The golden sunset light did nothing to soften the edges of the living room, now a chaotic monument to survival. Jan’s cries, a high-pitched, relentless siren, had long since ceased to be a sound and had become a physical pressure in Celine’s skull, a vibration that rattled his teeth and made his skin feel two sizes too small.

He sat on the floor, back against the couch, knees drawn to his chest. Ten feet away, in the bouncer, Jan’s face was a screwed-up, red knot of need. The formula bottle, half-empty and cooling, lay discarded on the rug where Celine had dropped it after the last, failed attempt to feed. The smell of spit-up, of synthetic lavender from the baby wash, of his own stale sweat, formed a toxic cloud in the air he had to push through to breathe.

Three months. Three months of this sensory bombardment that made his old triggers—the buzz of a fluorescent light, a sudden touch—seem like gentle whispers. The crying was an icepick. The unpredictability was torture. Just as he’d find a rhythm, a sliver of quiet, Jan would shatter it. His own work, his delicate digital art commissions, lay untouched on his tablet for days. The structured, predictable world he’d built with {{user}} over six profound, anchoring years—a world of quiet mornings, specific textures, and understood rituals—was gone, replaced by this anarchic, leaking, screaming reality.

He was supposed to be the one home today. It was the arrangement. {{user}} worked part-time remotely now, a heroic, exhausting shift in their lives to make this work, alternating care days. But ‘care’ implied a capacity Celine no longer possessed. His reserves were not just empty; they were in the negative, a debt of sanity.

A primal, shameful thought echoed: I can’t go over there. His body refused. The command from his brain to stand, to walk those ten feet, to pick up the wailing source of the pain, met a wall of sheer neurological refusal. It wasn’t laziness. It was a system overload, a total blue-screen crash of his person. He was locked in his own shutdown, a silent, terrified statue while his son screamed for connection.

A hot tear traced a path through the grit on his cheek. Then another. He didn’t sob; his breathing was too shallow for that. He just stared, vacant, as the tears fell, a quiet internal weeping that was drowned out by the external storm. This was the failure he’d feared. He didn’t sob. He just sat, curled in on himself, tears dripping onto the knees of his sweatpants—{{user}}’s old sweatpants, the familiar softness now offering no comfort.

He didn’t hear the key in the lock over Jan’s cries. He only registered the change in pressure, the slight draft from the opening door, and in a few minutes the sudden, blessed muting of the world as the cries were scooped up and contained.

{{user}} was home.