Letters to Sperling ➳ H.S.

Three: Sex with Paraplegics

Rachel and Nate didn't speak to each other for a couple days after their last argument. When I brought it up to either of them, they managed to brush it off as if nothing had happened.

"It's nothing, really," he shrugged, shoving toast and sunny-side eggs into his mouth before work one morning, a day or two after the dreadful night. "Couples fight all the time. It's normal. Every couple gets into these things and it just takes a few days to blow over."

"Why do you talk to me like I've never been in a relationship before?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him and setting my glass of orange juice down on the table. Nate choked a bit on his food.

"I— that's not what I meant, Harry, of course I know you've been in a relationship before."

His tone suggested otherwise. He darted out the door sooner than I had expected.

Rachel's response was no better.

"I'd rather not discuss it, not now," she said, running around frantically trying to find the matching top to her pink scrubs, which I had hidden so that she would spend longer trying to find it and therefore I could spend more time trying to convince her to tell me.

"Don't you think, as a psychiatric nurse, that you should talk about your problems instead of pushing them away?"

"Don't you use my job against me," she groaned. "And besides, what advice would you have to offer? All you enjoy doing is making inappropriate puns out of his name at the wrong time."

"Would you say it's... inNATE?"

She refused to speak to me after that remark.

The nature of their argument and the fact that neither of them would let anything slip about it (which usually happened with Nate because he always needed to talk about something) bothered me for the next three weeks. In that time, I worked a hundred and two hours, filled up thirty-six pages in my journal, and, to my surprise, received my blazer back on a mid-afternoon at the end of the month.

"Hey stranger," Rashida smiled the moment I opened the door. It was my day off, I had just woken up, and I was still in an old, grey hoodie and flannel pajama pants. I looked like absolute garbage. I felt like slamming the door in her face and sending her an apology note for how I looked. "I just dropped by to return your jacket."

"Three weeks late?"

"I— well, I... I came by the last two weeks but nobody was home — wanted to return it to you personally," she shrugged, holding out the charcoal-coloured article. I took it from her hands and set it down on my lap.

"Thanks," I began, without much of a plan for anything else I was going to say. I've had this conversation with her multiple times in my head, and most of them were carried out in such a way where I was the cool and suave and confident person I used to be. "I... er— I'm just going to put this away."

She nodded and I chuckled nervously to myself, trying to hide the fact that for once, the world's best con artist was reduced to nothing but a dude in a wheelchair. I turned around, nearly letting the door close, but I swivelled around quickly enough to catch it as I faced her again.

"Let me take you out for coffee," I announced, straightening my back a little, "as a thank you."

"Oh!" she gasped, gleaming again as she brushed some stray hairs behind her ear. "That's... that would be lovely. I'd love that."

Rashida and I caught the bus to the city shortly after I had chosen something more decent to wear, and we found ourselves dabbling in thrift stores on Main Street. We talked a lot: I found out that Rashida was Tamil and immigrated here with her family from Sri Lanka when she was very young, and that she was in the process of getting a doctorate degree in neuroscience, and that although I knew I couldn't fall in love with her, I really wanted to.