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“I hate it here so I will go to
secret gardens in my mind
People need a key to get to
The only one is mine
I read about it in a book when I was a precocious child
No mid-sized city hopes and small town fears
I'm there most of the year
Cause I hate it here…”
Inside Akkie’s new Religious School, the hallways smell like chalk dust and floor wax, but if you breathe deeply enough, they reek of macaroni and overcooked peas lingering from yesterday’s dairy lunch. The building is alive already with the sounds of other kids who know one another, none of them is the youngest kid of the shul’s new rabbi, their sneakers squeaking, their cubbies slamming, their voices braiding together in a language Akkie doesn’t quite speak yet.
Into this stream of familiarity, Akkie shuffles along and sticks out like a sore thumb: short, round-bellied, oceans of overlapping freckles scattered across his cheeks like brown sugar dusted sufganiyot. His scowl is permanent, practiced, maybe the only thing about him that feels entirely his own. His backpack sags with one broken zipper, his shoes are scuffed gray at the toes, and his whole body is slumped over because he already hates this place, hates it because it is new, hates it because he knows exactly how this kind of day goes. But he’s seven, almost eight, and he’s gotta be in school to get Bar Mitzvah’d at thirteen, everyone knows that. He’s got two big sisters and four big brothers, his family has been there and done that.
His real name is Yankl, Jack, but nobody calls him that. Everyone, even teachers, call him Akkie. The name has followed him since before he can remember, and no matter how he tries, it clings to him like burrs on a sock back home in Galveston. He doesn’t know where it came from, doesn’t know why it stuck, only knows that it always has, the way bad nicknames just do.
He waddles into his new classroom with a squint meant to look tough. His curly hair sticks up in fiery tufts, as though it wants to do the announcing for him: Here I am. Look at me. Laugh at me. Push me. The other kids, sleek-haired and easy with one another, turn toward him in unison, their attention sharp and assessing. Akkie feels it hit him like a draft of cold air. They don’t see a classmate; they see something strange, something that doesn’t belong, the way a pack of dogs notices an unfamiliar scent.
The whispers start, then the giggles, then the little nudges of elbows. Words float across the room, just loud enough for him to catch. Chubby. Carrot top. They land like wasp stings, sudden and sharp. He tells himself they’ll bounce right off, that they're just words. His fists dig into his pockets until his nails bite crescents into his palms. He knows this game. He’s played it before. The only way to survive is to look meaner than you feel, to pretend your skin is thicker than it is, to hold onto the lie until maybe it becomes true.
Morning prayers do nothing to drown it out. Neither does his stumbling recitation of what Hebrew letters he knows. The teasing only grows, louder, bolder, as though feeding on itself. A tall boy with braces mimics Akkie’s shuffling walk in a cruel parody. Another kid, wiry and sharp-faced, begins to oink softly under his breath, over and over. Laughter ripples outward like stomped-on puddles, spreading until it fills the classroom, until Akkie can feel it pressing in on all sides. His face burns red, hotter with every second. He grits his teeth so hard his jaw aches, but he doesn’t cry.
Outside, during recess, under the brittle sun, a circle forms around him. The insults grow sharper, the laughter harsher, and the boys move closer until their sneakers scuff against his own. One boy jabs a finger into Akkie’s stomach, poking as though testing bread dough, and the pressure inside Akkie bursts like a dam breaking. He doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t think. He simply explodes.
He hurls himself into the nearest boy with the force of a round rock launched from a slingshot, fists and legs flailing, every ounce of pent-up fury condensed into his small frame. The taller boys reel back in shock, unprepared for how much he has packed into so short and round a body. They stumble and fall, clumsy trees felled by a sudden gale. Akkie’s fists land with surprising weight. His shirt twists, his knuckles scrape raw against skin, but he doesn’t care. In seconds, three boys twice his size lie in the dirt, wheezing, while another stumbles backward, arms flailing for balance. Akkie stands at the center of the chaos, his chest heaving, hair sticking up like wild broom bristles, freckles stark against the red heat of his cheeks.
Then the rush begins: hot, metallic, sudden. Blood bursts from his nose in a thin red stream, quick as though someone turned on a faucet. It runs down his lip, stains his teeth, drips onto the dirt. Akkie snorts, wipes at it with his sleeve, but the crimson only spreads, faster, thicker, relentless. Ugh, he hates when his nose bleeds. It happens all the time.
The circle of children still around him recoils, their jeering collapsing into gasps.
“Whoa, gross!”
“Look how much — he’s still bleeding!”
“Ew! He’s dripping everywhere!”
