1 When Elliott first pursued me, he liked to tell people I was an angel who had tumbled down to earth. The truth was far less poetic. I was born with oculocutaneous albinism. My skin possessed virtually no melanin; sunlight wasn't warmth to me, but an open flame. While other couples checked the weather for rain, Elliott checked the UV index. The windows of his car were sealed with the thickest ceramic thermal tint money could buy, and whenever we stepped outdoors in the summer, his broad, dark umbrella was already open above my head. Our friends used to tease him, saying he kept me like an orchid in a bell jar. Elliott would only smile, slip his hand into mine, and say, "She’s supposed to be precious." That was before Tess came back from London. Tess was his childhood best friend, the girl who called him by nicknames from middle school and wore his vintage jackets without asking. Within two weeks of her return, my wide-brimmed UV hats started disappearing from the coat rack, and my protective umbrellas ended up stashed behind hallway planters. Whenever I brought it up, Elliott would smooth my hair, his voice low and soothing. "She doesn't mean anything by it, Daphne. She’s just playful. Don't take her so seriously." So when Tess told me the rare orchids in the botanical conservatory were in peak bloom and asked me to come take a look, I let my guard down. I didn't hear her slide the heavy brass deadbolt until the click echoed against the iron frame. It was high noon. The midday sun hammered down through four walls of unfiltered greenhouse glass, turning the air into a suffocating, blinding furnace. Within three minutes, my skin began to prickle, then throb, then burn as if dipped in scalding grease. Along the nape of my neck and across my bare collarbones, clear, agonizing blisters rose like blisters on charred paint. My phone screen was nearly impossible to see through my tearing, photophobic eyes. I dialed Elliott’s number once, twice, five times. On the sixteenth ring, he finally picked up. "Just hang in there a little longer, Daphne," he coaxed, his tone calm, almost amused. "Tess said I've babied you too much—that I turned you into a delicate little doll who can't handle the real world. Honestly, I wanted to see how long you could actually last." By the time the glass door finally unlatched, the pain had turned white and sickening behind my eyes, and my knees had given out against the damp stone floor. Elliott scooped me into his arms, but Tess leaned against the doorframe, a pout on her lips. "We agreed on twenty minutes, Elliott. Why did you unlock it early?" Elliott’s arms were trembling around my ribs, yet his instincts still worked overtime to cover for her. "Come on, Tess. Seventeen minutes was plenty to prove the point." Tess laughed, twirling her sunglasses. "Well, I bet she’d get a tan, and you bet she’d stay just as pale no matter what. So who won the bet?" The burns I suffered that afternoon eventually peeled, blistered, and hardened into raw pink scabs. Only the part of me that loved him never grew back. The fluorescent lights of the emergency room were a violent, sterile white. When the triage nurse used surgical scissors to slit open the collar of my cotton blouse, the fabric peeled away from the nape of my neck, taking half a ruptured blister with it. A jagged gasp ripped from my throat, and my fingers clawed deep into the stiff hospital sheet. Elliott leaned down, his knuckles white as he caught my hand. His voice dropped to a frantic whisper. "Daphne. Squeeze my hand. Bite me if it hurts, okay?" There was a time when hearing those words would have brought tears to my eyes, when I would have believed his chest ached with every beat of mine. But right now, all I could smell on his pressed cotton cuff was the faint, cloying scent of white gardenias. It was the perfume Tess had spritzed in his car that morning. I dragged my fingers out of his grip. Elliott froze, his empty palm hovering above the mattress. The attending nurse glared at him over her safety glasses. "With her pigmentation, direct UV exposure is a severe hazard. Second-degree burns within twenty minutes. Didn't you people know that?" Elliott’s Adam’s apple bobbed. "I knew." "You knew, and you left her baking in a glass enclosure?" A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the cubicle. Tess was leaning against the curtain partition, idly twirling my wide-brimmed UPF 50+ sun hat around her index finger. The structural wire in the brim was already crushed out of shape where she had been squeezing it. "Come on, nurse, isn't that a little dramatic?" Tess chimed in, tossing her hair. "Her skin is just paper-white to begin with. It always looks ten times worse than it actually is." Elliott turned his head sharply. "Tess." Just her name. A warning tap on the wrist, devoid of any real reprimand. Instantly, Tess’s lower lip trembled, her eyes welling with ready moisture. "I said I was sorry! I just thought you had her wrapped in bubble wrap for years, and I wanted to play a little prank. How was I supposed to know she was genuinely this fragile?" Elliott let out a