You Thought I Felt No Pain

My nervous system has always lived on a time delay.

If someone yelled at me, I just nodded and said, Okay.

If someone shoved me to the ground, I still just said, Okay.

When my parents abandoned me in the foster system, I accepted it. When the other kids held my head down in the gritty water of the playground, I accepted that, too.

My world existed in a vacuum, completely devoid of immediate pain. Until I met Mia and Dean.

One was my fiercely protective best friend; the other was my devoted boyfriend, a boy who looked at me like I hung the moon.

Mia used to poke me right between the eyebrows, letting out a dramatic, exasperated sigh. "You little slowpoke. If someone ever came along and snatched Dean right out from under you, would you just stand there and say 'Okay'?"

I would just give her my usual, delayed, dopey smile. "That won't happen. No one could ever snatch Dean away."

I believed that. Right up until the week before the spring semester of my sophomore year, when I came back to the dorms early and found the two of them tangled together in the shadows of the stairwell.

Through the dim light, I saw Mia crying, slapping him hard across the chest. "Dean, how can we do this to Grace? How can we?" She choked on a sob. "I'll go to a clinic. I'll get rid of the baby. We just we have to pretend this never happened."

Deans eyes were rimmed with red. He pulled her fiercely against his chest, burying his face in her hair. "No, Mia, don't! I'll talk to Grace. I'll end it. Im going to take responsibility for our baby!"

I stood out in the freezing hallway draft, watching the two most important people in my entire world.

For the very first time in my life, I realized that my sensory delay didn't make me immune. It just meant that when the pain finally hit, it was going to tear me apart.

I looked down at my phone, my thumb hovering over the screen, and finally sent the text to him.

Ill go with you. To Europe. For the treatments.

A reply flashed across the screen almost instantly: Good. Ill come pick you up in three days.

I wanted to laugh, but the tears fell first, hot and heavy, blurring the glowing letters on my screen until they were nothing but jagged streaks of light. I rubbed the heels of my hands roughly against my eyes, shoved the phone deep into my coat pocket, and drew in a long, shuddering breath.

Then, pretending the world hadn't just shattered at my feet, I shuffled forward at my usual, sluggish pace.

"Dean. Mia."

I smiled, my voice carrying its typical slow cadence.

They jumped apart like theyd been burned. All the color drained from Mias face, leaving her chalky and terrified, while Deans jaw tightened in sheer panic. But when they turned and saw my facemy perpetually blank, a-beat-too-late expressionthe collective exhale between them was almost audible.

I had a processing delay. They were absolutely certain I hadn't noticed a thing.

In a matter of seconds, they rearranged their features, expertly slipping on masks of casual surprise, acting as if theyd merely bumped into each other in the lobby.

But the smell of his cologne on her skin, the heavy, guilty gravity between themthat couldn't be faked.

"What are you guys doing back on campus so early?" I asked softly.

Instinctively, Dean stepped toward me. It was muscle memory; he always closed the distance between us, always reached for my hand. But half a step in, he caught the flash of wounded jealousy in Mias eyes.

He froze. His foot retreated. He stepped back, aligning his shoulders squarely with Mias.

I stared at the toes of their sneakers, perfectly parallel, and a microscopic needle of acid pierced the lining of my stomach.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. To cover the awkwardness, Mia suddenly lunged forward, grabbing the handle of my oversized, battered suitcase.

"Wow, this looks heavy! Let me get it for you, slowpoke!" she chirped. Her voice was too loud. Too bright. Too hollow.

I blinked, staring at her, terrified that if I closed my eyes, a tear would slip. I was even more terrified that if I blinked, the memory of the eighteen-year-old Mia I had loved so much would vanish forever.

Freshman year. Move-in day. I hadn't met Dean yet. While all the other kids had parents renting U-Hauls, carrying boxes, and making their beds, I had arrived alone, lugging a ridiculously heavy trunk up a three-story walk-up. The kids behind me in the stairwell were rolling their eyes, groaning at my agonizingly slow pace. I was dripping with sweat, paralyzed by the sensory overload.

