Description: The steps leading up to finding out Lydia has the same form of dementia his mother had and everything that came after.
When he realized that something was wrong
It wasn't as if the idea that something could be wrong struck Stiles all at once. A light bulb didn't flicker to life and he didn't immediately suggest that Lydia see a doctor; which one day he would hate himself for (as if it would have made a difference).
It was about a week after their first wedding anniversary that Stiles noticed his wife was becoming increasingly absent minded. She'd leave the sink running in the kitchen, the bathtub overflowing with water or forget to do the simplest tasks that weren't already in her daily routine. She'd compulsively get up at the same time every morning (8:00) and take the same shower; do the same makeup; eat the same breakfast and drink the same orange juice. If anything disrupted this routine, she became angry and difficult to placate.
It was on a Tuesday that he got back from work especially late after dealing with a drunk who resisted arrest. He had to file a lot of paperwork because of the bastard, and even though Lydia told him she'd keep his dinner warm he knew he'd be back too late for it. By the time he snuck through the front door to their house, the one they enthusiastically purchased in preparation for marriage, all of the lights were off and Lydia was fast asleep in their bed.
After stripping off his clothing until he was in his boxers and leaning in to whisper a gentle, "I'm here," into her neck, he climbed into the bed beside her soaked up her warmth.
Everything was fine until an hour later when a blaring alarm shocked them from their slumbers, tearing Stiles from a riveting dream about saving his friends from a werewolf and springing him back to the real world with a fuzz of confusion hanging over his heavy brow.
"What is that?" Lydia whined, thwacking her silk pillow against the headboard when it failed to drown out the sound resting on top of her face.
"It's the smoke alarm!" Stiles tore from the bed, briefly wrapping his ankle up in the sheet in his clumsy dash down the stairs. He can see the smoke before he reaches the last step, and it becomes difficult to breathe only a few seconds after that. When he gets closer to the kitchen, he sees the source of the fire. Lydia had left the stove on and the flame had eventually reached the rag on the counter and it had only spread from there. There were violently raging spikes of orange and red waving violently in his kitchen and smashing into his living room, burning the time they had to get out away and leaving them with moments to spare.
Stiles could swear he was staring into the pits of hell, but wasted not another thought on the matter because his wife was still upstairs. He swung back around the bend of the hallway, hearing her feet pounding along the stairs and meeting her halfway.
"Oh my god, what is it?" Her eyes flicker toward the hall. "Did someone break in?"
"No Lydia, you left the stove on! It's a fire!" His eyes want to roll backwards in his head and fall out at her lunacy, especially when he'd already told her it was the smoke alarm. His hand is wrapped around the middle of her arm and he's dragging her toward the safety of the front door.
"I'm not dressed, Stiles!" She tears her arm away from him and takes a few steps back, almost unseeing of the flames swallowing her living room.
"Lydia, what the hell are you talking about!?"
She's upset that he doesn't see why she can't just go out on the front lawn in nothing other than a tiny night gown that barely covered her thighs. What if the neighbors saw her? Lydia reasons that she just needs to go upstairs and get dressed, and then she can get away from the fire. It won't spread that fast, she has to time to change.
Without explaining her idea to her panic-stricken husband, she mashes her lips together and heads back for the stairs, jerking in surprise when she feels Stiles' big hand on her arm again. She tries to pull away but he's unrelenting.
Stiles isn't sure what's gotten into Lydia, but he won't listen to it until they're outside and far away from the house. She's beginning to struggle against him, shouting absurdities and nonsense about how he isn't listening to her, how she needs to get dressed and so desperately batting her hands against his chest, face, wherever she can reach. The only thing that scares Stiles more than the fire is why Lydia is acting this way. But she won't stop fighting him.
So he hoists her up over his shoulder and carries her out like a fireman, ironically meeting several as he and Lydia fall together on the grass, smoke inhalation and exhaustion creeping up and weighing them down. They both lay on their backs side-by-side, staring up at the starry night sky (when's the last time they've seen that many?) and breathing heavily, unhearing of the fireman as they ask them if there's anyone else inside, if they need medical assistance.
Lydia can't hear them because she's thinking about how angry she is with her husband, and how she's going to voice that disappointment when she can finally catch her deflated breath.
Stiles can't hear them because he's thinking about how scared he is. They could have died tonight.
He turns his head to stare at her, studying her face. "Are you okay?" he whispers when the firemen finally leave them alone to focus on the blaze.
After heaving a few extra times, Lydia gnaws on her lower lip and makes a sound close to "Uhuh," before adding on, "Yeah. I don't know what got into me," she blinks toward the sky. That's what he wanted to hear, right?
Stiles sighs in relief, because she knows what she did is wrong. "At least you're okay."
