Long Term - Chapter 7

We might have both dozed off briefly when I woke because Adam's shoulder moved under me. "Ra— Rachel… Wake up.”

"Hmm...?" I didn't want to open my eyes. Nothing could be more wonderful than lying with Adam and I sensed if I opened them, it would be over.

I felt Adam swallow hard. "Damn. Could you… Could you turn me?"

His voice sounded strained and I immediately lifted my head, scanned his tense face. "Turn? On your side, you mean?"

He nodded with tight lips. Now I clearly felt the vibration through the mattress and a weight plunged into my stomach.

Shit.

"Are you in pain?" I asked unnecessarily while I hastily knelt beside him and shoved the blanket aside. My heart clenched at the sight of his legs lying stiff as a board on the mattress and trembling violently.

Of course he was in pain, and massively so, if his pale, twisted face was any indication.

"Rachel, now..." The spasms had reached his chest and Adam had trouble breathing calmly. His rasped words and pleading eyes, fixed on me, finally spurred me into action.

"Okay, okay! Don't worry, we'll get this." I hurried to grab the knee farther from me and lifted it with all my strength. Adam’s limp foot flopped around on the mattress, his leg stiff and twitching, more alive in my hands than it had ever been, though not in a good way. Only slowly did the spasticity give way under the weight of his own leg, so that I could bend it a little. I laid it over the other one and pulled carefully at his hip, but it barely moved.

"Shit, when have you become so heavy?!"

Adam said something, but his teeth were chattering so loudly from the trembling that I couldn't understand him. I grabbed the leg before it could slide down again, stabilized it better and put one hand on his hip, one on his shoulder. I pulled with gritted teeth and found that it was much harder to turn him than usual because his entire body was locked due to the spasms.

Adam made a strangled sound. Oh shit, was he getting enough air? I had no time to dwell on it; I knew he had to relieve his back for the ordeal to stop. At least I hoped it would stop once I’d turned him. I had no idea what I’d do if it didn't. Or what to do if I didn’t manage to turn him.

Inch by inch I brought Adam further onto his side, pulling now alternately at hip and shoulder and finally he rolled over all at once. I could prevent him at the last second from rolling all the way onto his stomach and hurriedly pressed the pillow in front of his face flatter so it wouldn't block his airway.

"Better? Adam?” I crouched in front of him, trying to bring my face level with his, my heart racing. “Say something,” I whispered.

Please.

The spasms had stopped abruptly, but Adam was still breathing raggedly and had his eyes closed. I knew he always needed time to recover after one of those worse spasm attacks but I was on the verge of panic now. Was he alright? Did I need to call someone?

Finally he stirred and glassy eyes drifted to meet mine. "Mmm... god, sorry," he murmured, his tongue heavy in his mouth. I stroked his sweaty forehead with trembling fingers, enormously glad he was at least responding.

Oh Adam. "I'm sorry," I whispered and swallowed against a tight throat. “I took forever.“ My heart was still pounding wildly and I was hardly less out of breath than he was. What if I hadn't managed to turn Adam? I would have had to call an ambulance… Or get help from the hotel? What would the hospital have said? It wasn't the first attack I'd accompanied, but it was definitely among the strongest and longest. "Shit..."

"You did well, really," Adam murmured and my chest tightened. Even in a situation like this, exhausted from what his paralyzed body took him through, he took care of me first.

Adam's arm twitched and I realized I was still stroking him, mechanically, as if I could calm us both with it. I stopped and consciously breathed for a long time until my panic subsided somewhat.

After a while I whispered: "May I look?"

He only nodded and I carefully bent over him to look at his back. There wasn’t much left to see after all these weeks. Still, a few faded, almost black streaks ran across the skin of his lower back. The new scars, small incision points, were already fading as well, beginning to resemble the old ones, a little further down. I ran a slightly trembling finger over the pattern, then moved to the front, to the new patch on his stomach, tenderly smoothing the edges of the bandage. Were the stitches okay? At least I could see no bleeding tainting the white.

“Do I still look like a zebra?”

“A little,” I whispered, smiling and relaxing some more as he reminded me of our shared joke. “More like Swiss cheese now.”

“Excuse me?”

I chuckled. “There’s a lot of holes in you.” I ran my finger up his forearm, along the ridge where they’d cut to lengthen tendons to make it possible for Adam to flex his wrists despite the high level of injury. Many years ago, before me.

I watched him, hesitated. “So you… still get them?”

The spasm attacks had been a frequent visitor before the hospital, eventually forcing him to seek treatment.

“Hm.” He hunched his shoulders.

“I thought they’d…” Disappear? Get better? With the operations. They were supposed to, along with the pain. Weren’t they?

“The pain is better,” Adam offered after a while, not looking at me. “Slightly.”

Slightly… I squeezed my fingers into a fist so tight it hurt.

