Anyway, I should probably go out and get some food.
I go to grab my jacket when I hear Anna’s weak voice calling from upstairs, “Matt!”
I wince. It can’t be good that my wife just threw up and now she needs me. And of course, she’d have to be upstairs. Now I have to deal with this goddamn stair lift.
“Matt!” she calls again.
Shit. “Coming!”
I wheel myself over to the stair lift. It’s already swiveled out from when I came down the stairs this morning. I transfer my butt into the seat, then move my legs over to the footplate using my arms. I can still (mostly) feel my legs, but I can barely move them at all. My ankles and knees—zip. My hips just a little. But at least my trunk is strong. The lift has a seatbelt but I never bother with it.
I press the button that swivels the chair into position, then flip the switch so that the chair will go up the stairs. And it goes. Very, very slowly. Faster than I could drag myself up the stairs, but not by very much. And the lift is making a suspicious grinding noise, which grows increasingly loud as I ascend the stairs. Louder and louder until…
The lift stops.
This is just fucking great.
“Matt!” Anna calls for the third time.
Hey, honey, remember how you didn’t want to move to a house that was one story because we could just put in a stair lift? Well, I can’t help you right now because this stair lift is a piece of shit.
“Matt!”
Frustrated doesn’t even begin to express how I’m feeling right now. And I’m starting to worry this isn’t just an Anna freak out and something is actually really wrong up there. Maybe it’s not just vomit. Maybe Anna’s bleeding. Maybe she’s lying in the bathroom in a pool of blood and I can’t get to her because of this stupid stair lift.
Okay, to hell with this. I’m getting out.
I scoot forward on the seat and lean forward to put one arm on the nearest stair. I build a little momentum, then transfer myself onto the stairs. Now all I have to do is bump up the remaining stairs one by one. Basically, I lift my butt to the next stair, then pull my legs up after.
“Matt! Please come!”
“I’ll be right there!” I yell back.
Of course, my left leg goes into spasm, as if on cue. As if anything could make this more challenging. But I try my best to go as fast as I can, with a right leg that doesn’t move and a left leg that won’t stop moving. By the time I get to the top of the stairs, the spasm has calmed down, but I’m still on the floor. I’ve got to get from the floor into my chair, which takes me another good two minutes, because it’s not a transfer I do very often. I’m drenched in sweat by the end of it.
My upstairs wheelchair is cheap and shitty. It’s a hospital wheelchair we got on eBay. I would have bought a better one if I’d known how much I’d really be using it. It was good enough until last month, when the left footplate got loose and now my left foot is always sliding off.
But I’m not going to worry about that now. All I can think about is Anna. I’ve got to get to Anna. I’ve got to make sure she’s okay.
Please let her be okay.
Chapter 24: Anna
One of my least favorite things in the world is vomit.
It always has been. One of my earliest memories is of when I was four years old and I woke up during the night with a tummy ache, then proceeded to regurgitate all over my bedspread. Instead of calling for my parents, I just sat there, paralyzed by fear and disgust. It took several minutes before I snapped out of it and started to wail. I suppose I could blame my extreme aversion to vomit on that early experience, but I suspect my OCD probably has something to do it.
And of course, it’s not as if anyone likes vomit. This is one respect in which I am in the majority.
But because I am meticulous about both handwashing and food preparation, I am very rarely ill. Therefore, vomiting has been an incredibly rare occurrence for me. In fact, prior to that night at Lisa’s house, I hadn’t throw up since childhood.
And now it’s every night. Every night. It’s horrible.
Usually I have enough warning that I can make it to the bathroom in plenty of time. But tonight I was angry with Matt for refusing to eat the dinner I had prepared for him, so I ignored my body’s cues. I made it to the bathroom (barely), but not the toilet. I threw up on the floor two feet away from the toilet.