That was when a girl with a radiant, sunflower smile came bounding down the stairs. She grabbed the other end of my trunk without asking. "You alone? Come on, I got you!"

She had hauled my entire life up to our dorm room. From that day on, Mia was my roommate, my fierce protector, my sister.

"Put that down!"

A sharp reprimand snapped me out of the past. Dean strode forward and aggressively batted Mias hand off the suitcase handle. He pulled Mia behind him, shielding her with his body, and glared at me with a coldness I had never seen before.

"Grace, Mia has she hasn't been feeling well lately! Why on earth are you making her carry your luggage?"

I stood frozen. I didn't know what my face was supposed to do.

My condition meant everything was slow. My reflexes, my speech, my feelings. Dean knew this better than anyone on the planet. He used to laugh that gentle, adoring laugh, plucking grocery bags and heavy textbooks from my hands before I even realized they were heavy.

But now, his voice was coated in frost.

"Mia is your best friend, Grace. Not your maid." His eyes darkened with self-righteous anger. "Can you stop hiding behind her for once? You have a neurological delay, Grace, not a princess complex!"

The blood drained from my face. My lips parted, but no sound came out.

Mias expression fractured. With red-rimmed eyes, she shoved Dean hard in the back. "Shut up, Dean! What I do is my own business! Back off!"

Ignoring his panicked, hovering hands, she turned and grabbed my wrist. "Come on, slowpoke. Ignore him. Let's go upstairs."

I let her pull me forward like a lifeless ragdoll. As we walked through the dim, concrete corridor, that infinitesimally slow needle finally pushed all the way through my heart.

It was the first time I realized that tenderness wasn't permanent. It could be transferred.

That evening, the three of us went to our favorite off-campus seafood diner to break the afternoons icy tension. Dean specifically ordered the whole roasted branzino, my absolute favorite.

Usually, when we ordered fish, he would spend the first ten minutes meticulously dissecting the filet, pulling out every single microscopic pin bone before sliding the pristine meat onto my plate.

He did the same today. Head bowed, brow furrowed in concentration, picking the bones clean.

I sat with my fork resting in my hand, waiting quietly.

But mid-air, his fork took a detour. The most tender, perfectly cooked piece of fish landed gently on Mias plate.

"You're too thin," he murmured, his voice thick with an uncontrollable, naked ache. "Eat up."

Mia stiffened. Her head snapped up, her eyes darting to me, wide with a sickening cocktail of guilt and sheer panic.

Dean seemed to wake up. He went pale, hurriedly stabbing another piece of fish, clumsily scraping the bones away, and dropping it onto my plate.

"You eat too, Gracie." He cleared his throat, a pathetic attempt to cover his tracks. "Mias just her stomachs been off lately. I'm just looking out for her."

I looked down at the mangled piece of fish on my plate.

I gave a slow, empty nod. "Okay."

I lifted the fish to my mouth and chewed, methodically. It tasted like ash. It was so bitter I could barely force my throat to swallow.

Suddenly, Mia clapped a hand over her mouth. Her face turned the color of parchment. She shot up from the booth, knocking her knees against the table, and sprinted toward the restrooms.

Dean shot out of his seat like a loaded spring. He stood in the aisle, his eyes agonizingly fixed on the hallway leading to the women's room. His feet twitched. He wanted to go to her. He was fighting every primitive, biological instinct in his body to run to the woman carrying his child.

His fists were clenched white at his sides.

I forced down the bitter bite of fish. I looked up at him, offering that same, slow, dopey smile I always gave.

"Go check on her, Dean. She seems really sick."

The permission was a pardon. Relief washed over his face, so intense it was almost grotesque. "Stay right here, Grace. Don't move. Ill be right back."

He didn't wait for my answer. He sprinted toward the bathroom.

