Survivor's Guilt

by Michelle Arnold

  “Mum!”

  “Well if you don’t even want to talk about it, what makes you think you can do it? I think she just wants Janet to handle the gross things and the tedious things so you can just be the person she relaxes with. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Abi sighed. “It’s just hard…”

  “Giving up control?”

  Abi frowned. “Letting someone else take care of the most precious person in my life.”

  ***

  Bedtime that night was a little awkward. It was strange having a third person around, washing Greta up and changing her into a nightgown while Abi tried to get ready for bed herself. Abi was brushing her teeth in the en suite bathroom when she heard Janet helping Greta into bed.

  “What position do you want to sleep in tonight?” Janet asked her. Greta couldn’t change position on her own, so it was not a light question.

  “On my left side,” Abi heard Greta say. “Facing Abi. I want her to be the last thing I see before I fall asleep.”

  “Okay, but that might make it harder to reach your phone to call for me.”

  “It’s okay,” said Abi, entering the bedroom. “She can wake me up if she needs anything, and I’ll call you if necessary.”

  Janet smiled, using pillows to prop up Greta’s broken leg so she could lie in this position. “You won’t want to do that every night. I know hospitals aren’t always the most restful places, but now that you’re home, you should both be getting plenty of sleep.”

  “I’ll manage for tonight,” Abi promised. “If the lady wants to look at me, she can look at me.” She got into bed beside Greta, pulling the blankets up over both of them.

  “Well, I keep my phone on all the time, so either of you can call me if you need anything and I’ll come right down,” Janet said before retiring to one of the guest rooms upstairs.

  “Finally alone,” Greta said with a shy smile.

  “Yeah, in our marriage bed,” said Abi, slipping her arms around Greta.

  “I certainly didn’t think when I came back home from LA that I would have you in my bed!”

  Abi kissed her. “You know what I wish?”

  “What?” Greta planted a line of soft kisses down Abi’s jawline.

  “I wish, the night before you left, that I had let you kiss me. I wish I’d told you how much I loved you, and taken you back to my bedroom and made love to you all night. And then I wish I’d begged you not to go to LA, and that you had listened to me.”

  “I would have,” Greta whispered.

  Abi ran her fingers through Greta’s hair. “I wish you hadn’t been on that plane when it went down.”

  A tear slipped down Greta’s face. “I wish that too,” she admitted.

  “It’s okay for you to feel that way, you know. You’ve been through a horrible experience. You don’t have to be smiling and saying how lucky you are all the time.”

  “I know, but I’m just grateful to be alive, and to have you.”

  “I am too, but you’d be alive and here with me and also naked if I hadn’t let you get on that plane.”

  Greta giggled. “I wish it could be that way. But we can’t go back and change the past, so I’d rather think about what we have now. I might have temporarily lost my ability to walk and do many other things, but I’ve gained permission to kiss you, and that’s more than a fair trade in my book.” Greta kissed Abi, just to emphasize her point. Abi kissed her back, again and again, until, as usual, things got a little too heated and they had to back off again.

  ***

  As the days passed, they settled into a new routine. The days revolved around Greta’s physical therapy and doctor’s appointments, with everyone she saw commenting that Greta was a great patient with an unbelievably positive attitude. Everyone loved working with her, and Abi could see why. Greta was sweet, beautiful, cooperative, and very good at smiling through the pain. She made the task of caring for her easy.

  Abi slowly got used to Janet’s presence. Greta seemed to have divided the tasks in her mind according to what she wanted Janet to do and what she wanted Abi to do. Janet was in charge of taking her to the bathroom. Abi was in charge of brushing Greta’s hair and putting makeup on her (which Greta was starting to ask for sometimes). Both were allowed to help her get dressed and to do her sponge baths, and they usually worked together to get Greta in and out of bed or the car. Janet usually came with them if they went anywhere, but Abi nearly always pushed the wheelchair. It was just an unspoken rule.

  As Valentine’s Day approached, however, Abi found herself wondering what she could do for her sexually frustrated wife.

  “Do you have anything planned for Valentine’s Day?” Janet asked Abi over coffee in the kitchen while Greta was busy with her physical therapist upstairs.

  “I’m still figuring it out,” Abi said. “I know what she really wants, but I don’t know how to give it to her.”

  “And what’s that?” Janet asked.

  Abi looked down at her coffee. Something told her to just go ahead and say it. “What she wants is to consummate our marriage. She’s really frustrated that we haven’t been able to do it.”

  Janet smiled reassuringly. “I can understand that.”

  “I wish we could figure out a way,” said Abi. “I mean we’ve sort of fooled around a little, but we can’t go very far, because…”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, to put it bluntly, she’s never been the sort to just…lie back and let things happen. She prefers to actively participate, if you know what I mean. And if she’s really turned on, she can’t seem to, ya know, keep her pelvis still…but with her broken hip…”

  “Yeah, she really shouldn’t be thrusting her hips at all.”

  “But she can’t help herself. And so, we can’t do it.”

  “I can see why that would be a problem. But I can understand her frustration over not being able to make love with her own wife.”

