Florence had to pee.
Or rather, her instincts were kicking in. Pee after sex. It'd been a while since she had to remember that, but as exhausted and mentally strung out as she was, as much as she wanted to just lay in bed, wait for Sylvester to come back, throw back the pill and pass out. She didn't want to die. Not really. But sleep, being unconscious, that sounded really good.
After using the bathroom, she splashed water on her face, surprised at how red her eyes were, even though logically, of course they would be. She'd been sobbing. Her eyes hurt. It only made sense that they were red.
She opened the cupboard, and stopped in surprise. Her eyedrops were there, and they were what she was looking for, but it was the absence of other things that should be there that halted her in her tracks.
No aspirin.
No Xanax.
No Tylenol.
No Benadryl.
No cough medicine.
She felt a tightness around her heart and lungs. When Sylvester had been rattling around in the cupboard, and she'd called out to him that she knew they didn't have any Plan B…he hadn't been looking for it.
He'd been removing anything she could take too much of.
Florence closed the cabinet, walking back to bed in a daze, and remembering the eye drops only after she'd sunk back into a horizontal position. Her limbs felt like they weighed thousands of pounds. She had no energy to go back for them.
She heard the door open and close, and then water running, a click, and then he was in front of her, handing her a glass and a pill and she sat up and swallowed the pill and the water and then she curled up in a ball and sobbed, in both relief and anxiety because until she bled she wouldn't fully feel free.
Sylvester was kneeling beside the bed, resting his chin on the mattress, his hand on her arm, and she knew he was still worried, still not convinced that this was enough to make her want to stay. He didn't put the pill bottles back, didn't even have his bag in the room. She remembered the click shortly after he arrived, as he locked the door to the balcony.
She remembered the video call with Ralph, with Patty and Daisy discussing what could possibly be a bad way someone else's body could keep you up all night.
It was this.
Florence might sleep; Sylvester would not.
It was this.
It was this.
It was this.
Look at her. Look at how she arranges the letters. They're by color, Paige. They're by color!
Walter's epiphany about Amber. Paige had somehow managed to forget about it, with everything going on. But he appeared to be onto something. Amber could recite her ABCs when she was given a sheet, or given plastic letters all the same color. If they were the multi colored ones, she ordered them that way.
That day at the ice cream shop. She kept asking what the ice cream was. It was shortly after we finger painted. She wanted to know what colors mixed to get the green!
The conversation had happened the previous night, but Paige smiled to herself, remembering the excitement on her husband's face.
Amber was smart. She just saw the world differently. And that was something that Walter could understand, even if he and his daughter didn't view things exactly the same.
"Can I talk to you?"
Paige looked up, snapping back to the present. "Of…of course, Sly."
Sylvester looked over his shoulder. Walter and Happy were working on something at her desk; Toby was perched there, observing, probably making some sort of comment about his wife's rear end as she was bent forward slightly. He looked back at Paige. "Florence didn't have a good night."
Paige put her phone down. The newest wordsearch app could wait.
"We were intimate after I got home. And the way she reacted afterward, just at the possibility that that could result in another pregnancy…" he bit his lip, staring upward, his hands pressed onto Paige's desk. He made eye contact with her again. "I understand living in constant fear. But I'm not a woman. I'll never be able to understand the weight that the idea of getting pregnant when you don't want to can be."
"Do you know what she'd do?"
"Yeah, I do," he said, nodding. "And that's what scares me."
Paige blinked. She'd thought he was going somewhere else with this. "Do you think she would hurt herself if she got pregnant again?"
Sylvester's voice cracked. "I think she'd do worse than that."
"And leave Tilly without a mother?" It wasn't the best reply. Paige knew it. It just came out, a byproduct of her attempt to process just how serious this was.
"She's not thinking straight as it is. If her hypothetical becomes reality, I guarantee she won't." Sylvester hesitated. "Also, I don't want to get it into her head that she needs to keep fighting because of her relationships with other people. That's such a big part of her breakdown in the first place, feeling like she's lost herself. Telling her to stay for Tilly would just put more pressure on her when pressure is the stressor in the first place." He bit his lip. "You know, before I left the other day, to get her the Plan B, I was in our bathroom and she was a little impatient, you know, stop looking in the medicine cabinet, I know we don't have any here, but I wasn't looking for anything. I was putting every pill in there in my bag so that she couldn't swallow them while I was gone.
