After 32 years together, I thought I knew every version of my husband, even the helpless one he became whenever something hurt. But after an accident, Conor stopped letting me help him. The more protective he became of one simple injury, the more certain I was that something else had happened.
“Don’t touch the cast.”
Conor’s voice came out so sharply that my hand stopped inches from his right leg.
He was sitting on the bathroom floor beside the tub, one crutch under the sink and the other across the doorway. The top edge of his cast had cracked when he fell, and the padding had shifted.
“You’re on the floor,” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I can handle it.”
“Don’t touch the cast.”
“You just lost a fight with a bathtub.”
“Cynthia.”
Something in the way he said my name stopped me.
It wasn’t irritation. It was fear.
Conor grabbed for a towel, but he wasn’t fast enough.
The loose padding had slipped far enough for me to see a long pink scar running above the cast line.
Something in the way he said my name stopped me.
It was healing.
And it had nothing to do with the fractured ankle he’d supposedly gotten two weeks earlier.
I stared at him.
“Conor… what the hell is that?”
His hand closed around the towel.
Suddenly, the last two weeks of strange behavior made sense.
It had nothing to do with the fractured ankle he’d supposedly gotten two weeks earlier.
Or at least I thought they did.
***
When you’ve been married for 32 years, you learn certain things about a person.
I knew Conor snored worse on his back.
I knew he said he wasn’t hungry right before stealing half my fries. And I knew my husband had absolutely no dignity when he was sick.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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