  “Yeah. And I want it just as much as she does, but I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “Well, there might be a way to do it.”

  Abi looked up. “How?”

  “If you can get her to just lie still and receive pleasure just for once, maybe you could give her oral sex without hurting her.”

  “We talked about that, but she says she’s never just been still even for that.”

  “Then you have to make it easier for her. Try putting a pillow under her pelvis, so it’s sort of tilted up already. That might reduce the urge to thrust.”

  Abi’s cheeks were burning. This was one of the most embarrassing conversations she’d ever had, but it was also an important one. She wanted to make love to her injured wife without hurting her more, and she needed medical advice on how to do that.

  “I know it’s going to be awkward, but I can help you get her set up,” Janet said. “It’s no big deal for me because I see people naked all the time. I can help you undress her, get her into bed, position her with the pillows, and then disappear for the night…unless you call for me, of course.”

  Abi heaved a sigh. “It’s not ideal, but it’s kind of where we are. I just want to make her happy.”

  Janet smiled. “It will. We’ll plan it for Valentine’s Day.”

  ***

  On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the doorbell rang while Abi was enjoying coffee with Greta on the couch in the library.

  “That’s odd,” Abi said. “It’s not time for your physical therapy yet.”

  “Then you’d better go see who it is,” said Greta, smiling.

  Abi went to the door and found a man holding a vase containing what must have been 100 red roses, surrounded by some kind of little white flowers.

  “Delivery for Abi Okafor,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Abi, grinning as she took the flowers.

  “And you also have this,” the man said, handing her a red satin heart-shaped box.

  Abi thanked him and went back upstairs, where Greta was watching her with
an enormous grin.

  “This is the biggest bouquet of flowers anyone’s ever given me,” Abi said, setting them down on the end table.

  “Good,” said Greta. “I want to outdo all your past lovers.”

  Abi laughed. “You could give me a single flower and I would still be more impressed with you than I was by anyone else. You’re you, after all.”

  Greta flashed another dazzling grin. “Open the chocolates!”

  Abi took the lid off the box and saw something better than roses: nearly fifty fancy little chocolates, many of them brightly colored, all in different shapes. One chocolate in the middle bore the name of their place of origin: Lincoln Square Chocolates.

  “They look delicious,” said Abi. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Just pick one! And hand me one, while you’re at it.”

  Abi chuckled and handed Greta a chocolate ladybug while taking a heart for herself. “Your present is coming this evening.”

  “Ooo, what is it?”

  “I can’t tell you!”

  “Is it jewelry?”

  “Nope.”

  “Flowers?”

  “No.”

  “Shoes?”

  Abi laughed. “I don’t know if I could pick out shoes that would make you happy, and you can’t wear them anyway.” She indicated Greta’s broken leg. “Now stop guessing and just let me surprise you.”

  When Greta was taking her nap that afternoon, Abi carefully set the dining table for two, exactly the way she had set it the day Greta was supposed to fly back from LA. She even put the candlesticks back into place, and when she stepped back to look at it, she expected to feel happiness. She was surprised when she began to cry.

  “Abidemi, are you okay?” her mother said, coming down from the guest room she’d been using.

  Abi nodded. “I’m just thinking about the dinner I was supposed to have with Greta last month, and how she never made it.”

  “That’s not true. She’s here now.” Lola put her arms around Abi, pulling her close while a sob escaped.

  “I’m so glad she’s here now,” Abi whispered. “I was so scared I’d lost her. I can’t…I don’t even want to imagine a world without her. She’s like the center of my universe.”

  “You two are soul mates. I think that’s why God saved her, so you two could finally be together.”

  Abi wiped her eyes and stood up straight. “I wish she had made it for that dinner I planned in January. Neither of us would have had to go through that nightmare, and I wouldn’t be on edge now wondering what she’s going to say when she finds out she’s the only one who lived through that crash.”

  “Well, I believe she was saved for a reason.”

  Abi fidgeted with her wedding ring. “When she was not quite conscious, she told me she saw Jordan on the plane. I asked her again when she was more lucid, and she said it was a dream. She dreamed Jordan was on the plane with her and that he told her he was doing me a solid, and she didn’t understand what that meant. Isn’t it weird that she would dream a phrase she didn’t know the meaning of?”

  “She could have heard someone say it sometime.”

  “She probably has, but I wasn’t on the plane, so how was Jordan doing me a solid by being there?” She frowned. “I just keep thinking, what if he was there? What if he protected her somehow, kept her from dying…so he was doing me a solid, by keeping the love of my life alive.”

  “Anything’s possible,” agreed Lola. “But like I said, she needed to live to be with you. You two waited far too long to get together, and anyone can see this was meant to be.”

  “Well if Jordan did somehow have something to do with saving her, I wish I had some way to pay him back.”

  “I think living and being happy with Greta would be enough.”

  Abi smiled, looking down at the table. “Speaking of which, Greta and I are not to be bothered tonight.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll let you two have your romantic evening. I’ll be at work. Are you finally going to consummate?”

  “Mum! It’s none of your business when we consummate.”

  “I just want you two to be happy, and it’s hard to have a healthy marriage if you can’t be intimate.”

