by Ann Everett
With a deep sigh, he turned to face her.
Fifteen minutes later, she lay flat on her back. He sat on the corner of the bed and spoke over his shoulder. “I need a break.”
Her heart picked up speed. “From me?” She worked to keep the quiver from her voice. There was anger in his tone and he wasn’t looking at her. That was a bad sign. Maybe things were worse than she thought.
“No. Maybe. No, from the baby making business.”
“But I thought we agreed we’d give the drugs at least a year.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because the doctor said it would probably only take three cycles. It’s already been five. I’m tired of trying.”
“Jace, please.”
He shifted to face her and raked fingers through his hair. The lines in his face deepened. “We tried for over a year on our own and now the fertility plan for five months. Do you know how long it’s been since you let me take the time to bring you to orgasm?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Five months. We don’t make love anymore. We screw.”
Ten minutes of lying flat passed, so she rose and slung her feet to the floor. “I know you hate sex on a schedule. I do too, so I thought I was helping by getting it over as fast as I could.”
“Well, you’re not. I want us to give it a rest. Every conversation we have is about babies. You’re obsessed. Getting pregnant is all you talk about. Think about. Read about. I’m done with it.”
The words stabbed. She couldn’t stop the tears. “I thought you wanted a family as much as I do.”
“As it turns out, I don’t. I can’t let it consume every waking moment of my life and I’m not going to. So stop taking the drug. Forget having a kid. It’s what we need. I know it’s what I need.”
She cried harder. Everything she’d gone through had been a waste. The charting of cycles. The injections. The mood swings. The damn weight gain. All for nothing.
“Shit. Stop crying. I can’t stand it when you cry. I feel like a failure because I can’t give you the one thing you want. You never want sex unless it’s the right time of the month. I’m sick of being on pins and needles hoping that damn pee stick turns the right color.”
He got up and crossed the room to the bathroom door. “I’ve got to get to work.” The door slammed.
She fell back and sobbed into her pillow.
Later, at the hospital, Jace’s words echoed in Maggie’s head. Maybe he was right. She admitted she had become somewhat obsessed. But other than someone loving her unconditionally, having a family was the most important thing to her. Well, she couldn’t say the most important. Making Jace happy was number one on her list. That’s why she’d never shared the details of her inheritance. He already felt inferior because he couldn’t produce a baby, knowing she had money would only make it worse. No, it still wasn’t the right time. Maybe it never would be. But she’d do as he asked. She’d forget about getting pregnant because she didn’t like hearing the disgust in his voice and there’d been plenty of that this morning.
~~*~~
Jace drifted up then down, weightless like a feather caught in the breeze. Bright beams of lights, so bright, even with his eyes closed, he could see the brilliance. Icy cold wind lifted him higher. Freezing, his body quivered. Far below, Heisman chased Maggie, her crimson hair flying wildly around her angel face. Heisman’s big paws knocked her on her backside. She giggled, her laughter musical. Just the sight of her warmed his skin.
He wanted to go to her, but something held him back. He spoke her name and light filled her eyes. When the words I love you formed on her lips, they rode the wind to meet him. He captured them and pressed them to his heart. Without warning, he jerked up, then down.
Muffled voices spoke around him. “BP’s falling. We’re losing him. Again, Clear.”
Up. Then down.
“Again, clear.”
Up. Down.
He wasn’t floating anymore and he’d lost sight of Maggie. He was in a room surrounded by doors and needed to get out and find her. But which one should he choose? Where was she? He spun in a circle trying to decide. What the hell. Pick one.
He grasped the knob and swung it wide. A man lay on a table below him. An army poked and prodded with tubes and instruments. The guy looked like a science project. An odd sensation passed over him and he realized he was looking at himself. He slammed the door and moved to the next one.
The roar of the crowd. The scent of fall in the breeze, and like scenes from a movie, he replayed every missed pass of his career. Only this time, he caught each one. He leapt into the air, made impossible receptions and unbelievable touchdowns. The fans went wild and the rush jolted him, but soon agitation replaced his excitement. He needed to find Maggie. Talk to her. Explain that he’d made a mistake.
The next entry gave way to a cloudless, brilliant blue sky stretched across Lurleen Hogan’s backyard. He worked for a breath when Maggie appeared at the end of the aisle. She was beautiful with pink roses tucked into her hair. Till death do us part. Till death do us part. Is this death? A gust of wind slammed the door, and opened another to the sound of waves rushing to shore. Paradise. Our honeymoon. He was in the water, Maggie in his arms, her naked body snug against him. Fiji moonlight shimmered, bounced off the ocean, and illuminated her skin like the luster of pearls. He tried to hold on, but the tide carried her away. Only their fingertips touched now, and then she was gone.
Suddenly he was in her bedroom where she’d lived in college, lying in bed with her next to him soft and warm. He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep, lingering breath, inhaling her scent. God, she smelled good. A mixture of vanilla and grapefruit. Through the mist, he spied the harem costume hanging on a wall hook and pointed. “Dance for me.”
Without an argument, she glided to the door, put it on and began to sway. While in the background, Grace Potter grunted and growled ooh-la-la.
