Long Term - Chapter 9

I had chosen a table from which I had a view of the window that Adam would pass when he took the ramp access to the hotel entrance. Although I roughly had the morning shift schedule at the hospital in my head and had calculated that Adam would only arrive toward the end of the breakfast buffet, I'd gotten up early. I'd called reception and negotiated that I could check out two hours later. Based on the monotone voice from the antiquated telephone, I was sure I was speaking with the hotel employee with the old-fashioned braid. She hadn't hesitated long and immediately granted me the extension, even without charging extra. Presumably she was glad I was finally leaving and didn't want any further trouble because of me.

I'd showered and dressed, packed my suitcase but left it in the room, and then went down for a first coffee to the breakfast room, which was already half full at that time. By now I was on my third cup of coffee, the breakfast room was almost full, and the lady with the braid gave me a suspicious look every time I stood up to refill my cup at the machine.

I wondered if she slept with that braid or redid it every morning. It looked complicated enough.

The entire situation reminded me a little of my first meeting with Adam. It had been in another city, in another hotel. I'd waited for him in the hotel’s restaurant, my phone beside me and a glass of wine that I sipped as slowly as possible while trying to ignore the look from the waitress who repeatedly asked if I'd like something to eat with it. I didn’t. My stomach felt like it was trying to find a way out of my body.

I'd known what to expect and at the same time, of course, I'd known absolutely nothing at all. Adam and I had met on a dating platform. I'd been on a business trip and was traveling by train through that very city—the same city that I'd been returning to regularly for the last two months to see him—when we matched. Looking back, it feels like fate was playing some kind of joke on us, because even back then he'd been at the hospital for an examination, which I didn't know at the time. His profile picture showed him from behind, only his broad shoulders and everything above, a fitted T-shirt with a wide neckline showing a muscular neck, his hair in a man bun, a few strands tousled by the wind. In front of him a railing and behind it the turquoise sea. Easygoing, I’d thought. And that I wanted to go to the ocean again, too.

We wrote back and forth for a few hours, mainly about travel and music, a bit about work and what we did in our free time. He was planning a week in New York at the time and I was planning a trekking tour through Sweden. That evening he cooked—asparagus and linguini—and I went to the gym because after sitting in the train for so long I felt itchy for movement. Shortly before I went to bed that day he sent me a larger crop of that photo of him on the cruise ship. Still from behind, in a manual wheelchair.

For some reason, that didn't surprise me all that much. I now understood perfectly well why he preferred cruises to a trekking tour. In the following days I learned that while I jumped on the stepper to techno beats, he was at physical therapy. And at music festivals he had a phenomenal view, as further pictures of him proved. Only gradually, in small, digestible morsels, did he give me further, well-dosed insights. He preferred a power assist for the manual wheelchair, which he could otherwise only push forward with difficulty. His physical therapy included massages for his back or simply lying on his stomach to relieve it. And while he decided what he ate, the cooking was done by his assistants. I noticed that his voice was breathless when I called him in the morning while he was still in bed, and that a round with the handbike still sat in his bones the following days. After a while, I began to understand just how present his assistants were in his life, when I heard them calling something in the background, which happened almost every time during our long phone calls.

When we first met, I did it out of pure curiosity and without the slightest idea that my life would change completely. I liked Adam and I wanted to prove to myself that I would still like him when he sat in his wheelchair in front of me. I wanted to know how he ate, how he drove a car, and what he did when he couldn't get any further somewhere. He'd explained a lot to me in his calm, brief words, but I could hardly picture it.

And I’ll admit that part of me also wanted to know how it worked in bed, with a body with severed nerves between the 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae, as he revealed upon inquiry from my side after I'd diligently googled SCI. He gave hints but didn’t go into any detail. This part seemed even more mysterious to me than his back pain, which he only mentioned in passing and which I never really focused on, because what could it really do, if he couldn’t feel his back anyway?

When Adam shot past the lobby window with his power assist on that first date, I had to grin and suddenly wasn't nervous at all anymore.

