That’s a unique name, but I like it. I’m Christina Carter, Matt’s wife. Like I said before, I guess,” replied Christina.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything more that I can do for you? I will be performing cares for your husband tonight; this side of the hall is mine for the night NOC shift.”
“All right, and no, I’m fine…thank you. I’m probably going to lay down and sleep soon.”
“That’s fine. Just let me know if you need anything more.”
The nurse turned to walk out of the room when she heard a faint voice behind her say “Wait a minute.”
The nurse turned back around. “Yes, suga’?”
“Can I ask you a question?” said Christina.
The nurse walked back into the room and sat down on the bed, next to Christina.
“Charolette, I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“My husband is going to be paralyzed from the waist down. How can we survive this? Our marriage. Our lives. This is so much so soon.”
“Why are you even questioning it, baby?” asked Charolette.
“I don’t know why. I’m scared. I guess I rely on him so much, and now that he’s vulnerable, I’m going to be the one that he relies on.”
“Well, let me ask you this then, suga’. How come you here?”
“What?”
“I said, how come you here right now then? Seems to me if you weren’t serious about your marriage or your relationship to this man, you’d be back home now and I wouldn’t have had to go ask my shift supervisor if y’all could have stayed the night or not. So how come you here right now then, if y’all really havin’ some doubts about your marriage?”
“Well, I guess it’s not having doubts, per say. Maybe it’s because I plan on spending the rest of my life with this man and I wasn’t expecting something like this to happen.”
“Suga’, marriage is filled with the unexpected all the time.” Charolette laughed and smiled. “That’s how my baby boy Montel was born twenty-three years ago, suga’.”
Christina cracked a smile and halfhearted chuckle.
“Suga’, my husband worked in a factory for nearly thirty years of his life. About ten years ago, he lost his hand in a freak accident that involved cutting two-by-fours with a ban saw in the shop he works at. Even something like losing a hand drastically changed our relationship, but you know what?”
“What?”
“It changed it for the better.”
“For the better?” asked Christina.
“Hmm. Losing his hand made him realize how important our relationship was and how important I was to him, and it made me realize how important he was to me too. You know what I mean. When you get that random phone call in the afternoon saying your husband’s been taken to the local hospital, it really pushed me to step up my game as a wife to him. To be there and support him any way I could. Baby, when you’re in a marriage, you rely on one another. Sometimes you get away from relying on one another as a team and focus on yourself and the things that you want—things like your careers, your friends—and you just expect your marriage to just be there when you get home. For your marriage to fall in place with your own personal wants and desires. And that’s when God does something to bring it all back into perspective. Even through the bad times, God has a reason for what he does. He had a reason for my husband losing his hand, and he has a reason for your husband bein’ paralyzed. Maybe this is an opportunity to reestablish your partnership with him as a team.”
“I guess I have been putting my career first sometimes. But I always come back home, I never go out partying with friends like I did back in school.”
“Just sometimes? Suga’, you don’t need to go out partyin’ with friends to lose track of what is important in your life. Obviously, your husband is, or else you wouldn’t have married the man. I want you to look at it this way. This is an opportunity for you and your husband to be just you two again. Strive toward a goal in your relationship that includes no one else but you as a couple and as a family. Work together, not apart.”
Christina smiled and gave the nurse a hug.
“You are gonna be okay, baby, just remember what I said and remember what is the most important thing in your life,” said the nurse.
“I will, thank you,” said Christina.
“If you need somethin’ else, just holla, suga’. I’ll be around”
“Actually, do you have toothbrush and toothpaste I can have for the night?”
Charolette smiled. “Yes, I do. I’ll be right back with it.”
Charolette left the room and walked out into the hospital hallway to get Christina a toothbrush and toothpaste. Christina wiped her face with her hands, stood up from the bed, and walked over to the sink. Turning the water faucet on, she tested the water coming from the faucet until it was warm to touch. She then took both hands and cupped them together. Bending over the sink, she splashed her face with warm water. She repeated splashing her face with water two more times when the nurse walked back into the room. Charolette handed Christina a package with a travel toothbrush and a small tube of travel toothpaste in it. Christina thanked Charolette as the nurse smiled, turned, and walked back out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Christina proceeded to brush her teeth. Once she finished, she dried her face with a small white hand towel next to the sink and walked back to the second bed in the room. She took the blankets that the nurse had brought her and spread them out on top of the bed. Kicking her shoes off, she laid down on the bed and rolled over to her side, facing Matt. The silhouette of Matt’s body lay in the bed by the window. The light of a full moon shining through the window in the room on Matt’s side was the only light in the room. Christina laid there in the darkness. She wondered what life would be like now that everything has changed. Could she do it? Could she be the wife of a paralyzed husband from the waist down? Yes. Yes, she could. Charolette’s words rang true in her mind that no matter how difficult things would get in their marriage, maybe this was something that was meant to happen to her. To them both. Maybe this is a wake-up call for Matt, for her, for their marriage. Christina watched her husband’s chest inflate and deflate with each breath he took from the oxygen mask in the moonlight. Slowly her eyes grew heavy watching Matt, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
As soon as Christina shut her eyes, she opened them again. This time she woke to see her husband now sitting up in the bed with the head rest of the bed elevated up. He was looking out the window of the room at something outside. He sat silently in the bed, nostalgic really, as the moonlight exposed his bright blue eyes uncovered from his eyelids.
“Matt?” said Christina.
Matt slowly turned his head toward the extra bed in the bedroom.
“Chris?” replied Matt.
Christina leaned up on her arm. “Yes, Matt. I’m here,” replied Christina.
“I can’t feel my legs,” said Matt.
Christina’s heart began to pound in her chest. What was she to say now? Christina got out of the bed she was sleeping in and walked over to Matt’s bed.
“Why can’t I feel my legs?” asked Matt. “Where are we? I can’t even move them.”
Christina walked around the edge of the bed. She grabbed Matt’s hand and held it tight as she sat down next to him. “Matt, I need to tell you something that is serious. Right now, we’re in the hospital. You had a car accident yesterday on your lunch break. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah, but everything