When Maggie came closer, he placed his hands at her waist, felt the movement of her hips, and a charge of electricity ran through him.
“Let me guess. You want me to dance on top of you.” Her sweet voice came from far away.
“You catch on fast.” He pulled her lower.
She straddled him, the sheer skirt pooling across his chest and belly. She rocked against him. Then the music stopped, she disappeared, and the room closed in leaving nothing but blackness.
In a drug induced haze, he drifted in and out. The morphine will help. He’s one lucky s.o.b., he should be dead. Did you see that truck? Man, there was nothing left of it. Goddamn drunk drivers ruining lives.
Lucky, that’s what they say. The thought buzzed in his mind, the words meaningless. He thought of Maggie. She had been here earlier, crying, caressing his hand, making promises. Everything will be all right.
And he’d heard his mother too, sobbing, and his dad consoling her.
Machines beeped and hummed with an odd rhythm. An endless stream of people circled his bed. Pushed, jabbed, adjusted, questioned. Incessant questions. How are we feeling today, Mr. Sloan?
We? There is no we. It’s just me. Lucky me.
Maggie was back now. He could smell her, hear her breathing, and then something wet on his arm. Tears. “I love you.” Her declaration came in a fog. “Please open your eyes. I promise we’ll get through this. We have each other and I’ll never leave you…” her words drifted away and he sank back under the warmth of the painkiller.
He rubbed his eyes and thought he’d been dreaming, but he hadn’t. Sunlight filtered into the room and he saw Maggie asleep in a chair. When he moaned, she woke and moved to him.
“Hey, there you are.” She kissed him on the cheek.
“Where am I? What happened to me?”
“You don’t remember? You were involved in a car accident. Oh God, Jace. I thought I’d lost you.”
He rolled his head from side to side. “Oh yeah, I remember. How bad am I?”
She bit her bottom lip. “It isn’t good. Life will be different, b
ut it’ll be okay.”
“What do you mean, different? What’s wrong with me?”
“You have several injuries. But the most serious is a spinal cord injury.”
“Spinal cord injury,” he repeated. His face settled into a hard line. “You mean my back is broken?”
“It’s more serious than that.”
“How serious?”
“Oh, Jace—you—you’re…”
He opened his eyes wide. “Oh God! What are you saying? I’m paralyzed?” He jerked upright and struggled to lift his legs. “Oh God! Oh God! This can’t be happening.”
“It’ll be okay. We’ll…”
Tears flooded his eyes. “No! No! It won’t be. Not ever!”
Love is when you shed a tear and still want him.
It’s when he ignores you and you still love him.
~ Unknown
Maggie heaved a deep breath. Winks and blinks. That’s what life is. Some days God winks and all is right with the world. Other times, he blinks, and in that fraction of eternity, everything changes.
She sat on the edge of the bed and threaded fingers through her hair. The No Visitors sign posted on Jace’s door was to avoid her, but today she planned for that to change. She’d been patient and given him weeks to accept his condition, but it was time to take action.
Everything in life had always come easy for her handsome husband. Destroyed by the news of his paralysis, he spiraled into depression. And even though it was a normal step to acceptance, she couldn’t see any improvement. If she was ever going to get back her life, their life, it was time to step up her game.
She traipsed down the hall to the bathroom. Today, she’d take extra time with her makeup to look her best for the confrontation. Recent visits, when he allowed them, proved difficult and strained. There wasn’t any doubt she still loved him as much now as before. Even more. And it wasn’t out of pity. Sure, she felt terrible about his condition, but his ability to walk or not, had nothing to do with her love for him. No more than his looks did when she first fell for him. The concern he demonstrated for her during their friendship was the tipping point. That and the fact they became friends before they were lovers.
As she finished that thought, someone rang the bell. When she opened the door, a young man wearing a blue uniform waited on the porch.
“Hello,” Maggie said.
“Hello, Ma’am. I’m from Craig’s Wrecker Service. We’re the company that towed the Chevy involved in the crash. I have the items from the truck.” He pushed a brown paper bag toward her.
She took it and thanked him.
He left and she went into the bedroom and placed the bag next to the sack of personal items removed from Jace’s pockets in the emergency room. She grabbed her car keys and closed the door behind her.
Outside, clear skies promised another hot August day. On a deep breath, she sent up a prayer. With no clouds in sight, she figured the request had a direct line to the Almighty. At least she hoped so because today she needed it answered.
Once at the hospital, she gathered her resolve. Still an hour before her shift, she made her way to his room determined to make him discuss their future. Inside, he sat in a wheelchair, gazing out the window.
“I want to talk to you, Jace.”
He spun to face her. Pallid and gaunt, he appeared much older than twenty-six. Sucking in a breath, she focused on his beautiful face now riddled with anguish. She kept tears at bay, but inside her chest, her heart began weep. Where to start? What to say? She halved the distance between them.
“Didn’t you notice the No Visitors sign is still on the door?”
“I did, but I’m not a visitor. I’m your wife. Please, talk to me. Scream, swear, do whatever you need to do, but don’t shut me out.”
“What do you want to talk about? How lucky I am?”