Some lean closer, fascinated by his gushing mess. Others step back, scared. But one figure pushes forward — Michael Robinavitch is ten years old, tall for his age, already serious-eyed behind a pair of too-large glasses that slide down his nose. There is something grown-up about him. Everybody calls him Mike. He wants to be a doctor one day, and everyone knows it. But now he studies Akkie with that same funny focus, his brow furrowed. “You got leukemia or something?” His voice is more curious than mean. He says it like a scientist taking notes.
Akkie grumbles through the mess, blood still spilling. “No, I just bleed lots. Always have. It’ll stop, eventually.” He pinches his nose with clumsy, stained fingers, but the stream keeps running, as stubborn as he is.
Their teachers are nowhere in sight, so Mike takes over. He grips Akkie’s arm with a kind of authority that brooks no argument. “C’mon, Putz. Let’s go to the bathroom.”
In the tiled shul bathroom, Mike becomes somebody else. He folds brown paper towels with quick, sharp movements, gets them wet under the tap, and presses them against Akkie’s nose. He’s so bossy. “Make sure to tilt forward, not back. Otherwise, you’ll swallow it, and that’s bad, it’ll collect in your tummy.”
Akkie scowls but grunts, muttering that he’d rather be back outside finishing the fight. His blood stains paper towel after paper towel, his breath wheezing through his open mouth, impatient growls escaping between gulps of air. Mike is steady the whole time, pressing fresh paper into place, counting silently in his head.
Five minutes. Still bleeding.
Seven minutes. Still bleeding.
Akkie squirms, insists he’s fine, and growls that he doesn’t care. But the red keeps coming, so Mike refuses to budge.
Finally — ten long minutes later — the flow slows, thickens, stops. Akkie exhales loudly, relief mixed with exhaustion, pale and sticky but still upright. Mike adjusts his glasses, looking at him funny. “You’re a meshuganah. Fighting kids twice your size, bleeding like you’re dying, and you don’t even care.”
Akkie wipes his face on his sleeve, leaving a crimson smear, and smirks, crooked and stubborn. “Yup, don’t care. I’m gonna fight bad guys when I grow up. It doesn’t matter if I bleed — I’ll still win.”
Mike tilts his head, as though filing the words away in some private notebook with a grumpy sigh. “Then somebody’s gotta patch you up when you do. Guess that’ll be me then.”
The years pass, and Akkie stays tough and chubby, much to his displeasure on the latter. He shoots up in height a little, but never enough to stretch himself lean like the others. His freckles darken in summer, his hair goes a shade darker and refuses to lie flat, and his body, stubborn as ever, holds on to its soft belly. He hates it. He hates the way his shirts cling, the way his thighs rub together, the way other kids still joke, though less often now, that he looks like he’s smuggling snacks under his skin. He tries push-ups in secret, running in bursts until his lungs burn, but the weight never melts. Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees the same Akkie staring back — the round face, the thick middle — and it feels like failure. The rest of his brothers and sisters are tall and skinny and are good at sports. Akkie breathes in cold air and starts bleeding like a fountain.
Mike grows taller, thinner, and sharper too. By thirteen, his glasses no longer seemed big but perfectly fitted to his narrow, serious face and droopy nose. He moves with the certainty of someone who knows who he is and where he’s going. Their teachers praise his focus, his diligence, and his brains. Adults nod knowingly when he says he wants to be a doctor. Mike is becoming the person he was always rehearsing to be, while Akkie feels stuck, an afterthought beside him — loud where Mike is quiet, soft where Mike is sharp, bleeding where Mike is controlled. Still, they orbit each other as they always have: Akkie making trouble, Mike fixing it. Akkie feels like a burden most of the time. But Mike fixes him up anyway.
One late afternoon, when the sky is heavy with clouds and the air smells of rain that hasn’t fallen yet, Akkie proves once again that his body is a liability. They’re horsing around in the parking lot of the shul, rougher than they should be, chasing each other the way they always have, when Akkie trips. He doesn’t fall far — just enough to crack his forehead against the edge of a stone bench. The sound is sharp, dull at the same time, and then everything goes black for an instant.
When he comes to, the world swims. His head throbs and then he feels it: the wet, sticky heat of blood running in sheets down his face. It pours from the gash like someone has turned on a tap again, thick crimson sliding into his eyes, into his mouth. His shirt clings to him, soaked. He tries to laugh it off, to joke, but the sound comes out weak, strangled.