That’s when I fly into a panic. These days, I’m always panicking a little. But this is a full-fledged attack, in which I stare at the vile material on the tiled floor, my head spinning, my breath coming in quick gasps. Even a Xanax wouldn’t be enough, even if that were possible to take.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t clean this up. I can’t even get myself to move. I just keep staring down at the vomit on the floor, my revulsion increasing by the second.
I need my husband. He will fix this for me. He will save me from the vomit.
“Matt!” I call out.
He’s upset at me for cooking the chicken well done tonight, but when I call out his name, I immediately hear him yet out, “I’m coming!”
My panic abates slightly. Matt’s coming. He never lets me down. He’s my hero. What would I do without him?
Although admittedly, if not for him, I wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.
I wait, knowing he won’t be quick. The stairs are a struggle for him, so I don’t expect him to come instantly, but as the seconds and minutes tick by, my fingers start to tingle. I’m worried I might pass out. I try to recite my mantra:
Most germs are not harmful.
My immune system is strong.
I have a husband who loves me very much, and I love him.
Well, that was useless.
By the time he shows up at the bathroom, I have sunk down against the wall and I’m actually on the floor. It’s unthinkable, but my legs couldn’t support me anymore. I know I should leave because the smell is making me feel even worse, but I can’t make myself.
“Matt,” I whisper when I see his face.
Any residual anger from our fight in the kitchen has vanished from his face. His brows knit together and he opens up his arms. “Anna.”
I climb onto his lap, resting my head on his muscular shoulder. It’s so comforting here. I take deep breaths, trying to get control of myself. Matt’s here. It’s okay. I’m okay.
“I made a mess,” I murmur into his shoulder.
He strokes my back gently. “Don’t worry. I’ll clean it up.”
“But it’s vomit.”
“Right. It’s just vomit.”
“I’ll help you.”
“No, you should lie down.”
He doesn’t have to tell me a second time. I climb off his lap and step back so that he can get to the sink. He leans forward so he can (just barely) reach the handle to turn the water on. Which sputters for a few seconds before the stream of water dies.
“Shit,” Matt breathes.
“I think it’s broken,” I say. Probably unnecessarily.
“Yes,” he says tightly. “I agree.
Swearing under his breath, Matt backs up to look under the sink and I wince when his wheels go through vomit. I cover my face, unable to watch. We were having some issues with the sink a few days ago, and I usually call my brother-in-law Jake for repair issues, but Matt insisted he could fix it. I had never thought of him as being particularly handy, but I was willing to let him have a shot.
“I don’t know what I did wrong,” he mumbles, peering down at the pipes.
“We should have called Jake,” I say.
He shoots me a look over his shoulder. “Yeah, well…”
“I can call him now.”
“He’s probably eating dinner.”
“He’ll come.”
Matt straightens up and looks around the bathroom, crinkling his nose when he realizes his wheels are streaked with vomit. “We’ve got to clean this up first.”
“Yeah.” I take a deep breath, trying not to l
ose the calm I regained when Matt came in. Now that he’s here, I can deal with this. “I’ll go get a bucket of water from downstairs. And a mop.”
He nods. “Okay.”
It takes us about an hour to get the bathroom cleaned. Matt does most of the work, but I fetch him several buckets full of water from downstairs and wring out the mop in the kitchen sink when it’s necessary. I also stand there for moral support. At the end, he transfers from his wheelchair to the toilet seat so that he can wipe down the wheels of his chair. He really does his best, and by the end of it, there’s no trace of vomit in the bathroom. I can’t smell it at all.
“Thank you,” I say to him.
He looks up at me and smiles. “Jake should be here soon. Why don’t you go lie down?”
I nod. “I told Jake to use his key to let himself in so you don’t have to go downstairs.”
I noticed the stair lift stalled halfway between the top and the bottom. He didn’t tell me it was broken, but it was obvious. That thing is always breaking. I know Matt hates it.
We should move. We need to move. But I just can’t deal with that right now.
