we depend (I depend) on you • jayvik

Jayce - Year Twenty-Five

At the very beginning of the year, you struggle to fight off the cold. It seems to follow you everywhere, chilling you straight to the bone. No matter how many blankets we drape around you, or how many cups of hot tea and coffee you drink, it doesn't shake it.

At first, it's just a chill. Then the air turns bitter and dry, and scrapes at your throat until it burns. And then it arrives. The one thing that we've dreaded most. The common cold.

The sickness itself is manageable, and almost predictable with having a toddler running around. The quiet toll it takes on your body is not.

You try your best to write it off as nothing, but Steb and I have developed a special eye for your little lies. When you cough so hard that you can't hold yourself upright, we know it's time for a steroid shot, injected into the lean meat of your thigh. When you wheeze and gasp, we reach for the portable tank and give you a slow trickle of oxygen. When your spells leave you dizzy, we prepare a stimulant. None of it happens in front of the child.

These rituals have become part of our lives. They're familiar, yes, but never less frightening. Routine doesn't make them any easier to bear.

It's never easy watching you choke on the very thing that's supposed to keep you alive, but it's worse watching your extremities turn the color of ripe plums from hypoxemia. It's as if death itself is reaching out, just to test the waters. Even little Lyra knows to fetch you a glass of water when your breath won't come easy.

But the hardest part, the part that gnaws at me, is watching your body shed every hard-won ounce of strength it has. Every healthy pound of muscle, every bit of softness we all fought to restore...

It took us years to hide the bony ends of your joints beneath flesh and sinew. And then, just like that, it's gone. As if it had never been there at all.

You're skin and bones beneath your clothing, Viktor.

You hide it beneath thick sweaters and high-collared shirts, trying to preserve the illusion of what once was. But when I'm forced to wrap my claw around you – an action I've begun to dread – it's as if you've withered away beneath my hold. I'm worried that one day I will reach for you and there will be nothing left.

Your shoulders are so narrow now that I'm sure I could span across them if I tried. Your ribs press against your skin like piano keys beneath silk, your hips, once strong, even with your leg, have sharpened into angles. No amount of fabric can hide that. No amount of hiding.

When it's time for you to bathe, Steb has to help us. The threat of you slipping on the tile or falling into the basin is too great for me to manage alone. Now, we rely on Steb's much gentler hands to lift your shirt over your head, and to undo the buttons that you can no longer reach without trembling. He used to carry you up the two shallow stairs into our home. Now he lifts you in and out of the tub.

And I know how you hate it – the silence that settles in the room when you're made to surrender, or when you're manhandled like something breakable. You've always hated needing help. You've never wanted it. Even when you were well. This must all feel like torture to you, and yet you allow us to help you.

For that, I am endlessly grateful.

∘ ∘ ∘

Lyra has reached an intellectual explosion – entirely oblivious to what goes on behind closed doors. She's wicked smart, curious as ever, and she loves to ask her favorite question in the whole wide world: " Why? "

There's no telling how many times a day I have to hear that one word. Sometimes I think it's the only thing I hear.

" Why? Why? Why? "