We can’t eat this food.
“Anna?” Matt says.
I swallow. I can’t tell my husband I need to throw out our lunches. He’ll think I’ve totally lost my mind. But we can’t eat them! We’ll certainly get sick.
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is…
Oh, to hell with it. I’m not eating this food.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Matt as I pull the paper bag containing our sandwiches from the fridge. “These sandwiches are no good and I need to throw them away.”
“What?” He’s staring at me in a way I haven’t seen in years.
“I’m sorry,” I say again as I toss the sandwiches in the garbage. I shake them out of the bag first, just so Matt will not attempt to convince me to salvage them. As if I would ever consider eating food out of a garbage can.
“I don’t understand…” He shakes his head. “What was wrong with the sandwiches?”
I imagine myself explaining about the refrigerator to him and know what he’ll think. He’ll explain to me in that patient way of his that the sandwiches were wrapped in a bag and are therefore safe to eat. But I don’t want to hear his “logical” explanation. I can see with my own eyes that the fridge is contaminated.
“They’re just no good,” I say finally.
He scratches at his head. “So… what are we supposed to eat?”
Good question. There’s a café downstairs, but I don’t go near it ever since I actually witnessed one of the employees going to the bathroom without washing her hands. To my horror, Matt is still willing to eat there, even now that he is privy to that piece of information.
“I’m going to go home,” I say.
“Go home?”
Why is that so shocking? We live only about twenty minutes away—perhaps half an hour in lunchtime traffic. “Yes. Do… do you want to come?”
I wish he would come. I love having lunch with Matt. I miss him on days when I eat alone.
But he shakes his head, a crease between his eyebrows. “No, I’ll just grab something in the café. I’ve got a lot of work to do today. And there’s a meeting at one.”
I didn’t expect him to say yes, but I’m still disappointed. There’s part of me that wants to throw caution to the wind and join him downstairs at the café. Or maybe at a nearby restaurant where I didn’t see an employee practicing unsanitary bathroom hygiene.
But I can’t do it. My brain won’t allow me to have a nice lunch with my husband today. My brain isn’t allowing me a choice.
I just hope I can hold back the tears until I’m inside my car. I don’t want the girls in reception to see me crying on my way out—they already make fun of me behind my back as is.
Chapter 13: Matt
I’m worried about Anna.
Anna used to have a phobia of the work refrigerator. She use to be afraid to even touch it, much less put her food inside it. We used to talk about it all the time. Don’t laugh, but I even bought a petri dish with culture material and put it in a paper bag inside the fridge to show there was no growth in a twenty-four hour period. I thought it was the petri dish that convinced Anna the fridge was okay. But apparently not—it was her meds.
She’s off all her regular meds now, and I’ve been noticing changes in her. She washes her hands a lot more. She cleans more. She’s started calling me on the phone again from the bedroom so I can check to make sure all the doors are locked and the oven is off. Yesterday morning, I caught her scrubbing the pushrims of my wheelchair with bleach, and the fumes were making me dizzy the whole day.
And now she’s thrown out our lunches.
If she had just tossed the paper bag in the trash, I absolutely would have eaten the sandwich out of the trash. She must have guessed that. Instead, I have to eat at the stupid café with that cashier who doesn’t wash her hands after using the bathroom. Or maybe I can convince Cal to go somewhere with me, since Anna took the damn car home.
While I’m trying to figure out what to do next, a receptionist named Nicole breezes into the breakroom. When she sees me sitting there, her face breaks into a grin. “Hey, Matt!”
I return her smile. “Hey, Nicole.”
I’m not going to lie—Nicole is attractive. She’s got a great body with big but not too big tits and shiny blond hair. What can I say—I’m a sucker for blondes. Not that I would ever cheat on Anna in a million years. I’m not some kind of asshole who cheats on his wife—never. But it’s fun to look at Nicole. I’m only human.
