We spent the next hour in the gentle choreography of sick-day survival: a few more sips, a single cracker accepted like a summit treaty, peppermint refreshed, the fan on the noise machine clicked on to crowd favorite, curtains tilted to let in winter light without glare. I cleaned the bathroom without comment, because there are gifts you don’t wrap in words. I swapped her damp pillowcase with one from the closet and made a note to return tomorrow with laundry detergent if she’d let me. I texted Banks to log a sick day for “Ward” and to cover her emails so she wouldn’t feel like she’d abandoned a ship that sails fine without one sailor for a day.
Around ten, after a brief, less dramatic return to the bathroom, her body decided to negotiate. The nausea backed down. The headache—the one that