“Akkie? Oh, Baruch HaShem, are you awake?!” Mike is there instantly, his face pale, his hands already pressed against the wound. “Stay still. Don’t move, Akkie, don’t move.” Paper towels won’t do this time, not even rags from someone’s backpack. The blood just keeps coming, endless, defiant, as though Akkie’s body refuses to know when enough is enough.
Akkie, half-dazed, tries to make light of it. “It’s fine. You know me, Mikey. I bleed like crazy. Always have, just give it a minute —”
“Shut up!” Mike snaps, angrier than Akkie has ever seen him. His hands are slick with blood, his glasses spattered red, his jaw clenched tight. “You think this is funny? You think it’s nothing? You could die, you idiot! You don’t get it, do you?” Mike throws back his head. “HELP!”
Akkie blinks up at him, stunned — not just by the blood in his eyes but by the fury in Mike’s voice, by the panic. He’s used to Mike’s calm, his steady authority, the way he takes charge when everyone else panics. He’s not used to this heat, this almost frantic anger. Mike presses harder, his own breath ragged. “You think you can fight everyone, laugh off everything, bleed forever like it doesn’t matter. But it matters. It matters, Akkie. You scare the hell out of me.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he looks away quickly, ashamed of the emotion that slips through. “HELP US PLEASE!”
Akkie tries to grin, though his lips are slippery with red. “Hey, you’re the doctor-in-training. Isn’t this practice for you?”
Mike glares down at him, furious and terrified all at once, eyes as big as Seder plates. “This isn’t practice, shithead! This is your life. Do you get that?! Lie still!”
The blood finally slows, stubbornly, reluctantly, and Mike ties a strip of cloth tight against Akkie’s forehead. The rain begins to fall, light at first, pattering on the stone bench where it all started. Akkie sits there pale and sticky, Mike kneeling in front of him like a furious medic, and for once, he doesn’t know what to say. He only knows that something has shifted between them — something rawer, something deeper — and it frightens him almost as much as the bleeding does.
It’s all Akkie can think about when they load him in the ambulance.
By the time he’s fifteen, Akkie’s frustration with his body has hardened into something sour that never quite leaves him. He’s taller now, but still thick in the middle, still chubby in ways he cannot forgive himself for. Other boys are stretching lean, muscles carving into their arms and shoulders, their faces sharpening into something older, something admired. Akkie still sees the softness in his reflection — the stubborn roundness, the belly that won’t vanish no matter how many push-ups he grunts through in his room, no matter how many miles he forces himself to run until his puffy knees scream. Every morning when he pulls on his shirt, he feels the fabric tug around him, and it burns. He thinks about the jeers from years ago — chubby, doughboy, fatso — and though no one says it now, he hears it anyway.
So one week he decides he’s done. He skips breakfast, skips lunch, and picks at dinner until his parents give up arguing. He lies, says he ate earlier, says he’s not hungry. He chews gum to fill the emptiness, drinks water until his stomach sloshes. For a few days, he feels powerful, lightheaded but triumphant. His body feels less like an anchor, more like something he’s finally punishing into obedience.
Until the afternoon it gives out.
They’re in gym class, running laps in the heavy, breathless air of the school gymnasium, sneakers squealing against the polished floor. Akkie pushes himself, determined not to be the slowest, determined to prove — if only to himself — that he’s not hopeless. His vision blurs, his chest tightens, and then the world tilts. He stumbles, crashes shoulder-first into the wall, and slides down bonelessly to the floor.
When he wakes up in the nurse’s office, Mike is crouched over him, glasses sliding down his nose, fury burning hotter in his eyes than any fire Akkie’s ever seen. His hands are firm against Akkie’s shoulders, steadying him as though he might disappear again. “You idiot. You absolute idiot. What the hell have you been doing?”
Akkie tries to smile, weak, defensive. His lips are dry, his head throbs. “Cutting back. Y’know, trying to lose the gut.”
Mike’s jaw locks, his nostrils flare. He shakes his head so violently his glasses nearly fall off. “You starved yourself? You fainted in front of the entire gym, Akkie. Do you know how dangerous that is? Do you care at all about your body, or do you just hate it so much you want to break it too?” His words slice sharper than any insult ever has and Akkie feels it like a weight pressing down on his chest. What else did he break?
He sniffles, “I just… wanted to look better.”
Mike snaps, teary. “You look fine! You’ve always looked fine! You’re strong and stubborn and you can drop three bigger kids in a fight without blinking. You’re just too stupid to see it because you’re obsessed with looking like someone you’re not. Putz!”