long, weary breath, the look on his face that of a long-suffering older brother who had run out of discipline. "All right. That's enough." He turned back to the gurney, his fingers reaching for my forehead. "Daphne, she has a reckless mouth, but she doesn't have a malicious bone in her body. Look at her, she’s terrified." I lay flat on my stomach on the vinyl exam table, staring at the cold strip of linoleum below. "She locked the door from the outside." Elliott’s brow furrowed, a hairline fracture appearing in his patient facade. "Daphne, do we really have to tally every single grievance right this second?" I turned my cheek toward him, the raw flesh of my shoulder screaming with the motion. "Do I get to schedule when my skin blisters?" His jaw tightened, as if struck. A second later, he forced his voice down into that familiar, velvety register. "That isn't what I meant. I’m just saying, if you keep digging your heels in and attacking her, it puts me in an impossible position." Tess sniffled softly from the doorway. "Elliott, maybe I should just go. She clearly hates the sight of me." She spun on her heel toward the corridor, but as her sneaker caught the metal threshold of the doorway, she stumbled with a sharp gasp. "Ah—!" Elliott moved before she could even pitch forward, catching her firmly by the waist. "What happened? Are you okay?" Tess bit her trembling lip, a tear clinging precariously to her lower lashes. "It's nothing... I think I twisted my ankle earlier when I ran back to the conservatory." I watched her through the gap in the privacy curtain. Her weight was resting squarely, evenly, on both sneakers. Yet Elliott had already dropped to one knee on the dirty hospital tile, his hands gently encircling her ankle. "Don't put weight on it. I’m taking you to radiology for an X-ray." The nurse hadn't even finished debriding the burst blisters across my upper back. I looked down at the back of his head. "What about me, Elliott?" Elliott’s hands paused against Tess’s sock. Tess immediately tried to pull her leg back. "Never mind, Elliott. Stay with Daphne. I can limp down to imaging by myself." The moment she muttered the word myself, Elliott’s expression darkened. "Why do you always have to act like a martyr?" He stood up, turning to face my bed. "The nurse is right here, Daphne. She’s professional, she’ll dress the wounds. I’m just taking Tess down the hall to get a scan. I'll be back in fifteen minutes." "The doctor said the discharge papers and burn treatment authorization need a family signature," I said. "I’ll sign them the second I get back." Elliott looked at me, a tight, strained edge creeping into his tone, the kind of restraint born of sheer annoyance. "Daphne, I know you’re in pain. But if she’s got a fracture, every minute counts." Tess clung to his forearm, letting out a delicate, sniffling sigh. "Daphne, I'm so sorry. I really, truly didn't mean to take him away from you." I said nothing. Before he walked out, Elliott unbuttoned his heavy wool-blend overcoat and draped it gently across my trembling shoulders. "Don't be upset. On my way back, I'll go across the street and pick up that iced coconut milk tea you love." The coat had barely settled on my skin when Tess shivered beside him, her voice tiny. "Elliott... the draft from the AC vents is freezing." Elliott hesitated for less than a second. Then, his fingers caught the lapels of the coat on my shoulders, lifted it off my burned flesh, and wrapped it around Tess’s slender frame. "Daphne, you’re inside a climate-controlled room," he said softly, avoiding my eyes. "You aren't cold." The swinging doors snapped shut behind them. The nurse shook her head, muttering under her breath as she applied the silver sulfadiazine cream. The ointment was ice-cold, but the underlying tissue burned like a field of embers. Thirty minutes later, my phone vibrated on the bedside tray with an Instagram notification. Tess had posted a photo. She was sitting in an oversized hospital transport wheelchair, enveloped in Elliott’s dark overcoat. Elliott was down on both knees on the linoleum in front of her, his head lowered as he carefully retied the laces on her white sneaker. Her caption read: Someone swore he only pampers his fallen angel, but turns out he still can't bear to see me hurt. In the comments, a mutual acquaintance had commented: Elliott’s technique looks pretty practiced there. Tess had replied within two minutes: Can't help it! He’s spent the last three years taking care of an invalid. Practice makes perfect. I stared at the word invalid until the letters blurred into harsh, pixelated static. Three years of love, of care, of quiet adjustments. In their private lexicon, that was all I had ever amounted to. A patient. A burden disguised as a pet project. It was past two in the morning when Elliott returned to my hospital room. He looked exhausted, his hair rumpled, carrying a brown paper cup and a pharmacy bag. "Are you still awake?" I didn't move. He placed the cup on my rolling tray, pressing a paper straw into the lid. "I got it at room temperature. You can't have ice right now; the nurse