Amelia felt her heart race as her friend became unresponsive. She had just looked over at Ian, and he was sort of staring through her. And not in the normal spacey way of someone lost in thought. He was shivering, and when she asked if he was okay he just groaned and rolled onto his side. He looked really sick.

She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She could handle this. She thought back to what she learned in her First Aid course three years ago. Her two-year First Aid Responder card had expired after two years but the knowledge hadn’t.

First, she visually checked that he was still breathing; yes he was. She felt for a pulse on his wrist and found his heartbeat was quicker than her own. His skin felt hot and dry. She put the back of her hand against his forehead and checked… yeah, he had a fever.

She did her best to take care of him, deciding he wasn’t in any urgent danger. She certainly hoped he wouldn’t need to visit the hospital. She tucked him in with a pillow and blankets, leaving him a glass of water, some ibuprofen (from his medicine cabinet) and a large bowl in case of… accidents. She was pretty sure she knew what the culprit was, and that it might come back up. She had been so dumb. She really should have seen something like this was coming.

They would have to keep making their own meals from then on.

 

 

Claire massaged her temple as she hung up the phone. This was not a good situation, if Amelia was to be believed. She groaned as her Sunday plans were immediately ruined. Her plans of laying around in bed all day, snacking and unwinding on her phone. But it would be nice to spend more time with Ian and Amelia. She knew this was quickly gonna become a regular thing.

Anyways, so the thing that was going on was that Lia had for whatever reason called with Ian’s phone. He couldn’t call her because he was completely sick out of his gourd. Like, diarrhea and vomiting late into the night. Now Lia was wiped from taking care of him and they suddenly had a new problem.

See, their mom had called them both, at the same time. She was apparently the sort of woman who was intense and self-absorbed and if you didn’t answer her calls she’d immediately go drop in to check on you and make sure you were doing alright. But she didn’t want them taking any sick days off work and if that meant beating them into shape so they could be presentable at work then that’s just what she’d have to do. Amelia was able to answer the phone and suffer through the half-hour conversation ‘checking up’ with Mom but Ian’s phone was blowing up because at the time he had been checked off to the dark side of the moon and nothing would rouse him.

Claire threw together some clothes just to look presentable and left her filthy studio apartment. She drove her tiny smart-car to the cheap grocery market and deftly fished out some cans of soup, crackers, and other easy snacks to help pick Ian back up onto his feet.

The plan was, while Amelia had to hide the mirror and stay out of sight—because like, obviously that’s what you do when you risk exposing magic shenanigans—Ian would lie and say Claire had been there all weekend taking care of him, and Mom had simply called at an inopportune time when she had been out fetching some groceries. It would help that the two were already close friends, and Claire had met Ian’s mom once or twice. It didn’t help that she knew her well enough to agree that if she saw how well Ian was being taken care of and he was all on his own, that despite his current half-lucid state, she would assume he wasn’t really as sick as he seemed.

Claire pulled into Ian’s driveway and grumbled, seeing the hatchback that Mom drove. She didn’t feel like retelling the part that happened next. So suffice it to say:

It royally sucked.

Finally, they managed to get Mom out of their manes, but Claire didn’t relax until she heard the car drive off down the road. She allowed her posture to relax. She walked back into the bedroom and sat on the edge of Ian’s bed, and she looked over and smiled at him all bundled up and cozy in his blankets. Sure, he looked terrible in the condition he was in, but it was cute.

“Thank you for being here and taking care of me, Claire,” he said.

“Aaaah, I didn’t do much, y’know. It was Lia who took care of you all night. I just came over to help get your mom off your back so you could rest.”

“Wait, but… She told me you were the one taking care of me.”

“Yeah, as the story you’d use to get her out of here.” Claire leaned forward and looked at him worriedly. “Are you having trouble remembering things?”

He frowned and closed his eyes. “Yeah. I don’t even know what happened. I just woke up and now it’s Sunday and I feel awful.”

Claire patted his shoulder. “Well, you did a great job of acting, either way. You didn’t flinch once from the deadnaming and misgendering. Even I was having trouble keeping my composure! And you played off the haircut perfectly, too.”

