I was almost afraid to look, but I knew I had to, because not looking wasn’t going to make it go away, and I needed to know what I was dealing with. What I saw when I looked didn’t surprise me nearly as much as it had Rob, because I was the only one of us who knew what had happened earlier that morning.

Perhaps I hadn’t gotten as lucky as I first thought.

The top of my right foot was covered by a large, dark purple bruise, and my foot was so swollen that it had just about taken on the shape of the inside of my Gucci loafer. I was no medical expert, but I didn’t have to be to know that whatever was going on with my foot wasn’t good.

"Brian." Rob's voice broke through my thoughts and pulled me back to the present moment. "What happened?"

"Fell getting out of the shower," I mumbled, my tone reluctant because I didn't particularly want to recount this embarrassing story to anyone -- not even someone who knew all of the ins and outs and was intimately acquainted with the not-so-glamorous parts of paralysis. "I thought it was okay though. It looked okay earlier."

“Well, it’s not okay now. Did you hit it on something?”

“Fell on it.” Oddly enough, taking my shoe off seemed to have helped at least a little bit, as the intensity of the headache lessened ever-so-slightly, though I still felt extremely uncomfortable. I reached up and rubbed my eyes again, trying to breathe through the pain I was feeling, even though it clearly wasn’t the pain I should have been feeling.

“Sit up,” Rob said, his voice almost commanding, but still with the caring undertone that was always so very Rob, so long as I didn’t piss him off. “If this is what I think it is, it’ll help.”

“How about you tell me what the fuck you think it is?”

“It looks and sounds a hell of a lot like AD.”

“What the fuck is--”

“Autonomic dysreflexia. I don’t know if that’s exactly what it is, since your injury is so much lower than mine, but if it is, you need to sit up to help regulate your blood pressure.”

I still wasn’t sure exactly what the fuck he was talking about, but I did what he said, and that seemed to help as well, taking my headache down to a slightly more tolerable level, though the dizziness and the nausea were still very much present.

“I need you to tell me exactly how you’re feeling,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes in a way that made me feel a little uncomfortable -- like he was searching for something, though I wasn’t sure what. “How bad is the headache?”

“It’s no walk in the fucking park, I’ll tell you that much.”

“Stop being a smartass.” Rob’s gentle tone started to disappear, in favor of mild annoyance. “I’m trying to help you. Do you feel like you’re about to pass out? How’s your vision?”

“No, and it’s fine. Why?”

“Because I’m trying to decide whether we can take a car to the hospital or if we need to call an ambulance.”

“I don’t want to go to the fucking hospital.”

“I’m not sure you have a choice. I think your foot is broken.”

“Then we can go to the urgent care. That’s where I took Justin when he broke his wrist a few years back. They had everything we needed. I don’t need a hospital.”

“Do I really have to remind you that things for you -- for us -- are more than a little bit complicated when it comes to broken bones, given that you can’t fucking feel it?” Nice Guy Rob was completely gone now, replaced with “I-Mean-Business” Rob, who wasn’t taking any of my bullshit.

He did have a point, though.

“Fine,” I said, trying to make it clear through my tone just how reluctant I was, even though I knew I needed medical attention, and the shitty way I felt was making it extremely difficult to convey much of anything other than the fact that I was in pain. “Just let me put my shoe back on, and I’ll call for a ride.”

“There’s no way in hell you’re getting that shoe back on.”

“And there’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere in public barefoot or in just a sock.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

I wanted to continue arguing, because Brian Fucking Kinney did not go in public half dressed. Ever. But I had barely opened my mouth when a particularly strong wave of nerve pain washed over me again and I was forced to close my eyes and breathe through it.

“We probably need to go soon if we’re taking a car, because if you wait until this escalates again, you will be leaving here in an ambulance,” he said, more gently this time, probably because he could see I was hurting, and he was the one person who knew exactly what I was feeling. “And I know you don’t want to be the focus of that spectacle. So let’s just call for a car and leave quietly, okay? No shoe.”

“There’s no one here in charge but me,” I grunted, still not able to open my eyes. “Cynthia is out all week.”

“Who’s your senior staffer up here?”

“Julia,” I breathed, finally feeling some slight relief, though it wasn’t much. “The art director. I’ve got a meeting with the art department at two.”

“Where’s her desk? I’ll go ask her to hold down the fort for a few hours. I’ll tell her we have something we have to take care of, and ask her to reschedule the meeting.”