I have no delusions that someone as attractive as Nicole would ever be interested in me, even if I weren’t married. I’m not one of those handsome, suave guys who’s dripping with charisma. That’s just not me. And let’s face it—the chair doesn’t do me any favors. I was dealing with my disability for a few years before Anna and I hooked up, and it didn’t make the dating scene more fun. In any case, it’s a relief to know that when Nicole flirts with me, it’s one-hundred percent harmless.
“Don’t you and Anna usually have lunch around now?” Nicole asks as she pours herself a cup of coffee. I can’t help but notice she doesn’t rinse out her coffee cup, even though it’s been sitting in the cabinet all weekend, probably collecting dust. I wouldn’t have noticed something like that years ago, before Anna, but now it actually bothers me a little bit. I think my wife may be rubbing off on me.
“She, um…” I don’t want to tell Nicole about how Anna threw out our lunches and ran off. That’s nobody’s business but ours. “She was busy, so… it’s just me.”
Nicole shrugs. “Well, a bunch of us are getting takeout from Chipotle. You interested?”
“Count me in,” I say. I haven’t eaten at Chipotle in a long time. Anna had some story about how a rat was spotted in a Chipotle, but it wasn’t our Chipotle. It was just a random Chipotle somewhere on the west coast.
Nicole takes a sip of her coffee, eying me above her cup. Shit, she’s wearing a lot of mascara. She’s very sexy—Calvin is always making comments about her. “Your collar is crooked,” she says.
I blink up at her. “Huh?”
“Here…” She takes a step toward me, and before I know what’s happening, her slender fingers are on my collar, straightening it out for me. Her dark purple fingernails brush against my neck as she does it. Then she adjusts my tie, running her fingers briefly over the fabric. She bends down just enough for me to inadvertently catch an eyeful of her cleavage before I quickly look away. “Much better.”
If I were single, this would have been very sexy—I might have wondered if maybe there was a chance she really was interested in me. I probably would have gone for it. Because… well, why not?
But I’m not single. I’m very married. So I wheel myself back a foot, safely away from her grasp, and mumble, “Thanks.”
“You know,” she says, “if you’re not into Chipotle, we could go together to the bar a few blocks away and grab burgers.”
She’s not hitting on me. I’m sure of it. Like I said, she knows I’m married, and second, she’s miles out of my league. Even before I had the wheels, she would have been out of my league. Still, even if it’s innocent, I don’t think Anna would like me having lunch alone with an attractive young receptionist. If situations were reversed, I’d go nuts if I found out Anna was having lunch alone with an attractive guy.
“No, Chipotle sounds great,” I say. “Let me look at the menu and I’ll tell you what I want.”
I just hope Anna’s okay.
Chapter 14: Matt
Four months later
Anna has been cleaning my car for the last hour.
In the last few months, she’s gotten increasingly anxious about our cars. We work at the same place and always used to carpool together, but now we take separate cars because she thinks my car is too dirty, and she doesn’t want my wheelchair scuffing up the backseat of her car. For a while, I was letting her put my wheelchair in the trunk, but now she gets anxious about even touching the wheels. We had one very tense morni
ng when my chair was in the trunk and she made me sit there for nearly half an hour, trying to coax her to bring me the goddamn chair. I was this close to lowering myself out of the car and dragging my ass to the trunk to do it myself when—thank fucking God—she finally did it. After that, we decided it was better to take separate cars for the sake of my sanity.
But today we’re going to Anna’s sister’s house for dinner and it would be ridiculous to show up in two cars. Lisa and Jake know Anna’s got issues, but I don’t want them to see how bad it’s gotten lately.
Anna has been off her meds for six months. That’s how long we’ve been trying for a baby. She really likes using her ovulation kit and charting her cycles, but the point of this is not to make elaborate graphs and charts. The point is to make a baby, and so far, we’ve been unsuccessful.