Ian opened his eyes and glared at her. “Well, it’s ‘cause I’m not transgender. My name is Lillian. That’s what I’ve decided.” Claire sat there and looked at him in confusion. It took every ounce of willpower to keep her jaw from falling. “It’s easier this way. I won’t need to worry about being misgendered or anything like that. So, yeah.” He smiled knowingly. Er, she? No, she would still think of him with he / him pronouns until she got a more lucid explanation from him.

“Well, okay. If that’s what you want, Lillian, I’m fine with it.” Claire gulped. “Hey, so I did actually stop by the store to grab some soup and stuff. Are you hungry?”

Lillian simply nodded.

“Rest easy. I’ll have lunch ready soon.” Claire got up and made toward the kitchen to prepare lunch for them both. She shook her head in exasperation. Ian—Lillian must simply be feeling reticent because he was tired and they had just spent an hour dealing with his mom when he should have been resting.

She found Amelia out there waiting for her, leaning against a counter. Heck, she looked almost as tired as Ian did. “Hey Claire, thanks for coming over on such short notice…”

“Of course! I would expect either of you to do the same for me. So what even happened? What caused Ian to become so sick?”

Lia sighed. “It was after we had dinner. I decided, since we basically live together now, I would cook for us both. Half the effort in the long run, right? But he started getting quiet. And an hour after we ate, he collapsed on his side with a growing fever.”

Claire shuddered. “So, you can’t eat anything that’s not from your own side of the mirror without getting sick? Why? That seems like a dumb thing for the magic to do.”

“You’re right, it’s a strange stipulation, but it isn’t a fault of the magic. I had a hunch, so while Ian was resting I did a bit of research. It turns out there’s this whole scientific phenomenon called ‘chirality.’” She held up her hands in front of her. “At a glance, my hands look basically identical, right? But you can tell them apart. I mean, even if you only saw one in isolation, you could tell whether it’s my left or right hand, right?” Claire closed her eyes and imagined a hand floating in space. It was a right hand. But if she put the thumb on the other side, it was a left hand instead. She opened her eyes and nodded to show she understood. “Okay. That’s what’s called its chirality, whether it’s the left- or right-handed version. Every object in the universe has this property, except if it’s perfectly symmetrical, in which case both versions are the same.”

“Huh. Okay. And I’m guessing people aren’t perfectly symmetrical? Like, most of us are right-handed, but there are some left-handed folks, too.”

“Sure. If you’re talking about neurological structure, you could say left-handed people have a different chirality than everyone else. But if we zoom in to the cellular level, based on the molecules we’re made of, humans all share the same chirality. All life on Earth shares the same chirality. And food too, for that matter, since it’s made of living stuff.”

“Huh. So mirrored food is poisonous ‘cause the molecules are all different?”

“Pretty much.” She’d pulled an image of a molecule up on her phone and showed it to her. “Do you recognize this?” She shook her head ‘no.’ “This is glucose. Sugar, a common ingredient in food. Or at least that’s what it looks like to me. What you’re looking at is a molecule that’s… almost nonexistent, on your side of the portal, because plants only produce one chirality of sugar. And animals can only digest that same chirality. Same goes for most fats and proteins.”

“Wow, huh, okay.” She remembered not being able to read the text on Amelia’s phone yesterday because of how it was mirrored, and the same would be true for this image. “So that’s why he was puking it all up, then? But where did the fever come from?”

“I guess when your body detects a sudden surge of an unknown substance, the immune system kicks in.”

“Oh…”

“But it’s alright,” she quickly amended, smiling warmly. “His temperature was already going back down this morning! He should be on his feet in no time!”

“You’re such a dork. And a nerd.”

“Hmmm, yes, I know.” She mimed pushing up the glasses she wasn’t wearing. She giggled and then let out a long, sleepy yawn.

“Go get some sleep, Lia. I’ll keep and eye on… Ian,” she said cautiously. Lillian had apparently decided not to go by that name anymore, but they needed to have a serious talk about it before she’d actually switch his name again. She’d already internalized the change and it was hard to think of him as a girl anymore. “I’m just making us some lunch.”

“Okay. Thanks again for coming over.” She yawned again. “Gosh, I really am tired…” She stepped into a side room, where presumably the portal had been moved to.

