by Marilyn Grey
"I don't understand. One minute we were texting and the next you...."
He looked at me blankly.
"You crashed your car?"
"That's what they say. I'm lucky in many ways. It could have been much worse and my brain damage is minimal, although it's hard to tell because of my physical ability."
"Brain damage?"
"Traumatic Brain Injury from the accident. When I got out of the hospital I wanted to contact you, but Jane..." He closed his eyes. "I didn't want you to lose your life and dreams because of me."
"Alistair." I took his hand again. "I thought you hated me. I thought you were ignoring me because of a dumb argument we had. I wish you told me. I wish I had known. I would've been right here with you from the start." I kissed his hand. "I had no way to know. No way to find you."
"Jane, I'm sorry. I know how you feel about being abandoned, but I—"
"Stop it." I placed my finger over his lips. "Stop apologizing."
"I can't take care of you anymore. I need therapists and caretakers and I have so many—"
"Please stop."
"I'm not a man anymore, Jane. I'm not who I used to be. I want better for you."
"Shut up." I sobbed into his hand. "You are the best, do you hear me? Just stop saying that ... that rubbish."
He moved his fingers toward my chin and ran them up my jaw, back down to my lips, and held them there as we looked at each other through tear-filled eyes. He was right. He was different. And from what I knew of brain injuries personalities and memories could often be distorted too, but he was still the man I wanted. The one I needed. The one single soul out of six billion that I couldn't live without. He was still my Alistair. And I loved him. So much.
Chapter 56
For the next hour Alistair told me what he remembered before the accident, which wasn't everything, but quite a bit. He told me that he couldn't remember the accident itself at all or waking up in the hospital, but he slowly regained his ability to remember bits and pieces as he recovered. He had surgery and a lot of occupational and speech therapy and quickly went from a wheelchair to a walker. When he described the pain he went through and still endured I wanted to take it away from him. Go back in time and tell him I loved him instead of getting upset. Or at the very least I wished I told him not to text and drive. Instead I texted him. I was part of this. And I wanted to take it all away, give his pain to myself, anything to make him feel better.
He explained all of the logistics. His injury types, which for the life of me I couldn't remember no matter how much I tried, and his prospective healing and treatment plans. Doctors believed he could one day regain all mobility with hard work, but it would take time and patience that he often didn't feel like he had. He still had feeling in his ... lower region. So he could go to the bathroom without the embarassment of needing help. And although he lost a lot of function on one side of his body, it was mostly in his arm and it wasn't completely gone. He could feel hot and cold and move his fingers. He could also move his leg, but with the help of a walker.
When he stood and showed me how well he could get around it took all I had not to cry. We were so young. He was so full of life and we didn't have enough time to enjoy the bliss of falling in love before dealing with such a difficult obstacle. As he pushed his walker back to the couch I found myself torn between trying to help and letting him feel like he could do it without help and I wondered where I fit in now. Where I belonged in his life. Try to take care of him or love him as he struggled? Both?
How could I go back home and leave him here?
So many thoughts ran through my head, but more than anything I wanted to rewind. I just wanted to turn the hands back and change that one conversation. Maybe things would have been different.
"Carpe diem," I said as he sat back on the couch, looking majorly tired from his brief walk across the room and back.
He tried to smile. "Carpe diem."
I sat beside him and pulled my shirt down to reveal the tattoo. "I found your gift after ... after the accident. This is what I got."
He nodded and held my knee. "I'm so sorry. I wish I could—"
"I told you to stop apologizing."
"We can't be together, Jane." His eyes darkened and he turned his gaze toward the ground. "Perhaps if I get better, but not now."
"Alistair. We are together. We never stopped being together just because we were apart. Let me ask you this ... did you think of me?"
"You know I did." He refused to look at me. "You're all I've thought about. It's the one thing that's kept me going."
"Don't push me away because of this. I can't live without you. I can't deal with the feeling I had the last few months, thinking you were dead or with someone else or who knows what else."
"You deserve better. You know that. My short-term memory is terrible. If I go for a car ride I forget the street name before we turn on the next one. I'm always misplacing things and I'm not always happy. Sometimes I can be a bit crabby and angry and it nearly seems out of my control." He finally looked at me, but quickly reverted his gaze. "I just can't put you through this."
"I live in another country. Let's just take it one day at a time. Let's talk like we used to. Every night, okay? I'll visit as much as I can."
"I won't be able to provide for you as my wife. It's like you said before, why start something you can't finish?"
"We already started." I held his face in my hands. "And I'm gonna finish."
"What about—"
"The store is nowhere near as important to me as you. Not even close."
"What if I can't work again? What if it's always like this?"
"Carpe diem. One day at a time. Forget tomorrow, Alistair. We have today. We have right now."
"You're inspired now, but when it gets difficult you will be miserable. You need a husband, Jane. Not a child."
"Would you please stop telling me what I need? I know what I need and it's you. We can make it. I know we can." I cuddled into his shoulder and kissed his arm.
He breathed deeply and touched the scar on his neck. I knew he didn't want me to see him like this. I knew he felt like giving up. Letting me go along with the idea of ever having a normal life. But I didn't believe in giving up. And I wasn't about to let him do that to himself.
