I didn't even want to think about the medical bills that were coming.
Shep had been driving along, minding his own business on his bike when a driver ran a red, and plowed into him. He'd been left on the side of the road with a burst fracture in his spine, a shattered leg, a broken wrist, and three busted ribs. Not to mention the cuts and the road burn.
He'd gone from a successful electrician to bed-ridden in a blink of an eye.
He was slowly but surely starting to heal, yes, but it was still a long, long road. And not one of the doctors could tell us if his back pain would ever go away.
Sure, my life had been altered. And, yes, it sucked sometimes. But it was nothing compared to what Shep was going through, so I tried to put on the brave face. I tried to be a bright spot in his dark world. Even if he didn't outwardly seem to appreciate it.
"I'm an asshole," Shep declared, sighing as I helped him sit off the side of the bed.
"No, you're not."
"I am," he insisted as his head hung. "And I'm taking it out on the person who deserves it the least," he added, looking up at me as I moved his wheelchair in as close to the bed as I could get it. We'd gotten good at the transition from the bed to the chair after many painful failed attempts at the beginning.
"You're in pain," I reminded him, draping his good—well, good-ish—arm around my shoulders, then lifting up. Shep twisted on his good leg, then we both lowered down until he was in the chair.
"Still," he said as I lifted his casted leg up onto the pedal.
From my squatted position, I looked up at him. His face had healed. Gone were the burns and scratches and black eyes. But his face had changed a lot from the accident, from the months of pain since. His face had thinned out, revealing deep cheekbone hollows under his dark blue eyes that had seemingly permanent purple smudges beneath from the pain that made it hard for him to sleep for any decent stretch of time.
After the accident, he'd made me cut most of his long blond hair off, leaving it a somewhat shaggy, falling in soft waves just about to his shoulders.
He'd always been a good-looking guy. He'd been the most popular guy in school back in the day. And he'd never seemed to have trouble finding women after. But the incident had given his usually open and welcoming face a harder edge that made my heart ache a bit when I looked at him for too long.
"You're just grumpy because you're hungry," I declared, moving behind the chair to push him into the bathroom.
I'd been willing to do all of Shep's care, comfort zone be damned, when he'd come home. But it had been Shep who'd drawn a line in the sand about the bathroom.
So I did our usual routine, pushing him in between the sink and the toilet, locking his brakes, then moving out of the bathroom and out of his bedroom, leaving him to handle all those possibly nude things alone.
Every couple of days, I would help him remove his back brace, wrap up his leg, and help him into the tub where he would let me wash his hair, then make me leave so he could do the rest himself. Because of his refusal to let me help, it was an event that took hours, leaving him physically depleted and emotionally disgusted.
It wasn't bath day.
And I found myself thankful for that fact, then guilty for thinking it, as I made my way back into the kitchen to get breakfast started.
Sometimes, when I was lucky, an order would get screwed up at the diner during my shift. And instead of tossing out the perfectly good food as was the rule, I would discreetly package it to bring home. It saved me an extra task in the mornings.
But all the orders had been fine during my shift, so I was on omelet-making duty.
I was just putting the food on the table when Shep rolled in, looking a little less agitated than he'd been a few minutes before.
"How was work?" he asked, digging into his food.
"The usual," I told him, shrugging.
"I hate that you have to work there."
"It's a job," I said, waving it off. "Most people don't love their jobs."
"You did, though," he said, pinning me with a gaze that could always see right through me. "You loved your old job."
"I loved baking," I corrected. "The job itself was alright."
"I want you to be able to bake again."
"I will. Someday. And I still bake here sometimes." Though, admittedly, not very often. I just rarely ever had any energy to spare.