The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(59)

“What’s this?”

“That, my friend, is a valium.”

“I’m human valium,” Erik said.

“Not tonight. Take it or I’ll find one in suppository form and get Daisy’s mother to help hold you down.”

Even with the dire threat, Erik hesitated. And David smiled at him. His true, genuine smile. “Nothing will keep you from waking up if she needs you,” he said.

“I know.”

“She’s asleep, Fish. You should be, too. I’ll wake you up, I promise.”

Erik swallowed the little helper and lay down. He pushed the pillows around, piling them behind him. Dave could laugh, he didn’t care. The way Erik went to sleep best was with Daisy spooned up against his back. If she couldn’t be here, he’d fake it.

David dropped into the easy chair in the corner of the room, clicking the reading lamp over his head. “The light gonna bother you?”

“No.” Then Erik sat up on an elbow. “Dave, are you reading the bible?”

“Yes,” David said, licking his finger and turning pages. “Shocked?”

“Only because you’re the least religious person I know.”

“True. But there’s this one prayer, my Aunt Helen likes it. Here, Psalm 41.” He looked up with his irreverent grin. “That would be one of the Psalms of King David, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

David read out loud:



Blessed are those who have regard for the weak; the Lord delivers them in times of trouble. The Lord protects and preserves them—they are counted among the blessed in the land—he does not give them over to the desire of their foes. The Lord sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.



A long moment of silence. “Read it again,” Erik said.

David did, lingering over the last line, “Sustains them on their sickbed and restores them from their bed of illness.”

“Thanks for being here,” Erik said.

David looked back at him. “Go to sleep, Fish.”

Erik put his head down, wiggled back into the pile of pillows on his shoulder blades, willing them into Daisy’s pliant body.

“Fishy, fishy in the brook,” David said, “go to sleep while I read the Good Book.”

Smiling, curled on his side with the charms of his necklace tucked in a hand, Erik closed his eyes. He took roll call of his talismans: Saint Birgitta, the fish, the boat. And Daisy’s charm, the tiny gold scissors.

The sax.

He opened his eyes again.

“It’s all right, Fish. Go to sleep.”

Erik shut his eyes. He waited. For either sleep or panic. Neither came.

“Dave?”

“Yeah.”

“Read the rest of it.”

“All my enemies whisper together against me; they imagine the worst for me, saying, ‘A vile disease has afflicted him; he will never get up from the place where he lies.’” David’s voice cracked.

“Keep going,” Erik said drowsily. The edges of his mind were beginning to unravel. The pillows were warm and soft on his back, like Daisy. One of his hands became her hand. Daisy’s long fingers woven with his. He ran his fingertips over the edges of his nails, but they were her nails. She was here now. Holding his hand.

“But may you have mercy on me, Lord; raise me up, that I may repay them. I know that you are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me. Because of my integrity you uphold me and set me in your presence forever.”

“In your presence forever,” Erik said, yawning.

Forever, Daisy whispered on his neck.

And Erik was asleep.





Shaped By Our Scars


“I am such a practical person,” Daisy once told Erik. “To a fault. I don’t like drama. I don’t coo over babies or cry at movies…”

She didn’t cry at movies. Erik had to think hard to remember if he had ever seen Daisy cry. Really break down and weep from her guts. Sometimes she choked up in the throes of an emotional moment with him, but he was always choking right along, which made it a sweet, shared cry. Once or twice he saw her reduced to teary-eyed frustration after a grueling class or rehearsal. But if dance were a cause for sobbing, it was with an air of “I’m letting it out. I’ll be over it in a minute.” Productive crying. Cathartic and purposeful.

But when they dialed back the sedation the next morning and let her come up through the fog. When she opened her eyes and took in where she was. When Dr. Jinani explained, and Daisy gradually began to comprehend what had happened. And when she finally went grabbing at her leg, struggling to sit up but only getting as far as an elbow, just enough to push aside the draped cage over her calf and see what had been done to her…

No, Erik had never seen her cry like this. It tore him apart, how helpless she was against it. She couldn’t roll on her side or roll against him or curl in a ball or fall on her knees with her face in the floor. She had to lie there on her back and take it. Take in how her leg was deliberately and gruesomely sliced open.

It didn’t matter it was done to save her life. It didn’t matter Daisy Bianco was a pragmatic girl who veered away from unnecessary drama and found comfort in practical action.

Nobody was tough when their leg was cut open from knee to ankle.