Emily showed up the next morning with her quiet determination and two coffees. She didn’t wait for an invitation. She never did anymore.Jacob sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by abandoned notebooks and unopened mail. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days—because he hadn’t.
“You can’t keep doing this,” she said softly, setting the coffee in front of him. “You know that, right?”
He kept his eyes on the table, tracing a crack in the wood with his fingertip. “I’m fine.”
“Don’t.” Her voice trembled, not with anger, but with exhaustion. “I’m not asking if you’re fine. I know you’re not fine.”
He didn’t argue. Not really. Not this time.
Emily sighed and sat across from him. “Jacob, we need to get you back on your meds.”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t want to live half-asleep.”
“They don’t make you half-asleep. They make you stable.”
“They make me dull,” he shot back. “I lose everything. My creativity. My edge. It’s like someone turned the colour off.”
Emily’s fingers gripped her coffee cup, her knuckles white. “You also lose the paranoia. The psychosis. The weeks where you can’t get out of bed. Isn’t that worth something?”
He hated the way her words made sense. Hated that she’d seen him like this so many times she could predict his arguments.
“I just—” He exhaled shakily. “I don’t know who I am without all of it. The highs, the lows. It’s me.”
“No, it’s not.” Her voice broke, just a little. “You’re more than your disorder. You always have been.”
Jacob wanted to believe her, but the cycles had carved themselves so deeply into his identity that he couldn’t separate the illness from the man. When he was stable, he felt muted. When he was manic, he felt alive. When he was depressed, he felt… nothing.
The extremes were where he knew himself best.
Emily reached into her bag and pulled out a small white pill bottle. “Dr. Patel called in a new prescription. I’ll pick it up for you. It’s different. Fewer side effects. You just need to try.”
He stared at the bottle, that familiar war brewing in his chest. Part of him wanted to throw it across the room. The other part—a smaller, quieter part—wanted to stop drowning.
“I don’t want to lose you,” Emily whispered.
Those words undid him.
He thought about all the times she’d found him on the edge. The hospital visits. The late-night calls. The time he’d disappeared for two days and she’d driven the streets looking for him.
Emily was his safety net. He didn’t know why she hadn’t walked away yet.
Slowly, Jacob reached out and took the bottle.
“I’ll try,” he said. His voice was small, but honest.
Her shoulders sagged with relief. “That’s all I’m asking.”
He didn’t know if it would work. He didn’t know if he could keep trying. But for now, that single step felt like the bravest thing he’d done.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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