I sat alone in the clattering, noisy diner. I watched the broad line of his back as he desperately banged on the bathroom door, pleading with her through the wood.

I pulled my phone out and looked at the calendar.

Two more days.

The next morning, Mia smothered me with affection. She bought me a slice of the absurdly expensive strawberry shortcake from the artisanal bakery downtown. She held both of my hands, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

"Slowpoke," she whispered, her voice trembling. "No matter what happens in this life, we are best friends forever. Right? Promise me."

She stared at me, begging for absolution from a crime she thought I didn't know about.

I looked at her. I thought of that bright, beaming girl carrying my trunk up the stairs.

I gave a slow, heavy nod. "Yeah."

Mia let out a sob of relief and threw her arms around my neck, burying her face in my shoulder.

I didn't hug her back. My arms hung dead at my sides, my fingers curling, inch by inch, into fists.

The day I was scheduled to leave, the sky opened up. It was a miserable, freezing rain.

Mia had insisted we walk to a specific pastry shop off-campus to get my favorite chestnut tarts. She claimed sugar always fixed a gloomy mood.

Dean walked beside us, holding the large black umbrella. By default, he kept the center of the canopy hovering directly over Mias head. My outer shoulder was entirely exposed to the downpour, completely soaked through to my skin.

I didn't say a word. That was the convenience of my condition; they assumed the cold rain hadn't registered with my nerves yet.

What used to be an inseparable, lively trio was now a suffocating graveyard of unspoken words. Mia kept her head down. Dean cleared his throat, his voice tight and raspy with nerves.

"Grace theres something I need to come clean about"

He leaned forward slightly over the wet pavement, finally preparing to vomit up the secret he had been hiding for months.

At that exact second, we stepped off the curb into a crosswalk.

A delivery guy on a motorized scooter, swerving wildly to avoid a massive pothole, lost control. The heavy bike hydroplaned, careening straight toward us at terrifying speed.

Time seemed to warp. I saw the bike coming for the outside edgeMias side. My brain fired the command to push her out of the way, but my body, as always, lagged. I stumbled clumsily, my feet tangling as I pitched toward Mia.

Deans face twisted in absolute terror. He threw his hands out and violently shoved me backward.

"Mia!"

The sheer force of his shove launched my already unbalanced body directly into the path of the skidding scooter.

CRACK.

The impact launched me into the air. I hit the rough, degraded asphalt, rolling violently across the pavement until I came to a stop in a filthy puddle against the curb.

Dean had wrapped himself entirely around Mia, shielding her. Still trembling with adrenaline, he whipped his head around and screamed at me. "Grace, what the hell is wrong with you?! Were you trying to push Mia into the bike?!"

His words hung in the air. Then, he finally met my gaze. He froze.

I was lying in the murky water, thick, dark blood pouring from a gash on my forehead, running over my eyes and staining the puddle a sickening crimson.

Deans arms loosened around Mia. He took a mechanical half-step toward me. "Grace I"

A faint, breathy gasp came from his chest. Mias eyes fluttered shut, and she went entirely limp, fainting dead away in his arms.

Dean stopped dead in his tracks. "Mia! Oh my god, Mia, wake up!"

I lay flat on the pavement, watching it all. The freezing rain hammered against my open wounds, and an agonizing, piercing fire shot through my limbs.

For the first time in my life, my sensory delay failed me. The pain was instantaneous.

I forced my head up a fraction of an inch, looking at the boy I had loved for two years, standing merely feet away from me. My lips moved in a pathetic, trembling whisper.

"Dean it hurts"

But the rain was deafening. He didn't hear me. He couldn't see anything but the unconscious woman in his arms.

I don't know how long I lay there before the wail of sirens cut through the storm. Paramedics leaped out, pulling stretchers through the rain.

I forced my eyes open as a shadow moved over me. I thought it was Dean. But the frantic, scrambling footsteps weren't running to me. They were running away.

He scooped Mia up in his arms and sprinted to the first ambulance, shoving his way past the EMTs.

