“Let me at least get you something for the pain,” he said, slipping into caregiver mode. It had oddly become his comfort zone over the years. Caring for Kate’s needs gave him purpose. Being able to provide the small things – feeding her in bed, making sure she took her medication on time, helping her shower, changing her sheets and propping her pillows – they were the only things he could control, making him feel less impotent when he thought of the larger issues that were well out of his hands.

She couldn’t answer him through her tears and pain.

He searched the floor for the right pills. He palmed three and wobbled to the kitchen on anesthetized legs.

“I’ll get you a soda. You want a soda?”

The unreality of their reality was overwhelming.

Just keep your shit together and focus on Kate.

How many times had he said that when things got bad at work or when he looked at their medical bills and wondered how in the name of God they were ever going to pay them. It was always focus on Kate. The rest was never as important as it seemed. Bills were not life or death. What Kate faced on a daily basis was. There were less shitty ways of gaining perspective, but it was the only way he knew.

The horror outside their door followed him with its impenetrable yellow eyes.

It was coupled with Kate, and even though he knew she loved him, this monstrosity did not. It would tear him in two the second he stepped outside. Of that he was sure. It glared at him, daring him to slide that door open.

When he tried to give Kate her pills, she knocked them out of his hand, as well as the can of soda. It spilled all over the mattress.

“Kate, it’s going to help you,” he said, sopping up the mess with a throw pillow.

“Nothing’s going to help me,” she said, her eyes closed tight, her face a rictus of agony.

“She’s right about that,” Nikki murmured.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Andrew snapped. “Or I’ll throw you outside with that thing!”

She arched an eyebrow, the wicked smile returning. “Oh, finish what the wife started, eh? Brilliant.”

When he jumped to his feet, Kate said, “Stop. Leave her be. She’s…she’s not right.”

Andrew was seething, but he had to fight his impulses.

“I’m not right, she’s not right, you’re not right,” Nikki said. She looked fixedly at the beast. “Ryker sure as hell isn’t right. I think the only one that has any sense left is the dog. And he’s not about to tell us what to do, are you, you little mongrel?”

“Shut your mouth.”