Akkie stares up at Mike, seeing him not as the scrawny boy who patched up his nosebleeds but as someone fierce enough to stand between him and death itself. He doesn’t grin, doesn’t shrug it off. He just lies there, head spinning, shame flooding him hotter than the dizziness. Mike exhales hard, pushes his glasses up, and looks away, but his hands stay firm on Akkie’s shoulders. “Don’t you ever do this again. You hear me? Don’t make me try and patch up something I can’t fix.” His voice is softer now, but there’s fury under it, and Akkie knows better than to argue.
“I’m sorry, Mikey.”
He says that one a lot.
Mike’s parents die in a car crash on a gray winter evening in December, sudden and merciless. The news spreads fast in their tiny community, delivered with lowered voices as though volume itself could wound further. For days afterward, Mike walks around like a golem made of clay. He goes to live with his grandmother, a small, stooped lady who wears her grief like a heavy shawl, and Akkie — who has never been a good Jew, not by anyone’s measure — does the only thing he can think to do: he sits shiva anyway.
He doesn’t know the prayers by heart. He mumbles through them, lips shaping sounds that slip away like smoke. He shifts uncomfortably on the low chair, restless in the quiet that stretches long and unfamiliar. But he stays. He eats the kugel and the cold bagels that parade through the house. He folds himself into the silence when words run out. He is not good at mourning, not in the right ways, but he is there, day after day, a squat shadow beside his friend, refusing to leave Mike alone in the echo of that absence.
Mike doesn’t speak much. His sharpness — the steady confidence, the future-doctor authority — has gone quiet. He sits with his hands folded, his glasses crooked, his jaw set tight as if holding everything inside. Sometimes his grandmother reaches for him, smoothing a hand over his hair, but mostly she weeps silently in the kitchen while the house fills and empties with neighbors, cousins, other folks from the synagogue. Akkie never knows what to say, so he says nothing, just chews slowly, drinks tea, and sits until the silence feels like a blanket he and Mike are both trapped beneath. He snuggles his head into Mike sometimes.
Mike doesn’t push him away.
On the third day, when the house is especially crowded, Akkie feels the familiar, hot trickle start in his nose. No warning, just a sudden, humiliating rush. He swears under his breath and grabs at a napkin from the nearest plate, tilting forward instinctively, blood already dripping into his lap. Mike notices immediately. His eyes snap to Akkie, worry flashing across his tired face. “Not here,” He sighs, and then louder, “Come on.” He drags Akkie down the narrow hallway into the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind them. The mirror reflects both of them, one pale with exhaustion, the other streaked with the Red Sea.
Mike wets a wad of tissues at the sink and presses them firmly against Akkie’s nose. His hands are steady, though his jaw trembles, his breath sharp with frustration. “What am I gonna do with you, Akkie?” He sniffs, raw. It’s not really a question. It’s a confession.
Akkie grins weakly through the blood, though his teeth are pink. “Guess you’ll just have to keep patching me up, Mikey. You’re stuck with me forever.”
Mike shakes his head, but his grip doesn’t loosen. “Putz,” He says, but his voice cracks on it. He just holds the tissue there, pressing forward, keeping Akkie anchored the same way he has for years. In the silence, Akkie realizes this might be the only thing he can give Mike right now — something familiar, something predictable. His blood, Mike’s fussing, the old rhythm of their friendship that hasn’t changed, even as everything else has. Akkie wants to make a joke — he always does. Something about how Mike ought to be grateful for all the practice before he goes off to medical school someday, or how Akkie’s blood has a flair for dramatic timing. But the words die in his throat when he looks up. Mike’s glasses are fogged at the edges, and his eyes, sharp brown behind the lenses, are rimmed red. His lip trembles once before he bites down on it.
“I can’t lose you,” Mike whispers, though the words sound like they’re dragged out of him against his will. His grip tightens on the tissue, on Akkie. “Ever. You know that, right? I can’t.”
Mike has always been the fixer, the one who holds Akkie up — stern, bossy, always with the right words, the right fixes. So to see him unravel, even a little, is like seeing a mountain crack apart. Akkie’s chest swells painfully, something heavy and hot pressing against his ribs. He wants to say something honest back, but his tongue is clumsy, his mouth stuffed with iron and salt. So he does the only thing he can. He nods, blood still seeping but less now, trickling rather than pouring. He wants to say I’m not going anywhere, wants to swear it, even though he knows his own body sometimes seems determined to betray him. But all that comes out is a muffled, “Yeah, I know.”