Chapter 25: Matt
Anna’s sister always jokes that Jake and I have a bromance going, and I wouldn’t say that’s entirely inaccurate. I always wanted a brother, and Jake is great—really great. I wouldn’t say we have any kind of deep relationship, but it’s fun to shoot the shit with him or watch football or basketball on TV. We went to a football game a few months ago and had a great time, in spite of a few accessibility glitches. Jake has been bugging me to go camping with him, but I wasn’t a “roughing it” kind of guy before, and the thought of going camping now very frankly scares the shit out of me, so I’ve been making excuses.
When I hear the front door open and Jake coming into our house, I feel a rush of relief. Jake’s a great handyman. He’s a mechanic, so he’s best with cars (let me tell you what a relief it is to not have to worry about getting ripped off by the local mechanic anymore), but he’s good at fixing things around the house too. He just likes that kind of stuff.
Jake had been fixing stuff around Anna’s house for years before I moved in. He’d be happy to keep doing it, but the truth is, I found it emasculating to have another guy come in and fix stuff for us. It’s bad enough I can’t walk, but I wanted to at least man up and fix the bathroom sink. So I read some articles and tried to do it.
Obviously, it didn’t go so good.
Jake scales the steps to the second floor, casting a quick glance at the stair lift stalled in the middle. He’s at the top in ten seconds, his tool box clutched in his right hand. Jake’s even got a cool toolbox. It’s black with a rust-colored handle and looks it’s taken a lot of beating. My tool box is half the size and shiny new.
“Broken sink?” he asks me.
I nod. “I tried to fix it myself, but…”
Jake puts his toolbox down on the floor of the bathroom and crouches down on the floor to take a look at the pipes. That’s another thing—it’s easier for him to get into position to fix the plumbing than it is for me. Not that I can’t get out of my wheelchair and be on the floor like he is now, but it’s harder. I can’t get on my knees the way he’s doing. My leverage is shit.
“I know Anna must’ve gone nuts when she couldn’t get the water going,” Jake says as he digs around in his toolbox. He retrieves an impressive-looking wrench.
“Yeah, you don’t know half of it,” I tell him. “She had just thrown up all over the floor.”
Jake bursts out laughing. “Oh shit. She must’ve lost it.”
“Pretty much.”
Again, I feel a twinge of… well, I don’t know. Not jealousy. It’s not like I’d ever trade Anna for Lisa in a million years. But… I mean, it’s got to be easier to be married to someone who doesn’t have a freak out over every little speck of dirt.
As if reading my mind, Jake says, “Honestly, I wish we had some of Anna’s cleanliness at our place. Lisa has gone out of control in the other direction. Yesterday I told her I felt like I was living in a garbage dump.”
“Your place always looks okay,” I say. I’m being slightly kind. Their house is usually on the side of messy, but it’s not out of control. Last time I visited Calvin’s house, it was so bad, I had trouble wheeling through the living room because there was so much junk.
“Right, because when you come, we clean for like two hours.” Jake snorts. “If we didn’t, Anna wouldn’t set foot in that pigsty. And you wouldn’t be able to wheel two feet. I hate it.”
It’s the first negative thing I ever heard Jake say about his wife. I don’t bash Anna in front of him and he doesn’t talk about Lisa. Somehow it always made me think they have a perfect marriage.
“So, listen,” Jake says as he unscrews something below my sink. I can’t really see what he’s doing anymore, but I assume he knows his stuff. “Your sink breaks again, call me right away. Don’t worry about bothering me. Really. I’ve been fixing this sink since before you knew Anna.”
“I wanted to see if I could do it,” I say defensively.
“Yeah, and look what happened.” He lifts his face to grin at me. “Look, if my computer broke, I wouldn’t mess with around with it. I’d ask you for help. And when your pipes break, you call me.”
“Well, thanks,” I say.
“Hey, what are brothers-in-law for?” He ducks his head down to go back to work on the pipes. “And I’ll take a look at that stair lift too, if you want.”