I knew Julia would be more than a bit suspicious of the fact that I wasn’t telling her myself, but I didn’t have the energy to worry about it, and I knew that showing up at her desk in the state I was currently in would raise even more alarm than having Rob deliver the message. So I told him where to find her and hoped I’d be back in an hour or two, though I was starting to have my doubts.

“Can you call for the car?” Rob asked.

I nodded, still focused on keeping my breath even and deep because it did actually help sometimes when it came to relieving nerve pain that nothing would touch. I’d picked that up from Rob, though hell would freeze over before anyone ever got me to admit it.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

With that, Rob disappeared out the door to my office, leaving me sitting on the sofa, barefoot. I looked at my shoes and socks sitting on the other end and briefly entertained the thought of at least trying to put my shoes back on, but one look at my right foot told me exactly how likely that was to happen. Somehow, it was even more swollen than it had been just a few minutes before -- now that it had room to expand, I supposed -- and the bruise seemed to be spreading too.

I reached over and grabbed my socks, but even sliding a sock over that foot was more challenging than usual. By that point, I was really hoping that I wasn’t totally fucked, but in the back of my mind, I think I already knew I was. My head was aching and foggy, and I was still burning up, though I no longer felt quite as queasy as I had when I was lying down.

Once my socks were both on, I reached for my wheelchair and pulled it as close as I could, giving myself as small of a gap to traverse as possible, in hopes that would lessen the probability of missing the transfer. I hadn’t been gunshy about a transfer in a long time, but the morning’s events had brought that back, and with good reason, I supposed.

I made it, though, and went over to my desk to grab my phone. I was just hanging up with the car service when Rob came back into the room. Not long after that, we were both in the back seat of a town car, with my wheelchair in the trunk and Rob’s in the front passenger seat, and me wearing only one shoe. Though, thankfully, I don’t think anyone I saw noticed that. Maybe there was a benefit to how reluctant people were to look at my legs most of the time.

“You still doing okay?” Rob asked.

I was leaning against the window with my eyes closed, relishing how good the cool glass of the window felt, but I managed to nod. I'd bumped my foot against the door frame on my way in, launching another wave of nausea, so that was the only response I could manage without risking being sick.

“Good,” he said. “Not much farther.”

“Just a couple more minutes,” the driver interjected. He wasn’t my regular driver, and I was pretty sure he was new, because I’d never seen him before. But in this instance, I was glad for that, because Martin would have been very concerned for me, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer any questions. Having Rob worried about me was plenty. I didn’t like to have anyone worried about me, ever, if I could help it. Sometimes, however, it couldn’t be helped.

True to our driver’s prediction, we stopped in front of the emergency room doors a few minutes later, and Rob and I made our way inside after he had reassembled both of our chairs and done what he could to help me into mine, which wasn’t much.

We checked in, and I honestly was thankful Rob was with me, because he was a damn good advocate too -- pushing just enough to get me back into a room and on a morphine drip within a few minutes’ time. That morphine drip turned out to be exactly what I needed, and soon the majority of my discomfort was gone, and what remained had been lessened considerably.

I tried to ignore the pained “Ooh, honey,” that the triage nurse uttered after she took one look at my foot, but by that point, it was obvious that I was well and truly fucked, and the rest of my week was probably shot.

Once I was floating peacefully on a cloud of chemically-induced bliss, Rob started trying to call Justin -- who should have been at his studio -- but he didn’t have much success.

“It keeps going to voicemail,” Rob said, clearly frustrated, after his third attempt to call my husband.

“He’s got a show coming up,” I said, a little embarrassed by how slurred my speech was, even though I knew Rob wouldn’t care. “Lots of hours in the studio. Doesn’t hear his phone sometimes.”

“I’ll keep trying. I just wish he’d answer.”

“I’ll be okay if you need to go back to work. I’ll figure something out.” Never mind the fact that I sounded drunker than I had been in a long time, purely from the pain medication. But I’d always been independent, either by choice or by necessity, and that meant that admitting that I needed someone -- especially out loud -- was pretty much a no go.

“I’m not leaving you here alone. Or at all.” The look in Rob’s eyes dared me to argue, but it didn’t matter because I hardly had time to form a thought in my drugged-up haze before someone showed up to take me to radiology for x-rays, which confirmed what we all already could have guessed by that point -- my foot was broken. My fifth metatarsal, to be specific. Apparently I’d hit the outer edge of my foot squarely on the raised ledge between our shower and the bathroom floor, and my bone had more give than the tile.

