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.”

“Cognitive? It’s going to affect the way I think? Like how? Mom always seemed depressed, but we assumed that was because she didn’t feel good.”

“Most likely that was due to Huntington’s. Dr. Kohan is going to come in and talk to you in detail in a little while. He’s an expert in the field and will go over everything and answer all of your questions. I know the basics, but since juvenile Huntington’s is not common and the symptoms present differently, he’s in a better position to explain things to you.”

My head spun, and my brother looked shell shocked.

“Is there a cure for Huntington’s?” I asked.

The look on my uncle’s face answered the question. “Not as of today, no. But science makes new breakthroughs all the time.”

“But people live with it, right?”

“There is a shortened life expectancy with the disease.”

“Shortened?” My brother finally spoke up. “How much shortened?”

“On average, from the time symptoms appear, people live between ten and thirty years when they are diagnosed as adults. But with early-onset like you’ve experienced, the lifespan is generally ten years or less. I’m sorry, Jayce. I’m so sorry.”

The three of us sat in complete silence for a long time after that. Eventually, Dr. Kohan came in and joined us. He spent another two hours going over things, although I’m not so sure either Jayce or I absorbed much.

I couldn’t get past the life expectancy—ten years was the maximum from the time symptoms first appeared. Jayce had said yesterday that he’d started to notice small issues as far back as five years ago. My brother had just turned twenty-one.

“I’ll leave you boys my card.” Dr. Kohan took a pen from his lab coat pocket and jotted down something on the back. “If you have any questions, my cell phone number is here. Call me day or night. It’s a lot to take in. I know that. You’re going to have questions once everything really sinks in. That’s what I’m here for.”

Dr. Kohan and Uncle Joe spoke for a few minutes, and then Dr. Kohan extended his hand to my brother and me. “I’ll have my office manager give you both a call to set up appointments for this week in my office to follow up.”

“Both of us?” I shook the doctor’s hand.

“Yes. I’d like you to meet with our genetic counselor before you get tested. She works in my office on Thursdays.”

“Tested?”

The two doctors looked at each other before my uncle spoke gently.

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “As Dr. Kohan explained, Huntington’s is hereditary. Fifty percent of children inherit the gene from a parent.”

I’d been so freaked out about my brother, that part of the conversation had slid right by me. I’d heard the fifty-percent statistic, but it didn’t register correctly. I guess I assumed if fifty percent got it from a parent, and there were two of us…my brother had been the unlucky one. But the actual words our uncle had said sunk in now. Fifty percent of children—meaning each child had a fifty-fifty chance.

My brother would be dead within five years, and I had the same odds as a coin flip of having the same disease.

Chapter 29

Natalia

The bed was empty.

I must’ve drifted off in post-coital bliss. Lifting my head, I went to turn around and grab my phone off the nightstand, but I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Hunter sitting in the rocking chair across from the bed.

Springing upright, I clutched the sheet to my chest. “Holy shit. I didn’t realize you were there.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He’d slipped on jeans and sat with the top button open, sans shirt or shoes.

“What are you doing?”

The corner of his mouth curled. “Watching you sleep.”

“That’s weird. Was it interesting?”

“Riveting.” He stood and crossed to the bed, leaning down to kiss my forehead. “I gotta get going. I have to meet the building department in a little while, and you have an appointment in an hour.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He searched my face and spoke quietly. “Do you regret it?”

I wasn’t sure if he was referring to this morning or our relationship in general. “Us or today?”

“You tell me.”

I gave real thought to the question before answering. I might be disappointed, but I couldn’t say I regretted my time with Hunter. “No. I don’t.”

“Dinner this weekend?”

“Sure. That sounds good.”

He brushed his lips with mine, and then left.

***