"Why do we fall, Bruce?" I whispered, hoping to see if he remembered the next line of Alfred's wise words to Bruce Wayne.
Alistair closed his eyes and breathed in. Then out. Silence hovered between us for a few minutes, then finally he touched my hand and whispered, "So we can learn to pick ourselves up."
Chapter 57
When Alistair and I fell asleep on his couch it didn't cross my mind that his mother could walk in before we woke up, but that's exactly what happened. And let's just say she wasn't happy. We woke to the sound of her cursing and throwing her hands in the air in front of us.
Before my brain caught up with everything, Alistair was explaining what happened in a very loud, agitated tone. A tone I had never heard from him.
"You need to get on," she said to me. "I don't care who you are."
"Mum," he said sternly. "If she leaves, I leave."
"Mm, right. And where exactly might you go?"
"Dad's. Like I wanted to from the start."
"I'd like to see that." She waved her finger at me. "Who do you think you are coming in here and kicking his—"
"She didn't kick her out. I did. I wanted to be with Jane."
His mom left in a huff and stormed up the stairs, cursing until we could no longer make out the words. Alistair used his more functional arm to pull himself up into a straighter sitting position. "I need to use to the loo," he said shyly. "Don't fret about Mum. She's cheesed off because her boyfriend couldn't handle me being here and left her."
"Not exactly how I imagined the first meeting," I said.
"No." He shook his head sadly. "Not at all. This entire thing is just bloody awful."
"Is there anything I can do for you?
Right now, I mean?"
He reached for his walker. "I can manage." He pulled himself up and I got the impression he was struggling to show me that he was still a man inside.
Don't cry, Jane. He needs you to be strong.
"Alistair?" I said as he forced himself to his feet and looked down at me with those struggle-glossed eyes. "You can do this. You're going to overcome this."
"No, Jane," he said. "We are. We're going to do this."
When he came back from the bathroom almost thirty minutes later, he told me that no one ever told him that he would overcome it. They always said it was a "possibility." When I said that to him he felt something inside of himself click. Like a light switch had been turned back on after a long, lonely spell of darkness.
We embraced in odd positions, but comfortably, for five minutes and then his mother walked back in.
"I'm sorry," she said to me, reaching out her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Jane. All this time I thought Alistair had imagined you while in a coma."
I shook her hand as my entire body flushed with warmth. "Oh, yes. I'm real."
"I've never met someone actually named Jane Austen."
"Mum, please."
She rolled her eyes at him and put her hands on her hips. "We need to get your bath ready now."
"I'll take a bath when I bloody well feel like it," he snapped.
I gazed toward the floor, pretending and hoping not to notice the tension rising between them.
She exhaled loudly as he adjusted himself on the couch. I really wanted to stay the night with him, but definitely didn't see that happening in her house. Problem is ... I didn't want to say goodbye again. Ever.
"You can't sit here with your little mate and act like everything is normal."
"Mum, I said—"
"No, Alistair. This is my house and you haven't appreciated a thing I've done. I'm losing my life because of you and I'm exhausted. Do you expect me to let this girl sleep in your bed tonight? You need help and assistance and this is too much for you right now."
"If you don't stop, I'm going to leave."
"Over a girl?" She tossed her head back and laughed. "Give her a few months and she'll give up on you."
He grabbed a tea cup from the table and flung it by her head. It crashed against the wall and slid to the floor in dozens of pieces. She gasped. Her brow lowered and her knuckles whitened as they rolled into fists. Alistair stared at her with a steady locked jaw and serious eyes.
"I'm only speaking the truth," she continued to dig her grave. "What sort of pretty young girl like this would want to be with a cripple?"
"This one!" I stood, my stomach whirling about and my blood on fire. Alistair tried to pull my hand back to the couch, but I yanked it up and shoved it in the air between his mom and me. "I want him. I don't look at him and see what you see. I see..." I turned my face toward him and looked into his eyes as I said, "I see the person I want to spend my life with and when I look at you"—I faced her again—"I wonder what kind of nasty mother says such horrible things about her own child."
She stepped toward me, then stepped back. "If you don't leave within two minutes I'm goin—" She broke down and fell to her knees, sobbing into Alistair's pants. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
What. The. Hell. Seriously?
He shoved his foot at her. "Get up, Mum. I'm not playing this game again. I'm going to Dad's." He looked up at me. "Can you take me to my Dad's?"
"No!" she screamed and shot back to her feet. "It's dangerous. I will not allow it. Does she know how depressed you've been? Practically sleeping all day for months?"
"I've been depressed because I missed her, but I feel a bit better having seen her and now you—"
"Does she know that I had to change your diaper early on? Would she do that?"
I wanted to raise my hand and say, "She is standing right here, you know?" But I didn't.
"Mum, I'm going to say this as nice as I possibly can," he paused, then wrinkled his forehead and screamed at the top of his lungs, "Get the fuck away from me!"
