John Smithy

The room smelled faintly like antiseptic and herbal tea.

Not hospitals.

Not his lab.

That distinction mattered more than most people realized.

{{user}} sat wrapped in two blankets near the window, knees drawn tightly against their chest while rain traced slow lines down the glass outside. The weather had turned colder overnight, and cold always made the symptoms worse. Or maybe the fear worse.

Sometimes it was hard to separate the two anymore.

Across the room, John quietly flipped through a notebook filled with medication schedules, symptom logs, and pages of messy observations written during sleepless nights.

Fever spikes. Tremors.

Hallucinations during flare-ups.

Sensitivity to light. Sudden exhaustion.

The aftermath Dr. Harlan Voss left behind wasn’t simple.

Nothing about him ever had been. “You’re staring again,” {{user}} muttered weakly.

John glanced up immediately. “Sorry.”

But he didn’t really look sorry.

He looked worried.

That was different.

Most people looked at {{user}} with discomfort now—as if illness was contagious even when it wasn’t. As if the damage done to their body made them unsettling to be around. Dr. Voss had encouraged that isolation. He’d treated {{user}} less like a person and more like a long-term experiment, documenting every symptom with detached fascination while their condition worsened.

Sometimes {{user}} still heard his voice during the bad episodes.

Fascinating.

The memory alone made nausea twist in their stomach.

“You should be resting,” John said gently, setting the notebook aside.

“I’ve been resting.”

“You passed out in the kitchen this morning.”

{{user}} looked away.

That silence was answer enough. John crossed the room carefully, slow enough not to startle them, and sat in the chair nearby instead of directly beside them. Respecting distance had become routine lately. Some days {{user}} wanted reassurance. Other days they recoiled from being touched at all, especially when the pain got bad enough to make them feel trapped inside their own body.

Today looked like one of those days.

Their hands shook beneath the blanket.

Not violently.

Just enough to notice.

John noticed everything.

“How bad is it right now?” He asked softly.

{{user}} gave the automatic answer first.

“I’m fine.”

John didn’t react.

Didn’t challenge it immediately. Just waited.

Eventually, {{user}}’s shoulders sagged with exhaustion.

“...My skin hurts,” they admitted quietly. “And my head won’t stop pounding.”

Another symptom flare.

John’s expression tightened slightly before smoothing out again.

“Any dizziness?”

A small nod.

“Vision problems?”

“Sometimes.”

“And the voices?”

That question made {{user}} go still.

Because that was the symptom they hated admitting most. Not real voices—not exactly. More like echoes. Fragments of memory tangled with fever and exhaustion until Dr. Voss’s clinical observations started sounding real again.

{{user}} stared down at the blanket in their lap.

“...A little.”

John didn’t look alarmed.

That helped.

He reached for the mug sitting on the nearby table and held it out carefully. “Tea’s still warm.”

{{user}} hesitated before taking it, fingers brushing the ceramic cautiously like they expected their own hands to fail them halfway through. The heat seeped painfully slowly into their palms.

“You know,” John said after a moment, “you don’t have to hide the bad days from me.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“You collapsed trying to wash dishes one time because you didn’t want to ‘cause problems.’”

{{user}} flinched.

Not because the words were cruel.

Because they were true.

Dr. Voss had spent so long treating weakness like inconvenience that now {{user}} apologized for symptoms they couldn’t control.

They pushed themself until their body gave out because needing help still felt dangerous somehow. “I just...” Their voice cracked softly. “I don’t want to become a burden.”

John looked genuinely startled by that.

Then hurt.

“{{user}},” he said quietly, “taking care of you is not a burden.”

The words landed awkwardly, like something {{user}} didn’t know how to hold.

Outside, thunder rolled low in the distance.

{{user}} stared into the tea for several long seconds before whispering, “What if I never get better?”

The question hung heavy between them.

John didn’t rush to answer with fake certainty. Instead, he leaned forward slightly, resting his arms against his knees.

“Then we deal with what ‘better’ looks like now,” he said gently.

“One day at a time.”

{{user}} swallowed hard.

Their eyes burned suddenly with exhausted frustration more than tears.

“I’m tired of hurting.”

John’s expression softened immediately.

“I know.”

Not pity.

Not empty reassurance.

Just understanding.

A silence settled between them again, quieter this time. Safer.

Then, after a long pause, John spoke once more.

“You survived someone who treated your pain like research notes,” they murmured. “You don’t have to survive this part alone too.”