Mike breathes out shakily, with the smallest of sighs, and finally drops his gaze, hiding the heat in his eyes behind his lashes. He fusses again with the wad of tissues, muttering about clotting and pressure, as though retreating into the safety of clinical instructions. He glares at him like the blood is somehow a personal insult, like Akkie chose this just to drive him insane. His hands are steady, but his jaw is set tight, the way it always is when he’s trying not to yell. “You need to see a real doctor,” He orders finally, his voice clipped, urgent. “This isn’t normal, Akkie. It’s not just nosebleeds — it’s all the time. Cuts, scrapes, you bleed like someone turned on a faucet. What if one day it doesn’t stop?”
Akkie leans back against the bathroom wall, the tile cool against his shoulders, the tissue crumpled and soggy in his hand. He feels the last trickle drying against his upper lip, sticky and uncomfortable, but he shrugs anyway, the motion lazy, dismissive. “The last thing I’m gonna do is bug my Abba with this.”
Mike blinks at him, stunned. “What are you talking about? It’s not — this isn’t bugging him, this is serious.”
“Not to him,” Akkie huffs, picking at the corner of the paper towel. “He’s got enough on his plate. He’s a Rabbi. You know how many people line up to talk to him about their problems every single day? Real problems. Divorce. Kids gone off the rails. Who’s gonna care about some chubby kid who can’t stop getting bloody noses?” His laugh is sharp, bitter. “Not him, not when I’m the youngest of seven. He barely remembers I’m around half the time.” The words come out harsher than Akkie means, but once they’re out, he can’t take them back. They hang in the bathroom air like smoke, sour and heavy. He can see Mike’s face soften immediately, his fury slipping into something more complicated — sympathy, frustration, maybe even guilt.
“Akkie,” Mike starts slowly, carefully, like he’s choosing each word from a high shelf. “This isn’t about your Abba, or your brothers and sisters. It’s about you. You can’t keep bleeding like this and pretending it’s nothing. One day—” His voice cracks, and he has to swallow before trying again. “One day it might not stop and I told you, I can’t—” He cuts himself off, his hand curling into a fist against his thigh. “I can’t lose you.”
Akkie swallows, nods, and capitulates, “Fine, maybe someday — just not now.” He doesn’t promise, not really, but it’s the closest he can get without choking. Mike doesn’t look satisfied, not even close, but he lets the subject drop — for now. He presses a clean tissue into Akkie’s hand and exhales, long and shaky.
“Putz.”
But when Akkie smirks through the crusted red and cuddles into his middle, Mike doesn’t push him away.
It starts with a dull ache in Akkie’s ankle, the kind of thing he figures is just from running too hard or landing wrong when he jumps down the synagogue steps. But by the next day the joint’s swollen, hot, and angry. He limps down the hallways at school, pretending it’s fine, but each step sends a throb up his leg. He doesn’t tell anyone at home — what’s the point? He’s got six older siblings filling every inch of space, and his father is buried under that week’s parshah and phone calls and people who always seem to need him more. Another limp? Another bruise? Not worth a word.
But Mike notices and he scowls. By the third time Akkie’s ankle balloons like that, red and stiff, Mike’s face twists in a way Akkie hasn’t seen before. He grabs Akkie by the arm after school and all but drags him to the boys’ bathroom, ignoring the stares. Akkie tries to joke, limping dramatically like an old man with a cane, but Mike doesn’t laugh. He spins on him, glasses sliding down his nose, and hisses through clenched teeth, “This is insane, Putz. You can’t even walk anymore. Your ankle looks like it’s gonna explode. Do you even care what’s happening inside your body?”
Akkie shrugs, leaning against the sinks, trying for nonchalance even though the throbbing makes him grit his teeth. “It’ll go down. It always does.”
Mike slams his hand against the porcelain, and the sound echoes like a gunshot. His whole body shakes with the force of his anger. “Always does? Always does?! You’re bleeding into your joints now, Akkie. Do you know what that means? You could ruin your ankle forever. You could — God, you could cripple yourself before you’re even out of high school. Why don’t you care?!” His voice cracks, high and raw. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Akkie wants to snap back, to remind him that it’s easy for Mike to say, with his intact body and his intact family, with no Rabbi father too busy for another weak, needy kid. But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. Mike steps closer, so close Akkie can see the tear clinging to the corner of his eye. “I can’t keep patching you up like this. I’m not your doctor. I’m just—” He breaks off, fists clenching helplessly at his sides. “I’m just a kid and you’re my best friend. But if you don’t let someone help you — someone who actually knows what they’re doing — you’re gonna… you’re gonna destroy yourself. I can’t watch that, Akkie. I won’t.”
