Chapter 22: Priorities

Chapter 22: Chapter 22: Priorities

The ding of the timer reminded him that the soup had finished simmering.

He killed the stove and carried the whole pot into the bedroom instead of ladling out a single bowl, dishes and spoons balanced awkwardly on top of the lid, reasoning that if she woke up hungry he wanted it hot and ready rather than reheated and half as effective.

He set it all down on the small table in the corner of the room, then lowered himself back onto the floor beside the bed and resumed cultivating, drawing surrounding mana in slow and steady, refined into essence in his soul core one careful pass at a time.

An hour passed like that before his awareness caught the shift in her breathing, subtle, the kind of change only his enhanced perception would have picked up on this early.

He stopped immediately, opening his eyes just as hers fluttered open.

"Hey," she said, voice rough with sleep.

He didn’t answer right away. Guilt sat thick and visible behind his eyes, glassy in a way he made no effort to hide.

"I’m sorry," he said. "I’m so sorry I let something like that happen."

"Jason."

" I should’ve thought about this before I ever left the house."

"It wasn’t your fault." She said it plainly, no hesitation in it at all. "I had a seizure. There was nothing you could’ve done to stop it from happening whether you were standing in this room or on the other side of the city."

"Still. I should’ve been there."

"And done what?" Something sharp flickered through her voice, not anger exactly, closer to a helplessness she rarely let show. "Sat beside me all day, every day, in case it happened?"

He didn’t have an answer for that.

There was a strange, uncomfortable duality to it, sitting there watching her fight to keep the frustration out of her expression. In some ways he understood exactly what she was carrying, the same discarded, written off feeling that had followed him for sixteen years, the two of them bound together as a matched set of rejects nobody wanted.

But in other ways, she was as far from him as anyone could be. She’d been someone once. Real standing, a place in the world that mattered before all of it got taken from her in a single afternoon. He’d never had that to lose. Whatever she was grieving underneath the frustration wasn’t something he could claim to fully understand, no matter how much of the rest of it he did.

He moved to sit beside her on the bed instead of answering, taking her hand in his.

"We should hire someone," he said, quieter now. "Not to replace me. Just for the hours I can’t be here. Someone qualified, who’d actually know what to do if it happened again."

She was quiet a moment, then nodded. "I was about to say the same thing"

He glanced toward the pot in the corner. "I made dinner, by the way."

"I know. That’s what woke me up." A faint, tired smile. "The aroma kept haunting me before I even opened my eyes."

He dished out a bowl and fed her slowly, spoon by spoon, the same careful rhythm they’d settled into over the past days.

"Where’d you get the recipe for this?," she asked, between spoonfulls. My essence hasn’t sat this calm in days."

He hesitated. "Can’t really explain that part right now."

She studied him for a moment, then let it go with an understanding nod, the kind that didn’t demand more than he was willing to give.

They finished the rest of the bowl in comfortable silence.

He rushed through his own portion afterward, then carried the dishes to the kitchen and came back to find her already asleep again, exhaustion from the seizure pulling her under fast.

His phone buzzed as he was settling back onto the floor.

Reeve: Darius says he’ll be available to teach you around 11am tomorrow. Sending the location now it’s one of the Association’s training facility.

A pin dropped into the chat a moment later. Jason confirmed the time and set the phone aside.

Then he pulled up the home healthcare agency site and spent the better part of the following hour scrolling through profiles, most of them either too far, too expensive, or too vague about actual experience to trust with something this important.

Then he found her.

Judith, a fourth five year old Retired Army Nurse.

The profile photo showed a woman with steady eyes and an unbothered, practical expression suggesting that very little could actually rattle her anymore.

Her bio was short and straight to the point, she’d had just under two decades of field medical experience, a second career since retirement spent entirely in home care for disabled clients.

’That’s the one.’

He messaged her before he could second guess it, explaining the situation as concisely as he could even mentioning that she might’ve had to start as early as the following morning.

He then sent a summary of the file he was given from Novaria’s family before their marriage. At least the parts that detailed her seizures. She replied within a few minutes promising to read through the file and suggesting a meeting for 9am the following morning to discuss the details in person.

He confirmed, sent her the address, then set the phone down, and sat back on the floor beside the bed.

Then he resumed cultivating, feeling some of the effects from the Jade vein soup. Mana pulled in slow and steady, refined down into his soul core one pass at a time, and kept at it until nearly four in the morning, when exhaustion finally won out and let him sleep.