"I will not allow it. See, you're unable to manage your emotions. No. You're staying here. You need my help. Your father doesn't know the—"
"I am not a fucking baby! Yes, my fucking arm feels like jelly, but I'm not a baby and I'm bloody tired of you thinking I need you every second of the day. I can do more if you just let me." He hid his face with his hand. "And stop talking to my girlfriend like that."
She looked at him, then me, and started to speak, but decided not to.
Whew.
I clasped my hands in front of me and sucked in air. "Yeah. Oh, um, okay..." I rubbed my necklace and swept the Batman charm up and down the chain. "Um, so..."
"Go away, Mum," he said, hand still covering his eyes. "I'm sorry, but go away."
She dropped her hands to her sides and looked at me like she expected me to rescue her from the grave she dug. And I guess I felt sorry for her because I tried to reach out for her arm to tell her it would all settle down soon. But she scowled at me and rushed out the front door, screeching tires against asphalt as she drove away. You'd think perhaps Alistair's situation would've caused her to buckle up and drive like a normal human being, but I suppose love, even love of our own selves, makes us a little crazy sometimes.
I knew all about that.
Though I hoped to never become a nutcase.
Chapter 58
I walked beside Alistair as he went to his room to pack his things.He fumbled around with one hand as he tried to gather some of his stuff, then he lifted his pillow and pulled out a picture of ... me. He seemed like he was trying to hide it, tucking it behind him to keep it from my view.
"What are you doing?" I said.
He turned and shrugged.
"You put my picture under your pillow?"
"No. Well, sort of. I keep it there and put it on the other pillow when I can't sleep." He sighed. "I'm sorry if that—"
"Shhh..." I stepped closer and gently wrapped my arms around him, worried I might hurt him. "No. More. Apologizing."
The walker was cold against my lower stomach, keeping us from fully embracing. He lifted his left arm and placed his hand on my hip, then ... his right arm lifted. It wasn't much. But it was something.
"You still smell like you," he whispered into my hair.
I so badly wanted to kiss him like we did the last time. Walls, tree houses, baths, suddenly they all seemed like distant memories and an intense feeling of mourning came over me. That part of us was gone. Or at least temporarily gone. The conversation we had before came to mind. The time he held me in the middle of the night and I asked if it would always feel like that. He said it will change and be new every time. Like falling in love all over again.
I felt that now.
He sat on his bed and rummaged through a drawer in the night stand. I thought of his mother, albeit a little looney, and how I was raised to never go to bed angry.
"Maybe you should stay here," I said, hoping he wouldn't yell at me like he did to Emma and his mom. "I mean, it's going to be hard to transition to your dad's house and your mom's right. She knows the stuff you need."
He continued sorting through papers in the drawer.
"Alistair, our last conversation wasn't a good one. Not terrible, but not the best. Imagine if something happened to your mom right now. You'd feel so bad."
He stopped. "What was our conversation?"
"Us?"
He nodded.
"We hadn't talked in a few days. We were both getting upset about it and just not handling it well. Then you got in your car and we were texting and that was it."
"What did you do?"
"I don't know." I sat beside him. "I feel weird talking about it. You'll think I'm a psycho."
He laughed.
He ... laughed.
He actually just laughed.
I wanted to hear it again. To see him smile. I wanted him to feel alive again and be the man I knew he was.
"Tell me,"
he said.
"Well, I called about seven billion times. Sent emails. Messages. You didn't get any of them?"
He shook his head. "To this day I can't remember my old email address or password. Two months ago I got a new cell phone. Went months without one. It was lost in the accident, I think. I never saw it."
"I hate that this happened to you. I wish it were me."
"Don't say that," he said. "I wish it were neither of us, but definitely not you."
"I even flew over here and went to your apartment flat."
"My apartment flat?" He chuckled. "I like that. Apartment flat."
I tucked my hair behind my ear and blushed.
He leaned his head toward me and whispered, "Jane."
"Alistair." Butterflies still existed. Calmer and sweeter, but still there.
My hair fell back from my ear and created a curtain between him and me. He twirled a strand in his fingers, pressed it back behind my ear, and kissed my cheek.
With his lips still against my skin, he whispered, "I've missed you so much," and sent shivers down my neck just like the first time.
Only better. Deeper. And more real.
He listened to me. Thankfully. And decided to stay. When we heard his mom come back in, I asked him if I could go talk to her first. He said I could, but before I went out to her he explained that she's not always like that, but she endured a lot with the divorce, his accident, losing her job, then her boyfriend, and to top it off someone stole her dog. I told him to come out and apologize after about ten minutes. I just wanted to show her my heart. I needed her to see that I wasn't just some girl looking to play the selfless martyr. I was just a girl who loved a boy and I refused to let obstacles screw me over.
After he prepared me for her depression and volatile emotional mood swings, I meandered down the hall and back to the living room. She jumped when she saw me and put her hand over her heart.
"I'm sorry to scare you," I said, feeling like a freshman forced to stand in front of the entire school on the first day. "I just wanted to apologize. I know you've been through a lot and what I said wasn't kind. Alistair does appreciate what you do and I appreciate what you've done for him. He wants to stay. And I'd like to get to know you better."