Never did I imagine that in no time I would become part of a world I'd had no idea even existed. That I would attach and detach the power assist like the basket on my bicycle, that I would fasten his cutlery to his gloves as if I were smoothing a wrinkle from the tablecloth, would unfold a tissue for him without being asked and unbutton his shirt as if it were mine. Bit by bit he led me out onto a sea that seemed boundless, and I only realized how far out I'd swum when the shore was barely visible anymore. By that time it had already become my home.

Neither of us suspected that our countless meetings in hotels, which were similar to the first and to this one, would end abruptly, that the power assist would stand in the garage at his home for months, and that the plane to New York would take off without Adam. While I trudged through the blueberries in Sweden plagued by mosquitoes looking for moose, I clung to every message from Adam, still hoping he would have left the hospital by the time I returned. Weeks of this new reality became months, and now I sat in a hotel and waited for his arrival like the very first time, nervous because I wondered if he would really come.

Maybe they wouldn't let him go this time. Maybe he was doing too poorly after yesterday's exertion. Maybe there were new complications.

I picked up my phone but no new messages. Still a good sign, I decided, and nibbled a bit on the Danish pastry with pudding that I'd rescued from the buffet. Our last meeting in a hotel was so long ago that the waiting felt new again. My stomach rebelled, and I wondered whether this might be a beginning or just another illusion.

Just then I caught a shadow moving past the window from the corner of my eye, slower than on our first date, because the power wheelchair was throttled a bit more than the power assist. Even before the sliding doors could fully open for Adam, I'd jumped up from the table, rushed through the dining room and lobby, and was standing on the other side of the door. The hotel employee with the short black hair sat at the desk and looked up, first at me, then at Adam who directed the wheelchair forward with an amused expression.

"Good morning, Rachel."

"More like good afternoon soon," I grumbled and took in his whole appearance before we kissed in greeting. Adam had apparently convinced the nurses to dress him in slacks and a shirt; white sneakers sat neatly on the footrests. He was freshly shaved and somewhat pale. "How are you?" I asked more quietly.

Adam shrugged while steering the wheelchair beside me toward the breakfast room. "Ronald's snoring decimated an entire forest," he grunted.

I laid my hand on his shoulder. I knew how much the lack of sleep wore on Adam. "Should I call Greenpeace?"

"If I don't find a way to throw a pillow at Ronald soon, then yes."

"Hmm... Catapult?" I suggested with raised eyebrows.

Adam nearly steered the wheelchair into a potted plant, he was laughing so hard. "Sorry," he murmured in its direction.

"Now even more plants have to suffer..."

"Stop," Adam groaned, grinning and gasping for breath. "That hurts."

I chuckled but was immediately quiet again.

"Please add another person to the bill," I instructed the hotel employee with the braid as we passed her on the way to my table.

As always, heads turned toward Adam’s large wheelchair as it hummed softly into the room. Glances slipped over pound cake and bacon toward us as I dragged a chair aside so he could pull up next to me. Two kids stopped fighting at the cereal bar and stared at him instead; a man let the lid of the sausage tray slam shut with a clang.

"Coffee?" I got a second cup for Adam and filled it at the machine. The hotel employee with the braid continued watching me. Her face didn't reveal what she was thinking. "Could I have a straw?" I asked her kindly.

She frowned and stepped closer. "A straw?"

"Yes. Maybe from the bar?"

She looked from the cup in my hand to me, then to Adam at our table, who'd already engaged the elderly couple at the neighboring table in conversation. Then she sighed.

"Of course," and disappeared toward the bar.

"Thank you so much," I sang lightly under my breath, suppressing an eye roll, and returned to Adam.

"Straw's coming," I murmured as I set the cup down in front of Adam.

"Thanks. Have a seat."

"I could get you some scrambled eggs—"

"In a bit. Coffee first."

I sat down, almost reluctantly.

"Everything took forever this morning," Adam reported. “Sorry. Shift change didn’t go too smoothly, I think.”

I squeezed his hand on the armrest. "Main thing is you're here. Would you like—"

"Please."

Since the straw still wasn't there and there was no sign of the woman with the braid, I lifted Adam's cup to his lips to let him sip carefully. I could practically feel the stares.

"Wonderful..." he hummed and leaned his head back.

"The young man is practically parched," the elderly woman from the neighboring table chimed in, leaning forward slightly. At least she made no secret of the fact that she'd been watching us.