"Oh, Sly."
"She was doing better," he said, his voice cracking again. "She was doing better. And it's like this just completely undid all of that."
"It's wild how one simple thing can seemingly ruin your whole life," Paige said. "But like you said, her odds of getting pregnant, even without the contraceptive-"
"Sure. This time. But what about next time? If there is one." He shook his head. "I don't…" More headshakes. "I don't know. She's going to be a nervous wreck about this for…forever. How is that fair to her? How is any of this fair?"
"It's not fair to either of you," Paige said. "You both deserve to be happy and fulfilled."
"It's not about sex," Sylvester said. "I went almost twenty – seven years without sex. I can do it again. I would do it again for her. But we do both enjoy that type of intimacy, and even though I would never do anything to attempt to make her feel guilty – her libido is higher than mine, anyway – I know she would feel guilty about it if we just took that off the table for the rest of our lives."
"So…you guys are back together?"
"I guess I don't know that for sure. But I know I want us to be, and if there's anything at all I could do…"
Paige raised her eyebrows. "There is, Sly."
He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I know. There's just a lot to unpack there, too."
"Talk to her. As soon as you think she can handle a conversation about you two as a unit, talk to her."
"I am sorry, you know," Florence said.
"About what?" Sylvester was attempting to make pancakes. He was cautiously optimistic about it.
She was sitting at the breakfast bar, shifting on the stool. "Being this way. There's nothing we can do now, except wait another week and see if my period comes."
"Lori, I used to have to put chalk pieces in order before I could calculate something on a green board," he said. "I get it."
"How are you so patient with me?" She asked.
He looked up. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, there's two of us in this room whose daughter was born dangerously early. Two of us that have the right to be handling this badly. But you're just…taking care of me."
Sylvester attempted to flip the pancakes. Two went okay. The other two were complete disasters. Putting it lightly. "Sometimes when someone you love is struggling, you get this…extra ability to help them. Like you're able to overcome your own feelings by caring for someone else. And…I sort of understand."
She cocked her head.
Sylvester turned off the stove, moved the pan, wiped his hands. "When I was a teenager," he said, leaning forward on his arms so he faced her across the bar, "there was a lot that life asked me to handle that I didn't know how. I got to where I was in a bad place. I was thinking about…things. This was right before I met Walter. He's the reason I didn't. So maybe I'm handling this better than you are because I'm not the one who went through the physical trauma, or because I have this instinct to protect you. But I also understand what it's like to feel like there's no way out of the storm inside your head. And I know first hand how important it is to have someone to guide you out of it."
"Oh Sly." She was staring at him, eyes wide and glinting, and she reached out. He took her hand, feeling hers squeeze as his did the same. "I didn't know that."
"Other than Walter," Sylvester said. "You're the only person alive that knows. I only ever told Megan, before you." He looked down at their hands. "I've made a decision," he said. "I mean…I don't know if that's the right word. But…" he sighed. "I made an appointment."
"What kind of appointment?"
"For a vasectomy."
She was sure she couldn't hide the surprise on her face. "What? Why?"
"Because," he said. "It's the most effective form of birth control there is. And you won't have to worry, especially if you get back on the pill for your cramps. And we could even use condoms, still."
"But…"
"Do you want to be pregnant again?" He asked. "Ever?"
She was quiet. Her chin drooped. She shook her head. "No."
"So then it's simple," he said. "It's what I can do for you. To make sure you don't have to be in fear. Constantly making yourself sick over if that next test will come back negative. Or debating what you'd do if one came back positive. Lori…"
He knew that she was thinking about what she'd said. About how the balcony wasn't high enough. "But you might want more children. Someday"
Sylvester tipped his head. "Lori. That's not going to happen."
He could tell, by the look on her face, that the real meaning of his words hit her immediately.
I'm not going anywhere.
She started to cry.
Sylvester moved around the bar drawing her into his arms. She wiggled, freeing her arms from between their bodies to wrap them around him. "I want you," he whispered. "More than additional kids. I want you most."
"Are you sure?"
"About which part?"
She looked up at him. "The procedure."
"I'm positive."
"Hopefully only one of us is," she said.
He cocked his head, then realized she was making a joke. A joke. A positive sign.
She put her head back on his chest.