"I'd be more than okay if you'd let me get dressed. Everyone's probably staring at me," she says weakly, under her breath. Her eyes fill with tears; afraid of embarrassment.
Stiles' breath catches, his lips part. His breath is shaky as he realizes that no, she doesn't see how wrong she was in there. "I think it's time you see a doctor," he claims firmly, leaving no room for argument.
It's her turn to move her head to the side, looking at him with sad eyes. "You think there's something wrong with me." No. Accusing.
"I think that there can't be any more forgetting about leaving the stove on." He leaves it at that, pushing himself up to sit upwards, shifting around to watch his burnt house get watered down. This shouldn't have happened.
When he found out
No. He won't accept this. Hell will have frozen over a thousand times before he could ever accept this. He will do anything he can, he will contact the highest supernatural beings in the universe and implore them to help; he will bargain with demons and make a deal with the devil if it means he can spend the rest of his life with his happy healthy wife. They've only been married a year.
His knees are shaking violently, his lower lip bleeding where his thumb's nail digs into it. His breathing is violent and quick and the doctor sitting across the table is beginning to look at him with concern. Instead of her. He thinks Stiles is going to pass out.
The shaking of his knee is getting worse, clicking against the wood each time it goes up to repeat a rhythmic tapping sound until Lydia places a warm hand on his leg, pausing his movement and relaxing him where she soothingly rubs over the surface of denim there. He's instantly calmer, but still panicked and scared.
"Doctor, is this why I've been having so much trouble speaking properly?" Lydia queries, her voice airy and light as a feather. She doesn't sound scared, but Stiles knows she is. He knows she's terrified. He sure as hell is.
He wants to scream and he wants to cry and he wants to blame it all on fate. There's some higher being out there that wants Stiles to suffer as horribly as he possibly can. They want him to lose everything he's ever loved, and because of this bastard's sense of humor, he wants him to lose them the same way. It was cold and it was harsh and callous and absolutely horrible. If he weren't in shock right now, Stiles would be losing his mind. But not in the same way that Lydia was.
"Absolutely," he explains, "Patients with semantic dementia, what you have, often have trouble placing the names of basic objects and can struggle with reading and occasionally understand what other people are saying."
Lydia winces. "That hasn't happened yet…" she immediately coils back. "At-at least I don't think so," she turns her head to Stiles so quickly that her hair wraps around her in the air. " – have I done that?"
Stiles bites down on the edge of his thumb. Hard. "I don't think so," his voice is hoarse with pent up emotion so he clears his throat. "Sometimes you might have trouble… understanding but… you haven't ever had trouble reading or anything like that." He shakes his head briskly. "Does that mean that we have the wrong disease here? Is it something else?"
It's almost as if the hope in Stiles' wishing eyes is too much to reject, so the doctor looks at the wood of his desk when he speaks again. "No, no… Not every patient experiences the same symptoms, and there are other factors that don't always come in immediately."
Lydia's eyes lower as the volume of her voice does. "So what you're saying is… I'm just not that sick yet. But I will be."
The doctor's eyes are dark. "Everyone deals with their illness differently."
Stiles isn't sure how to take that, but instead asks an important question that's been on his mind. "She won't have to stay in the hospital right? She can come home?" His eyes are burning, only because he's fighting his tears so damn hard. He can't lose it now, Lydia needs him to be her support right now. He's the only thing holding her up. "I was young, but I think that I remember my mom was home for a while before it got bad."
"Absolutely, in fact, I recommend staying home as long as you can." As the couple shares a reassuring but sad smile, the doctor continues, "As long as you'll be with her, of course."
Stiles licks his lips. "Well, I can't be there all the time but from the moment I get home from work to the moment before I leave, I will be looking after her completely."
The doctor weighs this, his eyes squinting like he doesn't want to say something. "What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a police officer." Usually he says it so proudly, but he can't muster up the enthusiasm. He remembers all the times she showed him off at parties. "This is my boyfriend, he's a cop!" It usually warned away any would-be suitors that had plans to flirt with her, except for the occasional med-student.
The doctor plasters on a big fake smile that does nothing to comfort them. "I'm sure you'll do great." He pushes a paper toward them. "I just need you to sign this consent waiver that says that anything she does while in your care is your responsibility."
Stiles feels sick.
When they go through it together
Telling his father was more painful than he considered it might be. He'd always known that he and Lydia had a close personal connection and that she was a daughter to him, but he never thought they'd be crying the way they did, making promises of family that held true.
"You love that girl," his father had told him, his intense emotion shaking his voice, pain that he wished he could take away from his son and his daughter-in-law. Of all the things his son would and has gone through, this was the last thing he ever wanted him to experience. To go through what he went through with his mother, to sit with her every day and hear her make less and less sense as the days wore on until she didn't make any at all. She faded away, wearing down like old wallpaper that was chipping and growing dry. But she was still beautiful. And Lydia would be beautiful. "Love that girl until the end."