Her husband winked at me. “Things have to move faster for us men, miss. Otherwise we lose our drive.” He chuckled.

"He can get his own coffee next time if it's not fast enough for him," I joked, not unkindly, since after all they were catching me after my first cup of coffee, and noted with satisfaction that both frowned. Then I turned to Adam.

"You haven't had breakfast yet, have you? Pudding Danish?"

Adam sighed contentedly. "I thought you’d only kept that to taunt me."

While Adam and I shared the Danish, the straw was brought, and shortly after we went to the buffet to load the last remnants onto our plates. I carried two smoothies and Adam carried the tray with our food on his lap as we returned to the table. The elderly couple was about to leave. The woman helped her somewhat frail husband into his jacket.

"It's such meaningful work you're doing," she said to me before they left. She squeezed my upper arm. "We need people like you."

"Thanks," I replied. "The same goes for you, doesn't it? What great service to society."

The woman blinked. "Well..." she said, unsettled. "My husband and I have been married for thirty years..."

"No, really? Well, you certainly have a few years on us there," I informed her.

"To 30 more years," Adam grunted and I clinked my coffee cup against his on the table.

The elderly couple disappeared in silence, casting slightly irritated glances back.

"Should I be worried?" Adam asked.

I looked up innocently from my waffle. "Why?" No pancakes, but waffles. The hotel had immediately jumped several places up in my internal rating list, but was still in the lower half.

Adam jabbed at his scrambled eggs with a quick movement from the shoulder, skewering a bite with the fork strapped to his glove. "I think something's wrong with my memory, because I just can't remember our wedding."

"I think it would be worse if you could," I laughed.

I made sure Adam finished everything on his plate down to the last crumb, and he laughed as he fended me off when I tried to convince him to have a second waffle.

"All right, then it's mine," I decided and pulled it onto my plate.

"Admit it," Adam teased as he watched me demolish the last waffle. "That was your plan the whole time."

"No, otherwise I would have smeared Nutella on it too. Thick."

Afterward we were wordlessly ushered out of the breakfast room by the hotel employee with the braid. The buffet was already cleared. I still had my hotel room for exactly one hour, and since Adam declined my offer to lie down, we walked through the neighborhood around the hotel instead. We found a bench in a paved courtyard in front of a bank branch that was, of course, closed on a Sunday.

"Rachel..."

I opened my eyes and turned my face away from the sunbeams I'd wordlessly enjoyed for a few minutes and toward Adam instead. I sprawled on the bench, my legs lying over Adam's lap, my feet hanging over the armrest. Adam guided one hand to my ankles, brushing over them.

"Everything okay?" Last night’s episode was still echoing in my mind, and I searched his face for signs of pain. I found only fatigue and a tension he barely managed to hide.

"I'm bad at this stuff..." he finally muttered and let his head fall back against the headrest.

I sat up more upright but didn't pull my legs off him. I liked the way his fingers rested lightly around my ankle.

"At what exactly?" I teased him. “Somewhere between playing the piano and high jump, you might want to narrow that down.”

Adam laughed, then fell silent again. He shifted his gaze from my legs to my face. "What I said yesterday was..."

"Stupid?"

His lips twitched. "I might not have phrased it quite so drastically but—"

"I'm just direct. And also correct."

Adam sighed and shook his head. "Okay, stupid. What I said was, of course, completely stupid. Obviously it’s only logical that you travel around with a guy in a wheelchair for six months and then spend two more sitting next to his hospital bed. Practically inevitable. You’d expect nothing less.” His voice was dry.

I slid closer to him, my legs shifting a bit and his hand slipping off them. I waited until he'd placed it there again, warming my ankle, before I turned his head toward me with a finger under his chin. "You forgot to mention that the guy in the wheelchair is Adam and that he completely messed with my head, which is why I would have stayed with him even if he were a far-right sexist."

Adam blinked. "Really?"

I tilted my head and thought briefly. "Hmm... Yes."

"Yes?!"

I shrugged. “Yeah. But you’ve got the disability bonus, so you can say whatever you want—and I can go vote for you, so…”

“That is not how that works, and also a very questionable understanding of democracy—and both of those are, by the way, ableist!”

