Everest
Everest listens without interrupting, head tipped slightly forward as if that will help him catch every word exactly as she intends it, his grip on her hand steady even as his attention sharpens. When she mentions that she has been feeling unwell, his brows draw together faintly, his mind already backtracking through recent days and conversations, scanning for anything he might have missed despite her reassurance. The fact that it was mostly in the morning registers only as a logistical detail, filed under clinic schedules and routines rather than symptoms, and he nods once to show he understands, even if his thoughts are already beginning to drift into careful, quiet recalculation.
The mention of Stormbreak and a diagnostic test makes sense to him immediately. His shoulders ease a little at that, comforted by the familiarity of process and confirmation, by the idea that something uncertain was met with something concrete. he follows her reasoning step by step, tracking the logic of symptoms, testing, results, until she reaches the end of the sentence and says the word that empties everything out all at once.
For a pregnancy.
He blinks once, then again, his expression going slack in a way that feels unfamiliar even to him, like a system that has stalled mid-command. The room does not disappear, but it feels suddenly very far away, the weight of her presence beside him the only thing anchoring him to the bed. His thoughts attempt to line up and simply...do not. There is no immediate fear, no surge of emotion, just a vast, echoing blank where something important should be loading and is not.
She shifts closer, and he notices that distantly too, the warmth of her body beside him registering before the meaning does. He swallows, throat dry, and when he finally speaks his voice is quiet, careful, as if he is testing whether it still works. "What’s...what’s the likelihood of a false positive?" he asks, not because he doubts her, not because he thinks she is wrong, but because his mind needs a place to start, and probabilities are something he understands. His fingers tighten slightly around hers, an unconscious check-in, as he looks at her with wide, searching eyes, waiting for the world to begin making sense again.
The mention of Stormbreak and a diagnostic test makes sense to him immediately. His shoulders ease a little at that, comforted by the familiarity of process and confirmation, by the idea that something uncertain was met with something concrete. he follows her reasoning step by step, tracking the logic of symptoms, testing, results, until she reaches the end of the sentence and says the word that empties everything out all at once.
For a pregnancy.
He blinks once, then again, his expression going slack in a way that feels unfamiliar even to him, like a system that has stalled mid-command. The room does not disappear, but it feels suddenly very far away, the weight of her presence beside him the only thing anchoring him to the bed. His thoughts attempt to line up and simply...do not. There is no immediate fear, no surge of emotion, just a vast, echoing blank where something important should be loading and is not.
She shifts closer, and he notices that distantly too, the warmth of her body beside him registering before the meaning does. He swallows, throat dry, and when he finally speaks his voice is quiet, careful, as if he is testing whether it still works. "What’s...what’s the likelihood of a false positive?" he asks, not because he doubts her, not because he thinks she is wrong, but because his mind needs a place to start, and probabilities are something he understands. His fingers tighten slightly around hers, an unconscious check-in, as he looks at her with wide, searching eyes, waiting for the world to begin making sense again.
I was a dead man walking,
with bloodshot eyes—right place, wrong time.
with bloodshot eyes—right place, wrong time.