  “Can you let me worry about how intimate my marriage is?” The doorbell rang. “That’s dinner. Now bugger off.”

  Abi brought in the food and set it up on the table before going upstairs to fetch her wife. The redhead was still sleeping when Abi arrived, and she paused for a moment just to watch her. There was not one detail of that face that Abi didn’t consider to be absolutely perfect, and she knew every contour of that face intimately. The actress was on her right side, sleeping in her usual nest of pillows that propped up limbs to allow her to lie as comfortably as possible. She looked peaceful, beautiful, and most importantly, alive. However it had happened, she had managed to survive the crash Abi still saw whenever she closed her eyes. She was still here, and she was Abi’s.

  She gently moved a strand of hair out of Greta’s face and kissed her forehead, watching as hazel eyes fluttered open. “Hey wifey,” she said. “Are you ready to come down for your Valentine’s Day dinner?”

  Greta broke into a smile. “What is it?”

  “Chez Gustav. I got the exact meals I ordered for us the day you were supposed to come back to New York. We’re finally going to have that special dinner.”

  “It’s about time,” said Greta. “Are you finally going to tell me you love me?”

  “Repeatedly.” Abi kissed her. “Let me get Janet so we can get you out of this bed.”

  A few minutes later, Greta was downstairs in her wheelchair, her hair freshly brushed. Her eyes shone even though her smile was a little sleepy, and she seemed to enjoy the food.

  “I can’t believe you ordered the escargot!” she exclaimed.

  “Well I got it for you, not for me,” Abi pointed out. “But I know you love it, and I wanted this to be a special meal for you. The first time I ordered it, I planned to declare my love for you over these snails.”

  Greta smiled. “Instead you had to tell me next to a hospital bed.”

  “Yes, and I don’t even think you heard me the first time, but I just kept telling you until I was sure you understood.”

  “Janet says there’s a lot science still doesn’t understand about comas,” Greta said. “But it’s possible I heard you the first time. I had a lot of dreams when I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and I don’t remember much of them now, but I think they were mostly about you. I remember just having a strong feeling that you loved me the same way I loved you.”

  “And you were right,” said Abi. “Do you remember the dream you had about Jordan? You told me you dreamed he was on the plane.”

  “Yes, I remember part of it,” said Greta. “He was on the plane with me, and I asked what he was doing there, and he said, ‘I’m doing my friend Abi a solid.’ That’s all I remember.”

  “And you didn’t know what that meant.”

  “No. Can you remind me again?”

  “A favor. He was doing me a favor.”

  “By being on the plane with me? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does if he protected you when the plane was crashing.”

  “It was only a dream, Abi.” She smiled sadly. “But I know how much you miss Jordan. I do too.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think I could have taken it if I’d lost you too.”

  Greta put her good hand on Abi’s. “Well, you didn’t. Now you’re stuck with me all the time since neither of us are at work!”

  “Good thing you’re my favorite person to be around.” Abi kissed her. “When you’re done eating, I have a surprise for you.”

  “Is it dessert?”

  Abi felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “You could say that.”

  Greta tilted her head.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you,” said Abi. “But you have to finish eating. You’ll need your strength.”

  “What is it?
”

  Abi smiled sheepishly. “Well, I talked to Janet, and we think we’ve come up with a way for me to make love to you without hurting you. As long as you cooperate, that is.”

  “How?” Greta asked anxiously. One good thing about Greta was that the thought of Abi discussing their sex life with the nurse didn’t bother her in the least. She didn’t get embarrassed about stuff like that, the way Abi probably would have if the tables had been turned.

  “Well, she thought if we had your pelvis on a pillow so it’s tilted upward a little, you might be able to hold still while I, ya know, eat you out.”

  “I could try,” said Greta doubtfully.

  “Look, do you want an orgasm or not?”

  Greta grinned. “I really do.”

  “Then you’re going to have to use your willpower to keep your wriggly little pelvis still while I give you one. You can do this!”

  Greta nodded. “I can. I really want to have sex with you! I’ve wanted it ever since I first met you!”

  Abi raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yes, really! How could I not? I thought about it while you were making me up for the first time.” She eyed Abi hungrily as she scarfed the rest of her dinner, eager to get upstairs and get that orgasm she was so desperate for. Abi started to clear away the dishes, but Greta stopped her.

  “The dishes will still be there in the morning,” she reasoned. “Our marriage should have been consummated last month.”

  “Can’t argue with that logic,” said Abi. “Let me get you upstairs.”

  Once Abi had her blushing bride in the bedroom, she and Janet began the awkward process of preparing Greta for careful sex. Once they had her stripped down and lying in bed with a pillow under her pelvis and more pillows supporting her broken leg, Janet quickly bowed out, telling them she was going to watch Netflix in her room and they could call if they needed her.

  “Well,” said Abi, closing the door. “I guess it’s time to—”

  “Take off all your clothes,” said Greta.

  “Okay.” Abi removed clothing items one by one, Greta biting her lip as she watched.

  “You’re the sexiest human being I have ever seen,” Greta said weakly as Abi climbed onto the bed.