This is expected. The doctor said he probably wouldn’t remember anything about the accident, or even the day of or longer. I tell him this quietly, but by the time I’m finished speaking, he’s already shaking his head. “What?” I ask. “What’s wrong.”
His grip tightens on my hand, his thumb pressing against the ring.
“Can’t remember. Ask you?”
“Ask me what?”
He presses the ring, and it digs into my skin. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. “No,”
I say hoarsely. “You were on your way. You didn’t ask me.”
He arches an eyebrow in question and grimaces at the pain it causes.
“And?” he rasps. “What you say?”
And then he waits. And watches me.
And I… I am….
I’ve just been proposed to. Huh. I….
Holy hell.
Even though I knew it had been coming, even though I knew the moment I saw the rings and read the poem, and even though I’d already made my decision the moment my ring went on my finger and his went around my neck, it’s still a surreal feeling, one that I never thought would happen in my life. I’m twenty-one years old. I’ve been with Otter just under nine months. It’s too soon. It’s too fast. It’s not even legal. People won’t recognize it. Some people will hate it. I’m too young. We’ve just been through tragedy that’s not over yet. Rash decisions were made. Right.
Right?
&n
bsp; But his words. His words from that day that seems so very long ago.
Nothing’s too fast if it means forever, Bear.
O & B Forever.
I’ve loved him since I’ve known him. I will love him until the day I die.
And I almost lost him. Fuck rash decisions. Fuck my age. Fuck it being too soon. Fuck whatever others will think. And fuck the legality of it, because we’ll know it’s real. We’ll know what it means.
And now he’s worried because I’ve been thinking too much. Again.
“Yeah, you big bastard,” I tell him as his eyes widen. “Yeah, I’ll marry the crap out of you. It’ll be messy and weird, and I’m totally not going to be your wife, but yes. You’re obviously going to need someone to take care of your crippled ass for the rest of your life, so yes. Of course, yes. I’ll fucking marry you, asshole. How could I say no?”
He closes his eyes again as his throat works, bobbing up and down. His eyes are wet when they find mine again. I don’t know how much longer I can stand, and he feels this, my weakness, because he is my strength. He moves over slightly, grimacing as he does so, his leg swinging precariously in the harness, and against my protests he pulls me down next to him. I try not to lay against him too much, because I know he’s got a couple of sprung ribs and is still covered in bruises, but he’s adamant, and as my head reaches his chest and his good arm wraps around me, so strong and alive, I listen to the beat of his heart as his hand runs through my hair. He sighs again, content and happy, and I hear him grumble, “Knew you’d say yes. Can’t resist my awesomeness.”
Thank you.
I WISH I could tell you that Mrs. Paquinn opened her eyes and smiled. I wish I could tell you that she said that she was tired of lying in the bed, and what was her nurse Jorge going to think of her if she got a bedsore? She’d never get coitus after that! And didn’t that doctor in the hallway look slightly like Bigfoot? Oh, did I think the doctors would let her drive her early ’80s Caddy that was the color of shit? They just couldn’t take away her driver’s license! Not when she used to race stock cars! Well, that might not exactly be true, but wouldn’t it be great if it was?
And that she loved us. Ah, God, she loved us all, and that we were the family she’d lost early on in her life but that the Lord saw fit to give back.
How she thought of us like her sons and daughters, like her grandchildren and her greatest friends. That she knew each and every one of us would be okay, that as long as we held on to each other, that as long as we stuck together, it didn’t matter what was thrown at us. And I knew, I just knew she’d pull me and the Kid aside and tell us that our mother didn’t matter.
That we’d got on all right, and that she was proud of what we’d become.
That the next step in our lives was only the beginning, but that we should always remember where we came from.
I wish I could tell you that. I wish that more than anything in the world.