Akkie stares down at the tiles, the shame burning hotter than his ankle. He hates being looked at like this — like he’s broken, like he’s helpless. He hates it almost more than he hates the swelling, the bleeding, the way his own body betrays him. He wants to say I’m fine, wants to laugh it off, but the words die in his throat. Mike isn’t looking at his ankle anymore. He’s looking at him, eyes glassy, desperate, as if he’s trying to hold Akkie’s entire life in his hands, to beg him to care about it.
“Fine. You win, I’ll go.”
Mike exhales, long and shaky, like he’s been holding his breath for years. He wipes his face roughly with the back of his hand and nods, firm, decisive, like he’s just wrestled fate into submission. “Baruch HaShem.”
But his test for hemophilia comes back and says the word negative like it’s supposed to settle everything, supposed to make the bleeding, the swelling, the endless mess vanish into thin air. Akkie latches onto it immediately, clinging like it’s proof he’s right, proof he’s not broken. “See?” He says the second he gets to Mike’s house, his grin wide and obnoxious, his ankle still stiff but his tone smug. “Hemophilia, schmemophilia. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just… different, that’s all.” He shrugs like it’s the punchline to a joke, like the whole thing is funny.
Mike doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even look at him at first. His jaw works, his glasses sliding down his nose as his hands ball into fists. They’re standing in the driveway, sun glaring off car hoods, the open door yawning behind them, and Akkie can feel Mike’s anger simmering like heat waves off the pavement.“You think this is a joke? You think because one test came back negative that you get to act like you’re invincible? You’re not fine, Akkie. You bleed too much. You swell up. You faint. You scare the crap out of me every other week.” His hands fly up, helpless. “That’s not fine. That’s not normal. I don’t care what the test says, it’s the wrong test.”
Akkie feels his grin falter, but he forces it back, cocky, defiant. “So what? I’m fine, Mikey.” He spits the word out like it’s a shield, like if he says it hard enough Mike will stop looking at him that way. “The bad one was negative.”
But Mike doesn’t. He steps closer, so close Akkie can see the fury sparking in his eyes, the hurt underneath. “You’re not fine, Putz. Stop saying it like that makes it true. You’re not fine, and pretending you are just makes me want to shake you until you get it.” His voice breaks, cracks sharp as glass. “Fuck, one day, Akkie, it’s not just gonna be a nosebleed or a swollen ankle. If you keep ignoring it, if you keep just laughing like an idiot —” He chokes, bites the words off before they can finish.
Akkie says nothing, he just limps toward the nearby bus stop with his shoulders squared, his smile pasted on. “Stop worrying so much!” He tosses over his shoulder, like that’s enough.
Mike crouches with clinical patience, hands gentle but firm, probing the latest swelling of the same damn ankle. “It’s still not broken,” He sighs, mostly to himself, “But you can’t keep walking on this. You need to ice it, keep it elevated. Stay off it for a few days.” His voice is full of that stern authority he’s been practicing since he was ten in the bathroom of the Hebrew school, holding a seven-year-old boy’s nose for ten endless minutes.
But Akkie grumbles, the sound low and volcanic. “I don’t have a few days, Mike. I’m trying to enlist. Gotta get in shape, show them I can handle it.” His words are thick with stubbornness, a kind of brick-walled certainty.
Mike straightens instantly, dark eyebrows shooting up into his hairline, hands dropping in frustration. “Enlist? Enlist? Akkie, that’s —” He cuts himself off, pushes his glasses back up, exhales in a rush of exasperation. “That’s insane! You bleed if somebody looks at you too hard. Your nose runs like a faucet every other week and now your ankle swells up like a balloon for no reason. You want to throw yourself into basic training? Into combat? That’s not just stupid, that’s—”
“Brave,” Akkie interrupts, jaw set, freckles dark against the flush rising in his cheeks. “Somebody’s got to fight the bad guys, might as well be me.”
The living room feels small, like it can barely hold the weight of their argument. Mike paces, rubbing his temple, muttering about wrong hemophilia panels, coagulation tests he should have had done properly years ago, stress fractures, and future hospital visits. Akkie just sits there, glaring, ankle throbbing, arms folded like a barricade. The air hums with everything unspoken, with years of patch-ups and fights, with loyalty forged in blood and bathroom sinks. Then — abruptly, almost recklessly — Akkie shifts forward on the couch. The motion is clumsy, ankle twinging, but he doesn’t care. He scoots until he’s too close, until Mike’s litany of objections falters on his lips. Akkie stares at him, jaw set fiercely, eyes burning with something neither stubborn nor angry but raw and urgent. But before Mike can marshal another lecture, before he can list another medical risk, Akkie leans in and kisses him.