said sudden cold shocks your nervous system after a burn." He still remembered. He remembered that I couldn't drink anything below room temperature when my core temperature spiked. He remembered the specific medical brand of burn gel my skin tolerated, and he remembered that I hated syrup in my coconut water. He remembered every fragile rule of my existence, and yet he had left me lying on an ER gurney without looking back. I kept my eyes on the ceiling tiles. "How is Tess’s ankle?" "No fracture," he said, sinking heavily into the visitor chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Just a minor soft-tissue sprain. But she has an unusually low pain threshold. She cried all through imaging." I shifted my neck, every nerve ending screaming. "Did I cry?" Elliott paused, taken aback. "That's not who you are, Daphne." "Who am I, Elliott?" He stared at his hands for two beats. When he looked up, sensing the ice in my voice, he reached out to smooth my hair, his touch careful, placating. "You’ve always been the sensible one. The mature one." I pulled my head away from his palm. His hand hung suspended in the empty air. "Daphne," he sighed, his voice suddenly taut. "Do you have to take every single thing I say as an insult tonight?" "Every single thing you say," I replied quietly, "is telling me to swallow the pain." His expression darkened. When the morning shift nurse came in at dawn to replace the dressings, Elliott stood by the bed, his arms crossed, jaw clenched. But when the sodden, yellowed gauze was gently peeled away from my back, revealing raw, weeping dermis the color of cracked pomegranate, he sucked in a sharp, audible breath. "Jesus Christ," he muttered under his breath. "How is it that bad?" He cursed softly under his breath—whether at himself or at Tess, I didn't care to guess. Yet his guilt didn't survive past noon. When the discharge orders were finally signed, the attending physician gave him strict, uncompromising instructions: absolute zero direct sunlight for the next fourteen days. Transfer straight from the hospital exit into an underground garage. Curtains drawn shut at home 24/7. Elliott typed every single word into the notes app on his phone with meticulous gravity. For a brief, pathetic second, a treacherous thought flickered in my mind: Maybe he finally understands. Maybe he was genuinely scared. Then we reached the main lobby. Tess was waiting by the sliding glass doors, perched in a wheelchair, wearing a denim mini skirt. Draped across her bare thighs was my custom UPF 50+ travel blanket—a multi-layered technical textile Elliott had spent weeks importing from a German laboratory three years ago. I had used that blanket every single summer. When she saw us, she flashed a bright, cheerful wave. "Daphne! Oh my god, this blanket is incredible. Elliott told me you were inside the building and wouldn't need it right now, so I borrowed it for a second." I stopped dead in my tracks. Elliott cleared his throat behind my shoulder, his voice dropping into that familiar, defensive cadence. "Her leg is swollen and uncovered. The sun is blazing out front, and she’s terrified of tanning." I looked at him. "Terrified of tanning?" He shifted his weight, visibly uncomfortable under my stare. "Daphne, it's just a blanket. She’s borrowing it." "I have to walk outside to the car." "The car is idling right at the curb. It's ten steps." Ten steps. Just like seventeen minutes. As long as he minimized the metric of my suffering, he could convince himself that the blade didn't cut. Tess immediately pulled at the edge of the blanket with an exaggerated, remorseful gasp. "Here, take it back! I don't want you saying I’m bullying you again." She said the words, but her fingers remained firmly knotted in the hem. Elliott frowned at me, his patience frayed. "Daphne. Her ankle is injured." A short, dry laugh escaped my throat. "Right. So her vanity about a sun tan matters more than second-degree burns on my skin." Elliott’s face hardened. "Do you honestly have to turn everything into a contest between the two of you?" I didn't answer. I turned on my heel and began walking toward the hospital gift shop. Elliott caught up in three long strides, his fingers clamping hard around my uninjured wrist. "Where are you going?" "To buy a cheap umbrella." "There's an umbrella in the trunk of the car." "My blanket was in the car, too," I said, looking down at his hand. "And you gave it to her." He lowered his voice, his teeth clenched in embarrassment as other visitors glanced our way. "Daphne, stop making a scene in the middle of the lobby. If you need a blanket that badly, I will order ten of them right this second." "I need it right now." He choked on his own words, momentarily stranded. Behind us, Tess’s voice floated over, soft and tremulous as spun sugar. "Elliott, don't worry about me, please. It's fine. Even if I get sun, it’s not like my skin melts off like Daphne’s." The words sounded like an olive branch, but they were dipped in poison. Elliott snapped. "Daphne, she’s already backing down! What more do you want from her?" I wrenched my wrist out of