At our age, six months is the point when we go to a specialist to figure out why I can’t knock up my wife. But I’m already one step ahead of that. I already see a urologist, so before we even started trying, I got a sperm count to see if I was shooting blanks. Given all my medical issues, it made sense to check.
Thank God, my sperm count was okay. Not rip-roaring amazing, but in the normal range. My urologist told me I’d be fine. That said, my sensation below the belt is not what it used to be pre-MS. Sometimes I can’t ejaculate, which means all that great sperm isn’t going anywhere. We’ve had a few very frustrating sex sessions where Anna was ovulating, but I just couldn’t climax for anything.
The next step is for Anna to get herself checked out. And then we can try intrauterine insemination. And if that doesn’t work, we may have to go the test tube baby route.
It’s all really romantic.
But none of this is relevant because Anna will apparently be cleaning my car till the day we die.
“Anna.” I wheel around to the passenger side of my Toyota, where Anna is using a dust buster to clean the seat. I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s already done this at least once. “We’re going to be late.”
“I don’t know how you let your car get so dirty,” Anna retorts.
I tighten my fingers on the pushrims of my chair. My car isn’t dirty. It’s extremely clean. And right now, it’s beyond extremely clean.
“It’s good enough,” I say. “Come on, we have to go.”
She shakes her head. “Five more minutes.”
“Anna…” I clench my jaw, remembering she went off her meds for me. For us. So we could have a child together. This isn’t her fault.
In the end, I have to nearly pry the dust buster out of her hands. As I take it from her, I wince when I see her palms are bleeding. That used to happen to her years ago from all the times she washed her hands, but it stopped.
Now I see her hands bleeding all the time. It’s as bad as it ever was.
“Maybe we should take separate cars,” Anna says thoughtfully, as she hesitates in front of my car.
I push away the urge to shake her. “Anna, please get in the car.”
“It’s not that big a deal, is it?” She squeezes her hands together, her blue eyes wide. “We could take two cars. It’s not very far.”
“Just get in the car.”
“I could park a block away so Lisa and Jake won’t realize we took two cars and—”
“Anna, get in the fucking car!”
She stares at me, startled. I never yell at her like that. I can’t believe I did it. I know she can’t help the way she’s acting, but it’s gotten so out of control the last couple of months that it’s starting to wear on me. It makes me feel like the Anna I married is disappearing.
In any case, the yelling works. Anna climbs into the car, but she’s shaking and she won’t look at me during the drive to her sister’s house. If we don’t make a baby soon, I’m scared we could end up divorced. I never would have thought it could happen to me and Anna, but at this moment, it doesn’t seem impossible.
Shit.
I glance over at her while we’re stopped at a red light. I see tears in her eyes, but they’re just staying there, not falling. She’s trying so hard to keep it together.
I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I want my wife back. I wanted a child so badly, but it’s not worth this price. I didn’t think I’d lose Anna so quickly. I knew the meds were doing their job, but I thought all those years of therapy were worth something too. I thought me being there for her was worth something. I didn’t think she’d regress like this.
And that’s when I decide:
We’re not going to have kids. Anna needs to go back on her meds. I want my wife back.
Chapter 15: Anna
I spend the entire drive to Lisa’s house trying not to cry.
Matt doesn’t yell. Ever. He gets upset at times, but he always keeps his temper with me. It’s one thing I love about him, because—let’s face it—everyone else in the world has lost their temper with me. I am a frustrating person to deal with.
Over the last six months, all the symptoms I believed were gone—well, not gone but at least improved—have returned. Every single one of them. If anything, I’m worse than I was before. I chant to myself that I’m being illogical, that if the cleanliness of the work breakroom didn’t bother me before, it shouldn’t bother me now. But it doesn’t keep me from breaking out in a cold sweat every time I enter the breakroom. I can’t keep my lunch in the refrigerator, that’s for sure.
As for Matt, I’ve seen him become more and more exasperated with me. Even though these symptoms are not new for me, he did not live with me prior to my starting medication. He never had to deal with me on a daily basis. It is difficult for him. And then today he cracked.