It is not practiced or elegant; it is stubborn and hot-blooded, like every fight Akkie has ever picked. His mouth is insistent, almost defiant, a declaration without words: I bleed, I fight, I want this. Mike freezes, the world narrowing to the shock of it, the impossible reality that the boy he’s been fixing for a decade, the reckless firebrand with bruised knuckles and endless nosebleeds, has just crossed the invisible line between patient and caretaker, between childhood bond and something far older, far sharper.
For a long moment, he doesn’t breathe. Then, as if carried forward by gravity itself, he responds — not with fury, not with retreat, but with the quiet inevitability of someone who’s been holding back for too long. His hand rises, cupping the side of Akkie’s freckled jaw, thumb brushing the roughness of stubble, a gesture so achingly familiar and yet newly electric. He deepens the kiss, softens, steadies, transforms it from defiance into something more tender, something that acknowledges the years of blood and fights and bathroom tiles. It is a kiss that says: You are reckless where I’m careful. You want to fight the world, and I want to keep you alive. Fuck you for fighting me on it. When they finally part, Akkie grumbles again, because he never knows what else to do with his feelings. “Told you I can handle myself.” His lips are swollen, his cheeks brighter than ever.
Mike shakes his head, eyes hard, “You better have been joking about the Army.” He huffs a brittle laugh, “They aren’t going to take you anyway.”
The letter is crumpled in Akkie’s freckled fist, the paper already sweat-stained from being carried around all day like a trophy, and when he bursts through the door of Mike Robinavitch’s apartment, his grin is wild, feral, uncontainable. His red hair is sticking up in anarchic spikes, his face flushed with triumph. “They took me,” He announces, voice booming as though he has single-handedly conquered an empire. He waves the paper around like a flag, shoving it under Mike’s nose, practically vibrating with adrenaline. “I’m in! I ship out in six weeks.”
Mike, hunched at his desk surrounded by a fortress of textbooks — anatomy, organic chemistry, MCAT prep guides littered like debris — blinks at the page, then at his boyfriend, though neither of them dares to use that word in polite company. At first, he doesn’t understand. Then he does, and his glasses slide down his nose, and his whole body seizes in horror. “You — what?” His voice cracks upward, a jagged sound of disbelief. “No. No, that’s impossible. That’s —” He snatches the letter from Akkie’s hand, scanning it with the urgency of an ED resident reading a disastrous chart. But there it is, black ink, bureaucratic cheer: Welcome to the United States Army.
Mike’s mouth works soundlessly for a moment, before he erupts. “They took you? You? You bleed like a hemophiliac!”
Akkie’s grin just widens, like the insult is instead an accolade. He puffs out his chest, slaps his own round shoulder. “Guess they didn’t care, since I’m negative and all. Guess they saw something they liked. I told you I could do it.”
Mike surges to his feet, pacing, hands tearing through his hair in utter disbelief. “Do they not test for things anymore? Did they not notice you’ve spent half your life with tissues shoved up your nose, dripping like a faucet? That your ankles swell for no reason? That you bruise if somebody looks at you too hard?” His voice is climbing into the register of sheer outrage.
Akkie, infuriatingly unbothered, collapses onto the couch with a dramatic sprawl, ankle propped, freckled face tilted back in satisfaction. “Guess I fooled them. Guess I’m tougher than you think.”
“Tougher?” Mike whirls on him, stabbing a finger in his direction, eyes blazing with the righteous fury of someone who’s seen too much blood for one lifetime. “Tougher doesn’t mean invincible. Tougher doesn’t mean you don’t hemorrhage like a stuck pig! You want to run into live fire when you can’t even jog a block without — without —” He gestures helplessly, words dissolving into the memory of bathroom sinks and scarlet rivers that seemed endless, of joints swollen like balloons.
Akkie just shrugs, maddeningly calm, eyes glinting with that stubborn fire. “Stop bellyaching, I’ll be fine.”
Mike sinks back against the desk, pinching the bridge of his nose so hard it leaves marks. His voice drops, quieter now, raw, frayed. “Akkie, if they hurt you — if you bleed, you won’t —”
The books on the desk, the letter in Mike’s trembling hands, his swollen ankle that still hasn’t healed — all of it testifies to the insanity of this moment. But Akkie shifts forward, all freckles and fire, stubborn grin tempered now by something gentler. “Hey, if I get hurt, I’ll come home and you’ll patch me up — just like always.”
Mike sobs.