“You are lucky. I thought you were going to die. So in my book, being paralyzed beats being dead.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one in this chair.”
“You’re right. But as bad as this is, we can make it work. Things will be different, but we can still have a life together. A happy life.”
She was unprepared for his reaction when he started to cry. “Look at me. Take a good look. I’m going to be this way the rest of my life. I could live to be eighty. That’s over fifty fucking years. I’ll never walk, run, or be able to stand. I’ll never be poetry in motion again.”
She moved another step toward him. “Poetry in motion? What does that have to do with anything?”
“That’s how you described me in your journal when I played football.”
“What? You read my journal?”
“No. I mean, yes. It was a long time ago. Just one page. I know you loved my body. You loved the movement of it, and that’s gone.”
“That doesn’t matter. Besides, that’s ancient history. The silly writing of a girl in love for the first time. It has nothing to do with us now.”
“I can’t give you children. That dream is gone. And don’t say that doesn’t matter, because it does.” He stopped talking and struggled to breath.
Her lungs tightened, squeezing out all the air. Feeling light headed, she settled onto the end of the bed. This wasn’t going according to plan.
Voice quivering, he turned away and spoke over his shoulder. “I’ll be discharged in another week, that should give you time to get moved. I guess it’s lucky we bought Mrs. Hogan’s house after all since it’s wheelchair ready. The house belongs to you, but my lawyer says I’ll get a big settlement out of the wreck. When I do, I’ll pay you back.”
The impact of his words attacked with an unbearable force. She bit her bottom lip to stop it from trembling. “What are you saying? You want me to leave?”
“Yes.”
“No, I won’t go. I won’t. You’re upset. You don’t mean this.”
He wheeled around to face her, his emotions under control again, determination in his eyes. “Yes. I do. I’ve had plenty of time to think. You’re just a constant reminder of what I’ll never have again. Be thankful, we don’t have children, because then you’d be tied to me forever.”
She winced at the cruel statement. She’d expected resistance, prepared for anger, anticipated an argument, but she’d never once considered he’d ask her to leave him. “You’re saying if we had kids you wouldn’t ask me to go?”
He rubbed his eyes and lowered his head. “Yeah, because they’d need you now more than ever.”
Silent for a moment, she gathered her thoughts. The power of his statement sunk in. “Well, I’ve come full circle, haven’t I? To bleed money from my father, Mother kept me because I was necessary. You’re getting rid of me because I’m not.”
He lowered his head, tears streamed down his cheeks again. “I’m letting you go because I love you. You can’t see it now, but someday you’ll thank me and realize this was the best thing I could do for you.”
Every joint in her body stiffened. Sadness morphed into anger. “Since when do you get to decide what’s best for me? You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ve ever wanted and your situation hasn’t changed that.”
“My situation? It’s my future. It’s my goddamned life. But it doesn’t have to be yours. I won’t let it. Just be out of the house when I get home.”
“And if I’m not?”
“I’ll move in with Mom and Dad. One way or the other, I refuse to be a burden.”
She tried to kiss him, but he backed away. “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t do this.”
“No. I won’t allow you to spend the rest of your days taking care of me. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Mine’s over.”
She straightened her shoulders and added steel to her voice. “You stupid, stupid, man. Maybe I will leave and let you see how your life will be without me. Then you’ll realize what a terrible mistake you’ve made.”
“It isn’t a mistake. It’s all I’ve thought about since this hap
pened. This isn’t a rushed decision.”
She knelt next to him and before he could turn away, her mouth was on his. He didn’t resist. Instead, he hung on to the kiss and when their lips parted, she smiled. She got up and walked to the door, then looked back at him one last time. “That kiss told me everything I need to know. I’ll leave. But when you come to your senses and want me back. I’ll be waiting.”
~~*~~
A few minutes later, Jared rushed into the room. “What the hell, Jace? I saw Maggie in the hallway and she said you ordered her to move out.”
“She’s better off without me.”
“I don’t think so and deep down inside, you don’t either. It isn’t too late.” He pushed his cell phone toward his brother. “Call her. Tell her you didn’t mean it. Tell her to turn around and come back.”
Jace couldn’t help but smile and thought of her silly superstition. She doesn’t do turn around come back. “I can’t. No matter how much it hurts, I know it’s best for her.”
“What’s this really about?”
“I told you, she’s better off.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You just couldn’t keep it in your pants could you?”
Jace straightened and squared his shoulders. “Shut up!”
“Don’t play dumb. Tell me, have you been cheating on her from the beginning?”
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
Jared shook his head. “My sex life is no concern. I’m a free agent. I can sleep with anybody I choose. I’m not married.”
“No, but she is.”
“Who do you mean?”
“I’m talking about my wife. You think I don’t see the way you look at her? I know you’d try to take her for yourself if she gave you one little hint of being interested.”
“You’re a damn moron. Stop putting this on me. You asked her to leave because you have a guilty conscience. You’re playing the poor pitiful martyr. I’m crippled. I don’t want to be a burden, so I’m setting you free. What a crock. You don’t want her here, because you can’t bear for her to find out what you’ve done.”