his grip. "I want you to give me back what belongs to me." Elliott froze. In three years, I had never once spoken to him in that tone—flat, unyielding, entirely devoid of affection. When he walked over, ripped the blanket from Tess’s lap, and thrust it toward me, Tess burst into silent, theatrical tears. "Fine! I get it! From now on, I won't touch a single thing that belongs to you!" Elliott watched her cry, the veins on his neck bulging with suppressed fury. He turned on me, his voice trembling with anger. "Daphne, I took care of you because I loved you. I didn't do it so you could use your medical condition as leverage to control me." At that moment, the noon sun broke through the glass facade of the hospital, striking the tiled floor like an exposed furnace. I wrapped the heavy blanket tightly around my shoulders. Sweat pooled beneath the fabric, stinging the open wounds until my vision swam. So that was it. Even my agony had been downgraded to emotional blackmail. On the drive back, Tess occupied the front passenger seat. She claimed the AC vent was making her swollen ankle ache, so Elliott turned the climate control up to seventy-six degrees. In the back seat, the heat trapped beneath my sterile dressings turned unbearable. My sweat soaked the gauze, pulling against the raw tissue with every bump in the road. "Turn the AC down," I said from the darkness of the rear. Elliott glanced into the rearview mirror. "Tess can't have cold air blowing directly on an inflamed joint." "The skin on my back is burning." "We’ll change the dressings the second we get into the apartment." I closed my eyes. "I’m suffocating right now." He let out an exasperated scoff, slapping his palm against the steering wheel. "Daphne, for the love of God, can you stop having a crisis every time she expresses a minor discomfort?" The silence inside the cabin turned suffocating. Tess whispered from the passenger side, "Elliott, don't snap at her... she’s sick." Elliott didn't turn around. "She only acts out because she knows she’s sick. Because she knows nobody can call her on it." I looked out the tinted side window. The thermal film blocked ninety-nine percent of the harmful ultraviolet rays. Elliott had spent weeks researching tinting shops when he first bought the car, proudly telling me that he wanted to build an impenetrable shield between me and the world outside. He had shielded me from the sun, but he was the one driving the knife into my back. On the third day of my recovery, Tess showed up at our apartment. She used her own copy of the key. When the electronic deadbolt beeped open, I was lying face-down on the sectional sofa, awkwardly trying to apply silver cream to the base of my neck with a sterile cotton swab. The sudden sound of the door made me flinch. The plastic stick slipped, driving hard into an open blister. A wave of nauseating pain rushed up the back of my skull, turning my vision completely black for three agonizing seconds. Tess popped her head around the foyer wall, beaming like a golden retriever. "Daphne! Look at me, coming to bring the olive branch!" Elliott followed right behind her, carrying a bakery box from my favorite patisserie. "Why are you doing that yourself? Didn't I tell you to wait until I got home?" I glanced at the digital clock on the media console. "You said you’d be home in thirty minutes. That was four hours ago." Tess raised her hands in an exaggerated gesture of surrender. "Guilty! Entirely my fault! I insisted on finding the perfect apology gift for Daphne, and I dragged Elliott through three different shopping centers." She dropped a glossy boutique bag onto the coffee table in front of me. Inside was a sun hat. It was bright bubblegum pink, made of coarse, unlined woven straw, edged with wide, floppy tiers of decorative polyester lace. I checked the tag. 100% Paper Straw. UPF: None. For someone with my condition, it was as protective as wearing a fishing net. "Thank you," I said evenly. "Take it back." The bright smile on Tess’s face withered instantly. "I spent the entire afternoon picking that out." Elliott set the bakery box down with an audible thud, his brow knit tight. "Daphne, she went out of her way to make amends." Tess’s eyes turned pink in record time. "Daphne, do you just look down on anything I buy? I know you only use that ugly, industrial-grade medical gear, but I don't know anything about UV charts! I tried my best!" Elliott sighed, looking at me with undisguised disappointment. "Daphne, she isn't you. She doesn't spend her life obsessing over solar radiation." I looked at him. "Which is why I told her I can't use it, and that she should get her money back." "Would it kill you to just say thank you and accept it?" Would it kill me? Just like when she borrowed my UV umbrella for an Instagram selfie and broke the rib. Just like when she swiped my protective visor at the park to see if she looked cute in it. Just like when she locked the heavy brass latch on the greenhouse door to see what seventeen minutes would do. Before I could speak, Tess’s eyes dropped to the open tube of specialized burn cream on the coffee