“That would be great. But I think it might be beyond salvage.”
“Yeah, you gotta get a new one. Or better yet—move.”
I glance at the direction of the bedroom. The door is closed. “Anna isn’t too excited about moving right now. I don’t think I can do it to her.”
“Right, except…” His voice becomes more hollow as he disappears further under the sink. “What are you going to do when you have a baby? You going to carry the baby up the stairs in the stair lift?”
“No…” I don’t know how I’d even do that. I can’t make a transfer while holding a baby.
“Is the baby going to sleep upstairs?” he presses me. “Because you don’t have a lot of room down here.”
“Yeah…” These are all great points. “Maybe you’re right.”
Maybe I’ll call a real estate agent myself. I’ll look at some houses on my own and wait until I’ve found the perfect house before I drag Anna into it. Maybe we’ll buy the new house, and we can keep both houses for a short time while we transition. We have enough money to do it. Neither of us spend much money, so we’ve got plenty of savings.
But I don’t want to look at houses without Anna.
“Okay, I think I got it fixed,” Jake says as he emerges from under the sink.
“Wow, that was quick,” I comment as I back up my chair to give him room. My left foot slides off that goddamn broken footrest though and skids along the floor. “Shit.”
Jake laughs. “You want me to fix your chair too?”
“Uh, if you don’t mind.”
Damn, I wish I’d paid more attention in shop class at school. Who knew that stuff would end up being useful?
Chapter 26: Anna
Men like large breasts.
I have noted that this is a characteristic common to all men. Even those men such as my husband, who do not obsess over this piece of anatomy, do not find large breasts unattractive. When we were at Luciano’s one night, we had a waitress with particularly large breasts and I could see Matt’s eyes automatically go to them like a magnet, even though he quickly looked away. I suspect it has to do with evolution—large breasts guarantee adequate sustenance for a baby, to carry on the species.
My genetics have not blessed me with large breasts, which I always took as confirmation that I was poorly suited for motherhood. I wear an A-cup. There are men out there who have larger breasts than I do.
However, an expected bonus to my pregnancy is my breasts have enlarged significantly. I am now
spilling out of my A-cups. And as I am preparing myself for bed tonight—the first night in two weeks when I haven’t had to throw up—I notice something incredible: I have cleavage. For the first time, I can press my breasts together and form that attractive line between them.
I come out of the bathroom, remembering at the last moment to pull my housecoat closed. Matt is getting undressed for bed, unbuttoning the blue shirt he wore to work this morning—he sleeps in boxer shorts only. He pulls his shirt off and I take a second to admire the muscles in his chest, shoulders, and arms. His chest is what most women would refer to as sexy. This, too, I suppose, is evolutionary. I am attracted to a man who is strong and muscular, and therefore able to defend me from predators.
But I’m not thinking about evolution at this moment. Only that my husband is extremely attractive.
“Hi,” he says as he becomes aware of me watching him.
“Hi,” I reply.
“What’s up?”
I smile, remembering my revelation from the bathroom. “Guess what? I have cleavage!”
For a moment, Matt seems perplexed. Then he bursts out laughing. “Do you?”
“I do!” I pull open my housecoat and show him how when I shrug my shoulders together, the line forms between my breasts. “You see?”
“I sure do.” He grins and grabs me, pulling me into his lap. I laugh, feeling happy my nausea has abated. “Can I confirm this for myself?”
I run my hand over the taut muscles of his shoulder. “I suppose you may.”
That night, Matt spends a lot of time confirming my cleavage. While I do not much enjoy pregnancy thus far, I have to confess there are some parts of it I will miss.
Chapter 27: Anna
Things that are not safe to do while pregnant:
1. Eat raw fish (whether sushi or unintentionally undercooked). Or fish with a high level of mercury. Or smoked fish. Or really, any fish, just to be safe.
Baby Crazy (Matt & Anna Book 2) Page 10