"I will dad, you know I will."
Stiles and Lydia were butting heads like crazy, and he tried so hard to be understanding but when she was throwing objects at him because he didn't understand her ramblings that already made no sense he grew frustrated and even more worried. He was so tired that he was falling asleep on the job and ultimately lost a suspect in the middle of a chase after a drug store robbery.
It was so hard for Lydia to be empathetic these days, but somehow, late at night when Stiles was reading in bed, she sat on the edge and waited for him to look up. When he finally did, seeing her sad wet eyes and asking what was wrong, she told him. "I think that maybe it's time I admit myself to the hospital."
Stiles lurched forward, sitting up and tossing his book to the side. "What?" His eyebrows knit together, puckered lips pressed together. "Why?"
"I heard your dad chewing you out on the phone," she snivels. "He's right to be angry. This is my fault."
"What?" Stiles scoffs like it's the most unbelievable thing in the world, even when it isn't. Because he needs her to think it isn't her fault. "That's ridiculous, are you me? Did you fall asleep when a guy was holding a seventeen year old cashier at gunpoint? I let that guy get away, not you."
"Because you were…" Lydia trails off. "God, I can't figure out what word it is this is so hard," she cries, her face red and puffy as she's on the edge of tears. "What is the word? What is it?" Her head shakes, disbelief in her populous green eyes.
"Hey, hey," Stiles pulls her in his arms, cradling her jaw and planting soft kissed along her pink face. "It's okay, it doesn't matter," he murmurs against her dry hair, running his hands along the back and imagining that it was soft and healthy. That she was healthy. That she didn't forget to wash her hair or the name for the word 'tired'. He pretended that she was sad because someone was mean to her at work, or that she was upset because her husband made a rude comment about her weight. That they were normal, and that this was normal. But that way of thinking didn't work, because it wasn't reality. He couldn't pretend while Lydia faded away into her own misery. He had to take care of his beautiful sick wife.
So he stopped pretending her hair was soft and healthy and started to admire it for the way it was. She was perfect.
Her moans of sadness are the wails of a banshee, absorbed by the thickness of his shirt and staining it with liquid agony.
But even through their moment of shared weakness, they agree that it isn't safe for her to be home alone for such long hours when her mental capacity is so limited these days. The left corner of their house still wore a horrible burn that they couldn't afford to fix, and they most definitely couldn't afford any more. Stiles wishes he could quit his job and spend all day watching movies and kissing Lydia but in their reality, he has to pay hospital bills and every now and then an electric bill. Internet and cable was already a thing of the past. At least his father helped where he could.
Most days Stiles sat by Lydia's bedside, playing games and laughing and talking. Sometimes it got hard, and sometimes she'd pick a fight just to put him down, but he'd refuse to give her the satisfaction by losing his cool and shouting at her, so he'd quietly stew and wait for her to finish whatever chain of insults she's directed at him.
On a Monday they played UNO and teased each other and it was all very light hearted and sweet, but when he left to take a bathroom break he never thought he'd come back to such a change in personality. Lydia was crying in the bed and calling his name like she'd been searching for him. He rushed to her side and took her hand, running his thumb along the back.
"What is it?" He cried. "Should I get the doctor?"
"Stiles I need the note, my music note," she mutters weakly. "Please my music note."
"Lydia," he shakes his head as a fist seizes his heart. His chin wrinkles and his voice cracks. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Please, Stiles," she begs pitifully, gripping his hands tightly. "I need my music note you know how it makes me feel better. I left it next to the bed, in the drawer."
"Our dresser?" He knows this is just her illness talking, but he entertains her, praying that he can placate her in some way. He has to at least try.
"Yes, my music note." Her eyes twinkle where tears linger. "It sounds so beautiful when you read it."
Stiles leans forward, pressing his lips to the corner of her mouth and keeping them there for a long moment. He's happy she doesn't resist and hopes she won't question the tears that leaked from his eyes and were now dripping down her own cheek like they belonged to her.
"I'll get your music note, baby," Her eyes close and she sighs contentedly as he continues to pepper her face with soft kisses.
Stiles thinks he hears a faint "I love you" but it passes in the wind, and he brushes it aside to pass it for his imagination.
When he lost her
He tells himself that he's going home to take a shower and have some down time, but he's really checking their dresser. Just to convince himself that he isn't, he decides to do it last. He glances at it as he walks through their bedroom to get to the bathroom, and he takes another look when he's walking out with a towel wrapped around his waist. He gets dressed, he picks out a few things to bring Lydia that she'd appreciate, and then he opens the top drawer.