I was no stranger to broken bones, having had more than a few over the course of my childhood -- though usually not for the accidental reasons most children end up in casts -- but this was different. This time, there was no cast, and no lesson on how to properly use crutches before they would allow me to be discharged. Instead, they put my foot in one of those hideous walking boots -- not that I was going to be walking on it anytime soon, or ever, more than likely -- and discharged me with instructions to keep it elevated above my heart and ice it intermittently, using a timer, and being careful to inspect my skin to make sure I wasn’t keeping it on too long and that the boot wasn’t creating any hot spots. They'd also set me up an appointment with an orthopedic specialist for the next morning, so he could map out the rest of my treatment plan.

Yeah, the rest of my week was shot. Maybe even more than that, depending on whatever the orthopedist decided. Excellent timing, too, given that Cynthia was out of town. I was going to be spending the rest of the week in bed when I was the only one in charge at the office, and I had taken Rob out of the equation too, at least for the afternoon, because he was busy tending to me.

Rob called for the car when we left the hospital, because I sounded like I was either drunk or stoned out of my mind, and I was just self-aware enough to know that and be a little embarrassed by it. I was also exhausted, and I’d been close to falling asleep on the gurney they’d put me on in the emergency room as we waited an hour for the doctor to see me. Apparently all of the upheaval my nervous system had put me through so far that day had taken its toll, leaving me barely able to hold my eyes open while we waited for my prescription to be filled at the pharmacy around the corner from Justin’s and my apartment building.

Finally, they called my name and we were free to go, and I was adding yet another medication to my collection, at least temporarily. I just hoped that whatever the orthopedist would do for me was simple, short, and uncomplicated, because I didn’t have time for anything else.

When we got to the apartment, I was in bed within fifteen minutes of arriving, having only taken enough time to take a piss before I dragged my tired ass into bed. By the time I got out of the bathroom, Rob had already brought all of the pillows from the bed in our guest room and stacked them up on the bed so I’d have something to elevate my leg on. Normally, there would be no way in hell I’d be letting anyone take care of me like that, but between the pain medication and how physically spent I was, there was simply no fight left in me.

Rob taking care of me was something we hadn't yet broached in more than a decade of friendship. Even though we'd talked about a lot of very intimate topics, we’d never been in this position before. But Rob knew me well enough to be fully aware that I don't like to feel vulnerable or helpless, and he seemed to be doing his best to keep me from feeling that way -- at least, as much as was possible in that moment. He let me get myself situated on the bed with no interference, then left me alone to change out of my work clothes and into my sweats. When he returned, he had a couple of bottles of water that he left on the nightstand, and he offered to make me something to eat, but I wasn't hungry. All I wanted was a nap. I knew that wasn't at all like me, but, well, it was what it was, and Rob didn’t tease me about it when I said it. He merely nodded and gave me a look that told me he understood what was happening inside my head.

I knew that he knew -- knew how hard it was to accept help, and how it felt to suddenly be forced into that position -- but that didn’t make it easier to let him provide that help. I struggled for a moment to try to get my foot into a good position atop the small stack of pillows near the foot of the bed, and I could see in his eyes how much he wanted to step in and help, but he didn’t do anything. He didn’t even speak until I had myself settled and finally leaned back into the pillows with a heavy sigh.

“I’m going to set a timer for this,” he said, as he laid the cold pack I’d been sent home with over my foot, wrapped in a towel. “You go to sleep.”

My eyelids were suddenly very heavy, and the small nod I managed to give Rob felt equally heavy.

“If you need anything, just yell. Don’t try to get up.”

I nodded again, my eyes almost closed this time. “You don’t have to stay here,” I mumbled, wishing my speech was clearer but I felt like my lips and tongue were barely working by that point. “I’ll be okay.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I don’t mind. I’ll stay here until Justin gets home. I’ll keep trying to call him. I don’t want to worry him, but I want him to know where you are and what’s going on. Stop trying to send me home, okay? Adam has the girls. We’re good.”

I felt Rob’s hand lightly touch my forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze that I was sure was intended to be reassuring. Even in my drugged-up state, I idly wondered how long it would be until Justin came home this time. I wanted to tell Rob that it could be a while, and I really would be okay if he needed to leave, but sleep was moving quickly to claim me, and I couldn’t get my voice to work. Unable to force my eyes to stay open any longer, I let them slide shut as Rob left the room. As I drifted from wakefulness into slumber, I could hear Rob in the living room, leaving another voicemail for Justin.