“And they are… less frequent,” he added in a low voice.

With a sinking feeling, I nodded. I guess there it was, at least part of the truth. An answer to my unspoken question about his health. He was back in his wheelchair, and that in itself was a victory. But pain and spasms, that battle seemed ongoing.

I flopped back onto the mattress with a shaky exhale. Truth be told, I probably should have stopped Adam from overdoing it today. I could have. But I felt it just as much as he supposedly does, that we had needed this, badly. The last weeks had been a strain on a relationship like ours, still fragile and, after all, still new. Since the hospital, the two of us had never really been alone, and when we’d met we had tried but failed at talking about anything but his health. Every time I thought of Adam when I was alone, there was nothing but dread filling me. Would he wake up from the next operation? Would he recover? What if they messed something up? The worry eroded the memories I had of Adam, of brighter days with him, of the joy of simply being together.

What the last weeks had been for Adam, I could only imagine. The fear, the pain. We had no real way to work through it together. So today we had to take the jump, the risk, to not lose everything.

I understood that now.

"That was very brave of you. The surgeries, I mean," I uttered. And coming here, today, with a body still frail from the ordeal it was put through. He knew about the risk. He may have taken the spasm attack into account, willing to pay for the small blessing of intimacy with a brutal currency. I wished he hadn’t had to do it. I was glad he did.

Adam nodded silently and I scooted closer until our noses nearly touched. His legs were still now but I didn’t trust them to take much weight. Instead, I secretly lodged one foot between his calves and positioned his arm around me.

He smiled. “That’s my favorite,” he murmured.

”Your favorite?”

“Position to fall asleep with you.”

“You can’t fall asleep now.”

He blinked, then closed his eyes again. “Yeah…”

We waited for Adam to recover more fully. Finally he stirred.

“Ready?“ I stroked his cheek.

“Hmm…”

His nose was sliding against mine and then he kissed me, softly, first on my nose, then on my cheek, then on the lips. Before I could completely forget what time it was or my name altogether, Adam pulled back slightly.

”Sorry.”

“For being irresistible?"

Adam chuckled, his gaze flickering for a second, then returning onto me. “Thanks, for being here with me,” he whispered. I pressed my nose against his and didn’t dare to breathe.

The transfer back into the wheelchair was even more adventurous than the transfer to the bed. Twice Adam slid back on the transfer board onto the much lower bed, lost his balance several times and would have fallen backward or forward if I hadn't braced my whole body against him. Only with considerable effort of my strength did he make it into the seat of his powerchair, ashen-faced and with wheezing breath. The shirt I'd put back on him was dark with sweat at the collar.

He needed a few minutes to collect himself. "Can you please give me my phone?" he asked then. After I'd placed it in his lap, he scrolled through to a number, using the knuckle of his pinky.

"Adam?"

The sleepy voice belonged to Ronald.

"Hey Ronald, old casanova. Already in bed?" If you didn't know, Adam sounded as if he'd just had a pleasant dinner and not much of significance had happened.

Ronald grumbled something unintelligible and Adam laughed.

"Hey, listen," he said while watching me get dressed. "Is Jasmine there?"

One of the nurses on the ward, as I knew. She worked a lot of nights.

"Yes? Good. Just because... if they ask about me, tell them not to worry. Took a bit longer here. But we're on our way back. I didn't fall out of bed or anything."

There was a rustling and then Ronald, somewhat louder than before. "You fell out of bed?" Concern was clear in his voice.

"What? No, I—"

"How are you? Should I call someone? Nurse? Hello, nurse!" Ronald's voice crackled thinly from Adam's phone speaker.

"No, Ronald, no please..." Adam raised his shoulders and looked at me aghast while Ronald continued chattering excitedly on the other end of the line. "He completely misunderstood me..." Adam hissed to me. I nodded—I had gathered as much—and pressed my hand to my mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. Somehow it was all too much. What else could happen today? Suddenly this—all of this—felt insanely silly to me.

"Listen, Ronald, everything's fine here, really! Don't need to call anyone, okay?" Only after a while did Ronald begin listening to Adam's breathless voice again and finally Adam hung up.

We looked at each other.

"Oh my goodness," he let out a sigh.

"Do you think he got it?" I asked and helped Adam into his zipped hoodie. When he leaned his head against my shoulder while I leaned him forward, he hummed contently. I made sure to properly smooth the fabric over his back. "That you didn't fall out of bed, I mean,” I added softly, stroking over his neckline, which made him melt into me more.

“We’ll see.” Adam shrugged once I’d carefully leaned him against the backrest again. I gave him a kiss on the lips.

"Well then let's find out if an emergency team is already waiting for us," I joked grinning and held the door open for Adam. He grunted something indeterminate and steered his wheelchair through.

For some reason I was convinced that after everything we'd been through today, we had nothing left to fear.