I knew it was coming. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
The worst part is even though I feel horrible about him yelling at me, I can’t stop thinking about how dirty Matt’s car is during the entire ride. It was awful, really. He literally had crumbs of food on the passenger seat. Crumbs of food! God knows how long the crumbs had been there. Oh, and tire marks because he puts his wheelchair in the passenger seat when he drives. Even though I cleaned it out, I really would have loved the car to have a day to completely air out before I had to ride in it. If Matt hadn’t yelled at me, I would have grabbed some paper towels from the kitchen to cover the seat.
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is strong.
I have a husband who loves me very much, and I love him.
I really wish I had those paper towels.
Maybe I should ask him to go back so I could get them. But no, he probably won’t do that. And we’re almost there.
Matt is quiet during the drive too. He barely says a word as he gets his wheelchair out of the back seat and transfers back into it. The back seat of his car now has all the tire marks back that I cleaned off. I’ve been working really hard to keep Matt’s wheelchair clean, but it’s literally impossible. I now wash the cover to his wheelchair cushion nearly every night because he has to sit on that thing all day, and I clean out the little nooks and crannies with Lysol and I bought a toothbrush to help do the job. But the tires—they are always dirty. Always!
I suggested he leave his usual chair on the porch and use the spare chair around the house. Not that the spare is so great, but at least it hasn’t been outdoors. Matt didn’t like that idea though.
But Lisa doesn’t seem to care that Matt is going to make tire marks all over her floor. She hugs him when she sees him, even though she hasn’t hugged me for at least a decade. She likes him a lot. She said to me once, “I was always sure you were going to marry some weirdo. Glad you didn’t.” My parents like him too. If Matt and I ever got divorced, they’d probably all keep in touch with him over me.
“Hey, Matt!” My brother-in-law Jake comes out from the back with a big grin on his face. Even though Jake is a mechanic whose hands are permanently etched in grime, it’s hard not to like him. I would have had a nervous breakdown years ago if he didn’t come by any time I needed something fixed
in my home. Still, I wish he wouldn’t shake hands with Matt, because Matt might touch me. “Hey, Anna. What’s going on? Knocked up yet?”
I cringe and instinctively touch my belly. Matt and I have been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for six months now. Somehow it does not surprise me that we have failed at this. Both our bodies have failed us in so many ways—why not this too?
“Not yet,” Matt says in a flat voice that doesn’t sound like him.
Jake shrugs. “Don’t worry, it’ll happen. It took Lisa and me two years of trying to get pregnant with Luke.”
Two years. Oh God. I don’t think I could do this for two years.
Jake leads Matt into the living room, where he’s got some sort of sports game on the television. I don’t know how Matt could be interested in something so insipid, but somehow, he is. Luke is sitting on the couch and he’s eating crayons. The child is literally eating crayons—he has a blue and a red in his mouth and now he’s pulling a yellow from the orange Crayola box so he can ingest all of the primary colors to create the full spectrum of the rainbow within his belly.
I rush over to my nephew and crouch down beside him. “Luke, you don’t eat crayons.”
I expect Jake to interrupt and tell me not to worry about it, but he doesn’t. He simply watches us, an amused look on his face. Meanwhile, Luke stuffs the yellow into the cushions of the couch and pulls a carnation pink from the box. My stomach turns just from watching him. “I like pink,” he says.
Well, that’s beside the point. “Right, for coloring. But not for eating.”
Luke looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
I hold out my hand to him. “Luke, give me the crayons in your mouth.”
He pulls the two crayons from his mouth, sticky with saliva, and places them in my waiting hand. I glance at Matt and see a smile twitching at his lips. He probably thinks it’s hilarious that I have Luke’s spit all over me. But I won’t have my nephew ingesting a combination of wax and color pigment.
Baby Crazy (Matt & Anna Book 2) Page 6
