forcing my body to match my mind, my heart. My body is the weak thing, the failing thing. And I’ll be damned and double damned if I’ll let it slow me down, if I’ll let it stop me from showing my beloved, beautiful wife how much I love her, how much I missed her, how much I need her and want her.
Nope, nope, nope.
So, I take a little blue pill, since I’m only a few minutes from home, and they take a few minutes to kick in.
I’m on our street when I call her. It rings exactly once.
“Hi,” she breathes. “Where are you?”
“Passing the Johnstone’s house.”
She inhales sharply, and there’s a smile in the sound. Not a grin, not a smirk, but that secret smile only I know. A half-curve of the right side of her mouth, eyes narrowing, jade-green eyes luminous and hot. It’s a secret smile just for me that says you have no idea what you’re in for, buddy.
“I just got home from work,” she says.
“Have you showered yet?”
“Getting in right now.”
“Don’t.”
“I smell like—”
“Nadia.” I wait, and she’s quiet; I’m pulling into our driveway. “Just stay where you are, like you are.”
“I have to get work off of me.”
“I’ll do it for you.”
“I don’t want work on you.”
The smell of sickness, she means. The indefinable scent of possible, potentially imminent death. The scent of sorrow, the tang of fear. It’s palpable to her, and it’s why she’s such a fierce zealot about showering the moment she gets home. Protecting me, and our home, from all of it.
“Nadia.”
A sigh. “Okay.”
I feel a desperation right now. I haven’t seen her, or touched her in over a week, and for us, it’s an eternity.
But it’s a desperation borne of…something more. Something else.
Something I dare not, cannot even give name to in the deepest, hidden sanctum of my own mind.
I leave my bags in the car. Bring only one thing: a small velvet box, in my hip pocket. I pinch my cheeks and slap them on the way up the stairs, to put color in them.
I feel the little blue pill working. It’s me, too, though. It’s not that I can’t get hard, it’s that it can be difficult to stay that way, to keep from blowing too soon. The pill just restores some of my former stamina.
Our bedroom door is closed. I smell her: she’s put on perfume. Chanel. A gift for our fifth anniversary.
She’s in the process of taking her hair out of the braid—that’s part of her ritual, in the morning and when she gets home, like a warrior putting on his armor. She puts on her scrubs, bottoms first, then the top. Brushes her hair and puts it in a tight, severe braid, and then knots the braid into a bun at the top of her head. Some thick black eyeliner under her eyes. Moisturizing lip gloss—something I have bought for her in the past. Then she wraps her stethoscope around her neck, and she’s armored against the day.
When she comes home, the stethoscope goes in her purse. She begins with the braid, unknots it. Slips the tie off the end, and slowly eases the locks out of the binding of the braid. She then shakes it out, the kinked tresses sticking to each other at first. Brushes it out. Then, and only then, does she begin removing her scrubs, top first, then bottoms. The shower is usually going, warming up. She’ll brush her teeth.
When she gets out of the shower, she’s a different woman. Softer, sweeter, warmer. Nurse Bell is harder, sharper, colder. Not unkind, not at all. Nurse Bell is the human definition of understanding and compassion and kindness. But it’s a kindness that has seen pretty much the worst the medical field can offer.
Nadia feels me, hears me.
Pauses, hands up behind her head, about to free the last inch of braid. I slide up behind her. Capture her hands in mine. Bring her knuckles to my lips, kiss each one, pinky to thumb of her left hand, thumb to pinky of her right. Then I kiss each palm.
She holds her breath.
Her eyes are closed—I don’t have to see her reflection in the mirror to know this. She always closes her eyes when I kiss her hands like this.
I love her hands. They are strong, efficient, capable, but they can also be soft and loving and clever.
Oh, the things she can do with these hands. I treasure the way these hands make me feel, and