One side of his lips lift upwards, a breath freeing from between his lips that's almost saying that he continues to be surprised by his genius wife, even at this late stage in her illness. Laying there amidst the hair ties and batteries is a "happy first anniversary" card that he gave her. Right on the cover were two personified music notes with faces and arms, one swinging the other in a romantic dance with a speech bubble that said "You make my heart sing!".
His nose and eyes burned, but he sniffled the emotion away. His heart clenched with love for Lydia, but he didn't fight that. He could never fight that, not ever, so what was the point in trying now? He would bring his wife her music note and he would read it to her as she asked him to.
Stiles is excited as he walks through the familiar hospital wing, because he's finally able to answer one of her insane requests. He can't wait to see her toothy grin when he walks through that door, and he imagines it so many different ways all the while knowing it will never compare to the real thing. He missed making her proud. He missed the way she would look at him when he did something right.
Stiles almost smacks right into a frazzled looking Dr. Baranski. He's startled to see Stiles, like he's seeing a ghost. He recovers quickly. "Mr. Stilinski," he straightens his tie, only trying to mask his pale face.
"What's up doc?" He flashes a toothy smile. "Have you seen Lydia yet today? She's doing a little better than usual."
The doctors sucks the insides of his cheek into his mouth and sighs sadly. "Mr. Stilinski, I was just with your wife and –,"
He's interrupted by the ever sporadic Stiles, "She sounded like she wasn't making sense but it turns out she was," he shakes the card. "Look!" The doctor appears grim, so Stiles corrects himself. "Okay, so it doesn't make much sense from your position since you weren't there but she said this thing about music…" His voice eventually trails off into nothingness, frozen by the intensity in the doctor's eyes, something he hadn't seen even when he was staring down at his desk in avoidance when he was originally informing them of Lydia's condition. He doesn't ask what's wrong because in that moment he knows.
"Mr. Stilinski…" he begins.
"No." Stiles shakes his head, a fist flying up to his mouth where he can bite down hard enough to break the skin. He doesn't feel a thing. "No. No, please." His eyes feel wet, he can feel them running in frustration before he's even confirmed what he already knows. He's acting sloppy, placing two hands on the doctors sides and getting closer than comfort for the medical professional. He's used to hysterical family members, but that isn't to say it gets easier. "Tell me she's okay," his eyes are pleading and he's got the words to match. "please," he sounds so unbelievably desperate, and it's in moments like these that Dr. George Baranski has difficulty taking the emotion out of his career.
"The infection in her lung spread at an alarmingly fast rate, faster than I anticipated. The antibiotics we had her on were not enough to keep it bay… About ten minutes ago she had trouble breathing and soon after went into cardiac arrest. We attempted resuscitation but there was no…" Stiles can't hear him anymore. He can't hear anything but the violent pumping in his ears and he can't feel anything but the card in his tight grip, the cardboard bending where his fingers press into the corner. He squeezes until it's a crumpled ball in his hand, and that's when the overwhelming nausea hits him.
He heads straight for her room anyway, pounding in the direction with disbelief running thick in his veins like poison. He was faint, on the edge of blacking out, sweat pooling at his hairline and under his arms.
He freezes a few yards away from her door when he sees the gurney being pushed out, the covered body on top of it.
"Lydia!?" Stiles shouts her name like she can hear him, like she'll get up and ask him what he wants. He rushes forward, catching the attention of the nurses wheeling her away. "Lydia?"
"Whoa, whoa, who's this?" An orderly gestures toward Stiles.
"It's the husband," a nurse answers grimly, gently and cautiously reaching out to touch Stiles' arm. "Come with me sweetheart." She tries to guide him away.
"But that's my wife," a sob breaks free, his voice cracking where it meets her title. His wife. His amazing alive wife. "That's my wife!" The female nurse jumps out of the way as he bends his head over the covered body, tears sliding along his cheeks and landing on the sheet. He's only stopped when the orderly steps forward, a soft but firm grip on Stiles' arm as he pulls him back to allow the nurses to take Lydia away.
"They have to take her now, I'm sorry."
"But I have her music note!" He keens, dropping to his knees and pressing his hands flat against the tile. The pain is so fierce that it's physically affecting him, stirring in the most private place in his heart where he remembers the familiar moment of losing his mom, cutting deep like a sword and splitting a wound he would suffer from forever. With a gasp of agony his warm mouth opens. "I wrote it for her," he groans out.
He can feel the vague sensation of a stranger trying to comfort him, and it only makes him feel worse.
And somehow through his ineffable grief, through swallowing back saliva and choking back hiccups he thinks of his father's words.
"Love that girl until the end." But what do you do when you're loving that girl past the end? How does that love ever stop? She was his music note too, and now he'd never hear the sweet croon of her song, not ever again. There would be no teasing or laughter or red unsolved strings for mysteries, no fighting monsters that hide under their beds with baseball bats or fighting evil with Scott. How could he lose her?
They've only been married a year.