"Be quiet, Nazi."

We laughed. Adam breathed deeply and looked at me seriously again. "Anyway, I'm sorry. The last few weeks have just been shit and..." His hand stroked over the strip of bare skin between my trainers and my tight jeans. I tried not to show how it sent a small shiver through me. "Every time I was lying somewhere in the hospital again waiting—and I had to wait a hell of a lot of hours somewhere, in some hallway in front of some machine or before an injection or conversation about tables and graphs that are somehow supposed to represent my body—I thought of you. Only of you. I couldn't help it. I saw us walking down a street together and felt your hand, and I somehow knew... it'll be okay. Someday it’ll get better again, someday it’ll be like that again. And that made it okay. Still shit, but better."

"Adam..." My hand clawed into his jacket, but he shook his head.

"Anyway..." he continued and took a breath. "That means something, right? I mean, I still somehow can't really believe it, but that's my problem and I'll learn that, but the point is—I always knew you’d be there." He lifted his head, looked at me. His eyes shimmered and he smiled. "Rachel, I knew you would always come back. And really, you were never completely gone, for me. And… I want that to stay that way. I really do."

His voice broke at the end, and I pulled him toward me as I leaned into him, my arms around his neck. Tears mixed into the kiss, I couldn’t say whose. Adam had never talked about what it had been like for him during the last weeks, not really. Of course I had seen how it had worn him down, hope and despair, the uncertainty, the fear. But I had never pictured how alone he must have been, how truly frightened. At the mercy of hospital schedules, nurse shifts and doctors appointments. My heart ached for him and at the same time, slowly, the meaning of his words seeped into me, filling me with a warmth I could barely contain.

Breathing hard, I brushed the wetness from his face and mine, and we rested our foreheads together.

"I want that too," I whispered.

My thumbs ran along Adam's temples, my hands framed his face. He looked at me from red-rimmed eyes, his gaze incredibly tired and at the same time I saw in it the same glow that I felt in myself in that moment. A certainty, an invulnerability, as if this moment would last forever and we'd never leave this bench.

Adam blinked. "Okay..." he murmured, pulling back slightly. He sniffled, looked away. "You know what that means, right? Things won’t… things won’t necessarily change. Not really."

“Adam…”

I had no idea if he meant him being paralyzed, or his health in general or the hospital stay, but I found I didn’t really care. I knew privacy would always be hard to come by, travelling would continue to be a headache, and planning was an act of defiance against the universe. But we’d managed so far, we could manage a little more, and then more, and eventually just see.

I smiled weakly and leaned back, sighing. "I think so," I murmured and brusquely wiped away the last tears on my face.

Adam inhaled sharply as his upper body tipped forward when my support dropped away. His arm trembled as he pushed himself back against the backrest and he frowned at me.

I ignored his silent reproach and continued, grinning although it hurt. "You know, spending all this time with someone like you is truly damn exhausting."

Adam raised his eyebrows.

"You're constantly nice to people and people are nice to you, it's unbearable."

Adam guffawed. "That's all you can think of?"

I had to laugh at his exasperation. "Oh no, not only! That's far from all. Everywhere it's like, okay, we have rules, but Adam, of course they don't apply to you, that's something for the loser class." I gestured wildly to make clear what I thought of it. "And I'm always standing beside you smiling nicely, waving prettily and slipping quietly through the turnstile, your free plus-one."

Adam grinned. “That does sound terrible.”

"It is!" I insisted and poked his chest. “It’s unfair. How am I supposed to look next to you?”

"Like a very, very good-looking, intelligent, funny, and emotionally maturing person?"

I puffed up. "Emotionally maturing?!"

He shrugged, hooking his arm around my shoulder and pulling me in. I climbed onto his lap and leaned into him. "Point is, I really like having you by my side, Rachel."

“Good. Because I really like having you by mine too,” I muttered, and kissed him again.

“Get a room," called a grinning teenager who shuffled past on the street with his friends and skateboard under his arm. The other boys whooped.

Adam paused. "Did you mean that?"

I groaned. "I'm claiming that point for myself." And pulled him in by the back of his neck for an even longer kiss.