table. "Oh! Does this stuff stop itching? The mosquitoes tore my calves up at the botanical garden the other day." I reached out to grab it, but she was already unscrewing the silver cap, squeezing a massive dollop directly onto her bare shins. "Wow, that feels so icy!" The blood drained from my face. "That is my prescription burn ointment." Tess blinked innocently. "I didn't know! I only used a tiny bit." The 'tiny bit' was half the four-ounce tube. Elliott glanced at the flattened metal tube. "I'll call the pharmacy and get another one." I stared into his eyes. "The doctor told you this compound has to be mixed by a specialty pharmacy. It’s on backorder everywhere in the state, and I have to apply it three times a day." "I'll have a courier drive to the medical center downtown," Elliott said dismissively. "I need my dressing changed now." Cornered by my tone, Elliott’s frustration erupted. "Daphne, look at her legs, she scratched the skin raw from bug bites! Would it kill you to share a little ointment?" My voice was very soft when I asked, "Her mosquito bites hurt more than my second-degree burns?" Tess immediately slammed the tube back onto the table. "Don't say it like that! I won't touch it, okay? I’m sorry! I’m just an outsider here, everything I do is a federal crime!" Elliott’s face settled into stone. "Daphne, an apology isn't good enough, a gift isn't good enough, and letting her use a dab of cream is an unforgivable offense. What exactly do you want her to do? Get down on her knees and beg for your forgiveness?" I looked at him for a long, quiet moment. There was a time when this man would walk two miles in the pouring rain just to bring me my favorite electrolyte water when I was running a fever. He had once punched a drunk at a bar who made a crude joke about my pale eyelashes. I reached out, took the half-empty tube of ointment, and methodically screwed the cap back onto the thread. "No," I said. Elliott looked momentarily relieved. Then I looked up and met his gaze. "Whether she gets on her knees or not, it doesn't matter anymore." That evening, they insisted on dragging me to a dinner with Elliott’s circle of friends. "You’ve been locked in this dark apartment for three days," Elliott had said as he tossed my jacket onto the bed. "Your mood is in the gutter. The guys all want to see how you’re recovering." I hadn't wanted to go. But my quarterly genetic panel and skin biopsy records had been left inside his friend Mark’s trunk after a shared ride the previous week, and I needed them back. The private dining room at the steakhouse was aggressively lit by crystal chandeliers. The moment I sat down, Mark grinned across the table. "Hey, can the fragile princess handle indoor bulbs, or do we need the waiter to turn off the lights for you?" Tess immediately slapped Mark’s forearm with a giggle. "Stop teasing her, Mark! She’s made of pure porcelain right now, you can't touch her." A wave of comfortable, masculine laughter rippled through the table. Elliott slid a glass of ice water in front of me. "Drink some water." It wasn't an act of care. It was a command. A silent, polite way of saying: Don't start anything. Inevitably, the conversation drifted back to the conservatory. Tess propped her chin on her palm, batting her eyelashes with exaggerated innocence. "Honestly, I had no clue it was going to be that bad! I made a bet with Elliott in the car—I bet that no matter how pale Daphne was, seventeen minutes in direct sun would at least give her a light golden tan." Mark chuckled, cutting his steak. "What did Elliott bet?" Tess looked at Elliott with a coy smile. Elliott kept his eyes glued to his wine glass, silent. So Tess answered for him. "Elliott bet that she’d stay just as stark white as ever. He said she was like a little ivory doll, completely immune to color." A low whistle went around the table. "Damn, Elliott, that’s almost romantic. Total compliment, right?" I held my glass of water, the condensation freezing the pads of my fingers. Finally, Elliott set his fork down, his voice clipped. "All right. That joke's over. Let’s move on." I looked across the linen tablecloth. "Who gets to move on, Elliott?" He snapped his head toward me, a warning flashing in his eyes. "Daphne." I pushed my chair back and stood up. "Did your skin melt off, or did mine?" The laughter at the table died instantly. The clinking of silverware vanished. Elliott’s face flushed a dark, angry crimson. "Are you determined to embarrass me and ruin dinner for everyone here tonight?" "I just want to understand," I said, my voice steady and clear against the quiet room, "why the person who was burned isn't allowed to say it hurt." Nobody had an answer for that. I picked up the manila envelope containing my biopsy results from the edge of the sideboard, turned my back on them, and walked out of the restaurant. By the time I stepped onto the pavement, the sun had fully set. The night air was crisp, clean, and entirely devoid of UV rays. Yet as I pulled my coat around my shoulders, I had never felt so cold in my life.
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