Sex, Not Love(67)

Typical Jayce, more worried about me than himself.

“Plus, you’ve been wearing those clothes for four days. You’re starting to stink up my room.”

I dragged a hand through my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me about the shit you told the doctors? I had no idea you had any other symptoms going on.”

He watched me pace back and forth at the foot of his bed. “This is why. You’re gonna wear a path in the floor if you don’t sit down and stop worrying.”

A few days ago might’ve been his first seizure, but apparently Jayce had had other shit going on for a while and failed to mention it to anyone. Muscle spasms, tremors, weight loss—I’d noticed two of the three and asked him about them.

“Your fucking hand shaking—the first time I noticed it you told me you were hungover. Had you even been drinking the night before? I should’ve made you go to the doctor. Why didn’t you tell me?”

My brother’s face turned serious. “You want the truth? I didn’t want to know.”

“Great.” I shook my head. “Now you’re Mom. Ignore medical care and leave everything to chance.”

“What difference does it make to know? If I have Parkinson’s like Mom, there’s no cure for it anyway.”

“No. But there’s treatment. And then you could know what to look out for.”

“The doctor said seizures aren’t even a common symptom of Parkinson’s. So you’re blowing the entire thing out of proportion.”

Uncle Joe walked into the room carrying a file. He looked exhausted. He’d been here twenty of twenty-four hours for the last four days. But unlike me, he’d at least showered and run home for a change of clothes. I’d refused, sleeping on the chair in the waiting room when they kicked me out of his room at night.

He looked around. “Where’s Emily?”

“I made her go home and get some rest.” Jayce lifted his chin toward me. “Like this pain in the ass should.”

Uncle Joe looked at me. “I think that’s a good idea. Why don’t you go home and get some rest. I want to talk to Jayce alone anyway.”

“Why?” I eyed the folder. “You have results finally?”

Uncle Joe looked to Jayce. “I know you boys are close. But medical information is private.”

Jayce looked between our uncle and me. “It’s fine. Hunter can stay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

My uncle pulled up a chair alongside Jayce’s bed. “Why don’t you have a seat, too, Hunter?”

When someone tells you to have a seat, bad news comes next. “I’d rather stand.”

He nodded and looked down at the unopened folder on his lap for an excruciatingly long time. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed his tired eyes before starting.

“We all assumed your mother had Parkinson’s disease. She had the classic symptoms. And, well, you know she refused to go to a doctor for a workup.”

“She didn’t have Parkinson’s?” I asked.

“Obviously, there’s no way to be certain, but I no longer think so.”

“Does that mean I don’t have Parkinson’s?” My brother said.

Uncle Joe shook his head. “No. You don’t have Parkinson’s, son.”

Jayce’s head tilted back to the ceiling, and his shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank God.”

The excitement I felt was short-lived after I took a look at my uncle’s face. He wasn’t relieved like we were. I suddenly thought sitting down was a good idea.

“There are some conditions that have very similar symptoms to other conditions. Even yesterday when I learned all about the symptoms you’ve encountered over the years, it still sounded like Parkinson’s. And while seizure isn’t a common ailment of those suffering from the disease, there is a known comorbidity between Parkinson’s and epilepsy.”

“So I have epilepsy?”

“No, you don’t have epilepsy either. I’m sorry. I’m confusing things by going into all of this explanation. I just wanted you to understand that sometimes symptoms can present in a manner that leads to a diagnosis, but without proper testing, there’s no way to truly confirm what you’re dealing with. Your mother is gone almost two years now, and we’re still guessing since she refused testing. We’ll never be one-hundred-percent certain, but the genetic condition you have now leads us to believe she didn’t suffer from Parkinson’s either.”

“Genetic condition? What’s wrong with me?”

My uncle’s eyes teared up. “You have a genetic condition known as Huntington’s disease, Jayce. Yours is considered juvenile Huntington’s disease because of your age when you first started to experience symptoms. It’s an inherited defect in a single gene, an autosomal dominant disorder. It causes progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain, which impacts a person’s ability to move, among other things. That’s why you’ve been tripping and had some hand tremors. At the start, it can mimic things someone might do when they’ve had too much to drink.”

“At the start? What else is it going to do to me?”

“It’s difficult to know for sure, especially in cases of juvenile-onset Huntington’s, because it’s rare. But most people will have impaired movement and cognitive issues.”