that's the only thing that does.