Michael Robinavitch, twenty-two now, a tall med-student gaunt with textbooks and sleepless nights, is slumped at his desk in his tiny apartment. His desk lamp casts a lonely cone of light across anatomy notes, a cup of stale coffee, and the silent thrum of worry that has lived in his chest for two years straight — ever since his Akkie marched away in uniform with a grin too big and a heart too reckless. Mike doesn’t expect the knock. But it comes anyway, heavy, uneven, as though the knocker is leaning into the door for support. He rises with a frown, and when he opens it, the world drops out from under him.
There stands Akkie. His lover, his best friend, his boyfriend, is broader, freckled still but with shadows under his eyes. His red-brown hair shorn short to regulation length but grown out ragged now, untidy, defiant. There’s a crutch under one arm, a duffel slung awkwardly over his shoulder. But his right ankle looks damn near monstrous, swollen grotesquely, distended under the cuff of his fatigues. His face is pale except for his scattershot freckles, and yet there it is — that same crooked heartbreaker grin, stubborn as ever.
“Hey, Mikey,” He rasps, voice rough with travel, with exhaustion, with shame. He shifts the duffel down with a grunt. “The Army kicked me out.”
Mike just stares. His heart slams in his chest, beating against the bones of his ribcage, the scaffolding that holds him up. His mouth opens but the words take many long, agonizing seconds to form. “What do you mean kicked you out? What the hell happened to your ankle?”
Akkie shrugs, as if discussing the weather, though his knuckles are white against the crutch. “Turns out I got somethin’ fancy — Type III von Willebrand’s. My blood doesn’t clot right. Bad as hemophilia, they said. Means I’m out. Discharged. Done.” His words come quickly, defensive, like he’s admitting to a crime. Mike feels his stomach collapse inward: VWD Type III. The worst kind. It’s not just frequent nosebleeds or slow healing. It’s the severe, catastrophic variety. It is everything he suspected, everything he feared, written in clinical terms that feel like knives. His hands curl into fists, nails biting his palms, not in anger at Akkie but in fury at the inevitability of it all.
“You’ve been — fuck for two years you’ve been bleeding yourself half to death in training fields, in barracks, in HaShem only knows what places—” His voice cracks, his breath shudders. He grips the doorframe to steady himself. “They only just figured out you’ve got von Willebrand’s? Type III? Fuck, Akkie —”
But Akkie just limps past him into the apartment, dragging the duffel, collapsing onto the couch with the gracelessness of a man whose body has finally betrayed him beyond denial. He exhales loudly, pinches the bridge of his nose like it might start gushing at any second. His ankle throbs visibly, pulsing against the fabric of his boot. “They ran some tests after I couldn’t stop bleedin’ from nothin’,” Akkie groans, pouting. “Didn’t matter if it was a cut, or just runnin’. This —” He gestures down at his grotesquely swollen ankle “— happened last month. Wouldn’t heal, just got worse. Docs said it’s the blood, not the bone. Fluid leakin’ out ‘cause it don’t clot. The whole thing’s shot. So they kicked me out. Honorably, I guess. But still kicked out.”
Mike stands there, trembling, unable to move, unable to breathe. He has imagined a thousand scenarios of Akkie’s return — flag-draped coffin, hospital gurney, silent phone call. But this — this limping, grinning, broken boy on his couch — is somehow both worse and better than all of them. He sinks down onto the coffee table opposite, leans forward, stares at the terrible, horrible ankle bleed, then at Akkie’s face. His voice is ragged. “You could have died. A hundred times over, you could have died. But now you’re here, on crutches no less, with type III von Willebrand’s, like it’s just another scraped knee I’ve gotta patch up? Really? Jack fucking Abbot.”
Akkie only lifts his head, his freckles standing vivid against his bruised, pale skin, eyes bright and sharp with something almost like mischief. “Well, yeah,” He says simply. “You always patch me up, didn’t think you’d stop now. You love me.”
Mike lets out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. His hands rise, rake through his hair. The absurdity, the horror, the inevitability — it all collapses into that moment. He leans forward, presses his forehead against Akkie’s, their breaths tangling in the narrow space between them. “You’re such a fucking putz,” He hisses, voice breaking. “A lost fucking cause.”
But Akkie just grins, even now, his swollen ankle elevated on the coffee table, a serious blood disorder in his veins, discharged and disgraced in his own mind but alive, here, returned to Mike’s waiting arms where he belongs. “Yeah,” He grumbles. “But you still keep me anyway, I’m yours.”
He is.
“I'm lonely but I'm good
I'm bitter but I swear I'm fine
I'll save all my romanticism for my inner life and I'll get lost on
purpose
This place made me feel worthless
Lucid dreams like electricity, the current flies through me,
and in my fantasies, I rise above it
And way up there, I actually love it…”