Mitigation by Sawyer Bennett

I vaguely note that
Matt is wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes… an outfit
that I’ve never seen him in before. It’s a far cry from
the tailored business suits and silk ties he always wears.
    No matter what he’s
wearing, when I release my mom’s hand and turn to walk into his
outstretched arms, I finally feel a small measure of comfort.
    Matt wraps himself
around me, and I lay my head on his chest. He smells like fresh soap,
and I could care less how obvious I am when I turn my nose into his
shirt and inhale him deeply. Unfortunately, it makes me painfully
aware that I probably smell like a garbage dump since I haven’t
showered in over a day and a half.
    Pressing his lips to
the top of my head, Matt just holds me until I’m ready to break
free. But I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. This is the
first time in our tortured game that he has held me just to comfort
me, with no expectation of getting anything in return. It’s a
side of Matt I’ve never seen, and I probably won’t see
again after he leaves.
    Which now makes me
realize… why is he here? This is very anti-Matt. We eat dinner
together… we have sex. That’s all there is.
    But I can’t
let that be one of my worries because I have enough on my plate. For
now… I’ll just enjoy Matt’s strong embrace and
worry about everything else later.
    Unfortunately, my
peaceful moment is disturbed when my stomach gives an incredibly loud
and embarrassingly long rumble of hunger. It sounds like Chewbacca
and a T-Rex having a mixed martial arts contest inside my stomach.
    Matt pulls slightly
back and looks down at me. “When’s the last time you’ve
eaten?”
    “When I had
dinner with you, I guess,” I answer, because I think that’s
the last time I’d eaten. Wracking my brain, I couldn’t
remember putting anything else in my stomach other than coffee, which
is probably why it felt full of burning acid right now.
    Grabbing my hand,
Matt says, “Let’s rectify that.”
    I pull back,
glancing in worry at my mom laying in the bed… the respirator
slowly whooshing in and out. “I can’t leave her.”
    Matt’s eyes
turn warm, but they are stern. “Mac… she’ll be
fine if you leave for just a few minutes. The nurses’ station
is right outside her door. We’ll come right back, but you need
to eat to keep up your strength. Okay?”
    He waits for me to
decide, which again is very anti-Matt. The Matt I’ve come to
know and ‘love to hate sometimes’ would have dragged me
kicking and screaming down to the cafeteria and shoved food down my
throat. Now, he’s presenting me with an option and leaving the
choice up to me.
    “If you don’t
want to leave her,” he continues, “I’ll go down,
get you something, and bring it back. But I think you should come
with me… stretch those legs a bit.”
    I glance back at my
mom and feel tremendous guilt for leaving her side for even a minute.
But then rationality comes back and I realize… she won’t
even know I’m gone. She won’t know anything, ever again.
    I nod at Matt and he
takes me by the hand, linking his fingers with mine as we walk
through the hospital. Following the signs pointing to the cafeteria,
we walk in silence for a bit because I’m still stunned that
he’s here. I can’t figure out why. It’s not
something he should be doing as my employer. But he doesn’t
seem to have any feelings for me outside of the bedroom, so that
doesn’t make sense either.
    Deciding to go ahead
and put this worry to rest so I can concentrate on the more important
things, I stop and turn to look at Matt. “Why are you here?”
    “Because no
one should go through something like this alone,” he says
simply.
    “Yeah…
but I’m not your responsibility or concern.”
    Matt shrugs his
shoulders and resumes walking. “Truth be told, Mac… I’m
not really sure why I’m here. When I got into the office this
morning, Miss Anders told me what happened. I guess Macy called her.”
    “Yeah, I
vaguely