A medic grabbed his shoulder. "Sir, you need to back up! The girl in the street took the impactshes bleeding out!"

Dean clung to Mia like a madman, his voice raw and hysterical as it sliced through the rain.

"She only has scratches! Grace can wait! She has a neurological delay, she doesn't even feel pain! She can take the second ambulance!" he roared. "But Mia can't wait! Shes pregnant! She passed out from the blood! She can't wait!"

His words echoed against the concrete buildings, raining down on me like shrapnel, tearing whatever was left of my heart into a thousand bloody pieces.

By the time the second ambulance rushed me into the ER trauma bay, my body was turning to ice.

It felt like someone had shattered glass inside my chest; every panicked gasp I took bubbled up with pink foam.

A doctor sprinted over, holding up a fresh scan, his face grim. "Ruptured spleen! Massive internal hemorrhaging. We need her in the OR, five minutes ago!" He looked at the nurses. "Patient has no next of kin on file. Who is her emergency contact? Get them on the phone for consent, now. If we don't open her up, we lose her."

A nurse rummaged through my wet belongings, pulled out my phone, and tapped the number pinned to the top.

It rang. And rang. Finally, the line clicked open.

In the background, I could hear the muffled, pathetic sound of Mia sobbing.

"Yeah?" Deans voice was laced with utter exhaustion and deep irritation.

"Sir, are you Grace's emergency contact?" the nurse demanded, practically shouting. "She has severe internal bleeding. We need to perform an emergency laparotomy right now. I need you down in the ER lobby to sign the consent forms!"

The line went dead silent for a fraction of a second.

Then, Mias wails amplified. "Dean, my stomach is cramping is our baby okay I'm so scared"

Deans tone instantly shifted into a frantic, soothing purr. "Shh, I'm right here, baby. I'm not going anywhere."

Then, the phone shifted. His voice returned, cold and utterly devoid of humanity.

"Look, don't let her play you," he told the nurse. "She has a processing delay. She doesn't even know what pain is. Shes just jealous that I'm taking care of Mia, so shes putting on a show to pull the doctors away and force me to leave Mias side."

The nurses eyes widened in horror. "Sir! I am telling you, this patient is in critical condition! She will die if you don't sign these papers!"

I heard him let out a long, disappointed sigh.

"Tell Grace that Mia is carrying my child," he said, his voice flat. "And since she can't feel pain anyway, she can lie on a gurney in the hallway and think about what she did today. When Mia is stabilized, Ill come down and discharge her."

Click.

The line went dead.

The nurse stood frozen, the phone still pressed to her ear, staring at the screen in disbelief. She looked down at me, her eyes brimming with a profound, helpless pity.

I lay there, staring blindly at the blinding white fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

Tears finally breached my eyelashes, rolling hot and fast down my temples, mixing with the blood in my hair, soaking into the sterile white paper of the stretcher.

And in that exact momentit hit.

Eighteen years of delayed pain, hoarding itself up for a lifetime, crashed over me like a premeditated tsunami. It swallowed me whole.

The agonizing twist of a ruptured spleen. The jagged, breathless stabbing of broken ribs. The dull, sickening throb of torn skin. It all detonated at the exact same second.

But none of it hurt as much as my chest.

I opened my mouth, gasping like a fish thrown onto the dock, trying to suck in air, but only managing to choke up mouthfuls of bloody froth.

"Shes crashing! Hang on, honey, hang on!"

Doctors and nurses swarmed me. I bit down on my bloodless bottom lip until I tasted copper.

Just as the doctor turned, shouting at a nurse to call hospital administration for a legal bypass on the consent, a hand reached out.

Long, elegant fingers plucked the clipboard and pen smoothly from the doctors hand.

A voice, low, steady, and achingly familiar, rang out above the chaos.

"I am her fianc. Ill sign."

The moment that deeply anchoring voice registered in my brain, the darkness finally pulled me under.