 

 

Claire carried two plates, each with a bowl of soup and half a package of saltine crackers. “Could you sit up, sweetie?” She stopped next to the bed.

Lillian drowsily fluttered his eyes open and looked at her. “Claire?” After a few moments he grunted with the effort of sitting up, then scooted back to lean against the headboard.

Claire set a plate with bean and bacon soup on his lap, then went to sit next to him on the other side of the bed with her own tomato soup.

He didn’t start eating, he was just looking at her. “Why are you here?”

“I came here to help fend off your mom,” she replied. “It took like an hour. You were awake the entire time. You don’t remember it?”

He groaned. “All I remember is chilling with Lia in her living room, and then I start feeling weak and lightheaded and pass out. And… I have some scattered memories of bending over the toilet bowl and Lia taking care of me.” His head sank. “She kept apologizing to me for making me sick. I… I don’t know what happened, but I want to tell her that it’s not her fault.”

He had told Claire earlier that he didn’t remember anything from the previous night. And now he was able to remember that, but he couldn’t remember the last few hours? She would be willing to blame that purely on him falling ill, but…

It suddenly clicked. “Ian?”

“Yeah?” he replied.

“I had to use ‘Lillian’ and she / her when talking to your mom. Are you fine with that?”

He winced when he heard the name. “I guess. Because you had to do it. She’s awful, she would never accept me like this. I hate her.” A pause. “I’m glad she never visits, and I only have to deal with her on the holidays. I don’t know if I could take any more than that.”

“Ian, hun, your mom visits like at least once a month. I’d already met her. I know how bad she is.”

He shook his head. “No, she doesn’t, I would remember.”

Claire decided to switch to a different tactic. “Well, if you don’t want to come out to your family, what about at work?”

He ate a cracker before replying. “I feel like there should be reasons not to but I can’t think of any. Like, normally there’s this voice in the back of my head telling me how dumb I’m being and why I should stop.” He chuckled softly. “But screw it. I feel better this way. I want everyone to see me as a man. I dunno, maybe I’m just saying that because I’m only half-awake and none of my anxieties are registering.”

“That’s great, Ian. I’m proud of you for accepting it.”

His stomach rumbled before he could respond, and with a blush he decided to start eating. He blew on a spoonful of soup and Claire joined him.

She finished eating first and so she started filling him in on what she knew of the situation. What Amelia told her in the call, when she arrived, she skipped past the mom part but talked about the chirality theory Lia had, and finally, what Ian had told her earlier: the memories he had had of the day and how he had wanted to be called by his deadname.

He was still processing everything as she brought the dishes out to the kitchen.

She found him laying down and getting comfortable as she came back in. “Want me to turn out the light and let you sleep?”

He nodded. “…And come cuddle.”

Claire smiled. She had been hesitant earlier to get close to him but now she knew his disease wasn’t contagious. She pulled her pants off and climbed into bed next to him in just her shirt, panties and socks. He was laying on his back, and she laid on her side next to him.

“So, from what you told me.” He paused a few moments, the cogs turning in his mind. “It sounds like… I switch between these two personalities. And I’m only now becoming aware of it because the other one isn’t in the background denying everything.”

“It seems like it, yeah,” she said. “You might be on the plural spectrum. If you thought the spectrum of gender identities was hard to grasp, just you wait!” She giggled. “You can be anywhere from a singlet, meaning you always behave the same way, to fully plural: different personalities with different memories. In the middle are medians, who are only slightly distinct or share most of their memories. The members of your system are called alters, and of course they don’t have to be human; some may identify as animals or supernatural beings, and each one usually fulfills its own role as part of the whole—”

Ian put his finger against her lips to shush her. He sighed. “I think that’s enough for now, Claire. I’m tired.”

She giggled again. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll let you rest.” She scooted closer and rested her head on his shoulder, laying an arm over his belly. He hummed contentedly and drifted off. She had to keep herself from vibrating. She just thought plural people were super interesting and fun to interact with and it would be so cool if he turned out to be one.

She tilted her head up to look at his face. He looked so peaceful, so vulnerable. Her heart fluttered a little as she silently vowed to look after him and help him come to terms with his identity.