Still, she had a point. The doctor had said that mono, benign as it generally was, was wildly contagious. Spread through saliva, hence its nickname.
Josh didn’t know where he’d gotten it from. Apparently it stuck around for weeks before showing symptoms, which meant Heather had most definitely been exposed. Chances were she’d be fine. The doctor had said most people were exposed to the virus as children, never exhibiting symptoms beyond the common cold. Most everyone else was exposed in high school or college.
Josh, apparently, was the rare exception.
Still, on the off-chance Heather was also an exception, he’d have to tell her.
Tomorrow. He’d tell her tomorrow.
Right now he wanted a shower, and to be out of the fucking hospital. Maybe a big-boy dose of NyQuil and a good night’s sleep.
“Heather’s not the reason I feel like an idiot,” he said, locking hands around the back of his head and looking up at the ugly ceiling of his hospital room. “I dragged you guys down here for nothing. Put you through hell—again—for nothing. For mono.”
“Stop,” she said quietly. “Don’t forget that I was there when the doctor explained how closely mono can resemble the symptoms of something much more serious. You were right to worry. The doctor was right to insist you come here today for tests. And you were right to tell us. You were.”
Jamie was at least partially right: The symptoms of mono were easily similar to his early leukemia symptoms, the very ones he had originally dismissed as just a persistent cold. The sore throat, the fever, the persistent, weeks-long fatigue. Even more wily were the swollen lymph nodes and the tender left side courtesy of a swollen spleen. Symptoms of both leukemia and, apparently, fucking mono.
But while Jamie had a point about his worries being well-founded, calling his family had been premature. Calling them before he’d had the test results had been downright selfish, and his mom calling Heather on top of that had been downright disastrous.
Still, maybe it was for the best. He and Heather were going to end sometime, might as well be now. Granted, the ripping off of this particular Band-Aid had been horribly painful.
But it was off now, and he could go back to being . . .
What, exactly?
Alone.
“Okay, don’t bite my head off for saying this, but you look—”
“Like hell, I know, okay? Give me a break. I’ve got a fever, my head feels like there’s a hammer rattling around inside, and it hurts to talk.”
“Not what I was going to say. I mean, yes, you look like you’re ready to keel over, but I was going to say that you look lost.”
Lost.
Heather had told him the same thing once, and he’d written her off. Correction, he’d bitten her head off.
But here was another woman he cared about saying the same thing, using the exact same word to describe him.
Josh sat down hard on the stiff hospital bed. “How so?” he asked gingerly.
Jamie sighed and stood up, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her black pants before looking at him. “I know you’ve got the whole ‘live like you’re dying’ thing down pat. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you’d literally walked on coals and skydived and sang karaoke naked. But Josh . . . you’re also living like you’re dying. You get the distinction, right? The same phrase can have wildly different meanings, and you’re heading toward the depressing one.”
Every single one of her words struck a painful chord, but he still resisted. “Didn’t we just have this talk?”
“Yes!” she said, half shouting. “And you were in love when I last saw you, and you’re in love now, but you let her walk away. No, you pushed her. All because . . . why?”
“Because I might be dying, Jamie! You got that memo, right? The cancer could come back at any time. I’m not going to leave Heather a”—he struggled to get the word out—“a widow.”
“We’re all dying, moron. I could get cancer tomorrow. Or Heather could. Or Dr. Rios. Are you a little more likely to get it? Sure. Just like Kevin’s more likely to have heart disease because it runs in his family, and just like Dad’s more likely than Mom to get hit by a golf ball because he actually golfs. We’re all dying of something, but only the cowards among us base their lives around that.”