The week after Thanksgiving was rough. Waking up Saturday and wandering into the bathroom, only to be startled by my own reflection in the mirror wasn't much fun. Neither was getting frustrated when I couldn't get the scarf I wanted to wear to stay on my head, though Karlie helped me solve that one so I could go out to treatment on Monday. My counts were down, so they told me I needed to wear a surgical mask anytime I was coming to or leaving the hospital since I would share spaces with people who had contagious illnesses, and that I should do the same if I was going anyplace with an unusually large crowd or going to any other kind of medical facility, or if I knew or suspected someone near me had a cold or whatever. Because the scarf over my bald head didn't scream 'sick' loudly enough.
They used a different dressing after they accessed my port, and in the middle of radiation, I developed unbearable itching where it was. Apparently, I'm allergic to that kind, and by the time they got it off, I'd gotten hives all over. So before they could even start my pre-meds, they had to try to treat that and stop the reaction. With my counts low, they were kind of surprised I had enough of an immune system to mount that strong of an allergic reaction, but they said that was kind of a good sign, ironically. In addition to the regular meds, I had to add a course of steroids, which made my face all puffy again, like after surgery, and also made my feet and legs ache, no matter how many bananas I shoved into my stomach. So I was also taking pain meds to counteract that. The one bright spot was that the new med they'd added mid-infusion the previous week seemed to help with the nausea and vomiting, when used as part of my pre-med regimen. Two bouts of vomiting, but not too awful, and I felt less nauseous than I had since starting treatment. The anti-diarrhea meds were helping there too, since they'd upped my dose from the previous week. I guess that was the concession from the universe for the fact that three days after chemo I was still mildly itchy and covered in raised red blotches. Still, I was frustrated going into December. Which is why, on December first, Karlie decided we should get out the Christmas decorations so the house would at least look good when Mom came to stay with me so she could go to the Adidas event in Germany.
She plopped a santa hat on my head that morning as soon as we were both up, and announced that it was officially December and that meant we were overdue to decorate. She knows Christmas is my favorite holiday, especially with my birthday so close, and I love that she took the lead decorating this year. Usually I'm the one telling everyone they have to help me, but she totally took control. She even made me santa pancakes with strawberry hats and whipped cream beards to get me in the spirit, which was adorably Karlie. I took a picture of them to post on my insta, a reminder that although I wasn't up to a video right then, I was alright, and there were good things happening in my life. I wasn't cheerful enough yet after breakfast, so Karlie put on a pair of reindeer antlers, presented me with the can of whipped cream, knowing I have a weakness for dispensing it right into my mouth, and then proceeded to serenade me with a horribly off-key rendition of Santa Baby until it made me laugh.
The good mood even carried into radiation, probably the first time I've gone into it with a truly positive attitude. The team was the same one who had been working when I discovered my allergy to the port access dressing, so they'd seen me in a pretty bad place, freaking out about the itching and afraid it was some kind of reaction to my meds or something, and worrying about what might happen if it was. They said they were really pleased to see me so happy, dancing around with my wife while we waited our turn, both wearing goofy hats and promising to bring treats the next day. They even played festive music for me while I was on the table, just to help keep me in a good mood. I hadn't realized just how bad my attitude had been until I saw the change reflected back at me from the radiation team. Where before they'd been kind of quiet and business like, now they tried joking around with me and Karlie a little, even showing that they're familiar with tumblr, pulling out "I like your socks" and pointing out something I hadn't even noticed – that Kar's socks had little giraffes wearing santa hats and scarves all over them. It was an important reminder that although going to treatment sucked, I did have some control over how I felt about it, and I wasn't doing as good a job as I thought choosing to be happy and not letting it get me down.
Getting home from radiation, I was much more in the Christmas spirit than I had been when I woke up. Karlie put on Christmas music, and even as we worked she would occasionally stop what she was doing to pull me in for a dance. She did the heavy lifting, carrying the tubs of decorations from storage, and climbing up the ladders to hang things up high, while I mostly pulled the different decorations out of tubs and directed her where to put them. She explained that she'd sent Sean and Jeff to go get a tree from some farm in Jersey. She'd thought about taking me out there, knowing I grew up on a Christmas tree farm, but decided it was too cold for us to spend that much time outside, and as much as I hated to admit it, she was probably right. Getting cold doesn't actually make you get sick, but it can lower your immune system and dry out your mucus membranes, making your more susceptible to germs, and with my immune system already down, it wouldn't have been a smart decision.
She was up on the ladder in the living room trying to hang some lights up high when she sent me into the kitchen to get more command hooks and adhesive. I had my head deep in the cabinet under the kitchen sink trying to find the size she asked for when I heard a startled yelp from the other room, followed by a loud thump, a metallic clatter and Karlie's voice yelling 'FUCK!' I raced into the living room to find my wife lying on her back on the living room floor, pushing the ladder off herself.
"Jesus, Karlie, you're bleeding," I exclaimed, surveying the scene. There was a fairly large gash on her forehead, a trickle of blood aiming for her eyebrow.
"Am I?" she queried, bringing her left hand up to her forehead, making a face when she saw the blood on her fingertips as she pulled them away. "Shit. I wasn't even paying attention to that, because I hurt my wrist when I fell."
Up until that moment, I'd been most concerned about her head. It wasn't until then that I consciously realized that she wouldn't have used her left hand for anything she'd done since I'd come in if her right was okay. I pulled the ladder off the rest of her and helped her sit up, finally turning my attention to her right wrist. It was just slightly swollen compared to the left, and didn't seem too oddly shaped, but when I asked if she could move her fingers, she could barely manage a flutter, accompanied by a sharp hiss of pain. I hated to see my wife in pain, but letting her drip blood everywhere wasn't going to help anything, so I ran back into the kitchen to get a clean towel for her head and a bag of frozen veggies for her wrist. I held the towel to her head, trying to see if I could get the bleeding to stop, but it became clear very quickly that it wasn't going to happen. I had a moment of panic when I realized that security was somewhere on a tree farm in Jersey, but Karlie assured me they'd left the Highlander in the garage, though they'd left it in case we needed it for me, not her.
It wasn't easy getting her down to the car, which I knew I was going to have to drive, since she had her hands full not bleeding all over the car and keeping her wrist as still as possible. It was a good thing we'd left a box of masks in the car, because I didn't even think about it until we pulled up to the valet line, a blessing since I've never actually had to worry about what to do with the car at the hospital before. I've always had security drive us, so what they did after that, I didn't really know. But the ED has valet parking so you don't have to worry about it, you can just take care of whoever is having the emergency. As we approached the front of the line, I grabbed a mask out of the box, looping it over my ears. I was still wearing a santa hat, and I realized that somehow Karlie's antlers had stayed on through all the drama, though slightly askew. An orderly with a wheelchair met us at the line, though he looked confused as to which of us to wheel in, with Kar the slightly bloody reindeer and me the obvious cancer patient santa. Kar had been doing pretty well, not too much pain on the way over, only grunting a bit at the bumps. But getting her out of the car proved more difficult than getting her in. The orderly was gentle though, and once he discovered I was there as the wife and not the patient, he led us directly to the orthopedic treatment area and a relatively private treatment bay so I would be kept apart from all the germs. He even hung a sign on the curtain requesting that any doctors or nurses coming to see Karlie follow infectious disease control protocol so I would be able to take my mask off, it would be them who had to wash up and wear masks, gowns and gloves to protect me. I'd done that plenty of times to keep patients I was visiting in the hospital safe. Now it was my turn to be protected.
The first nurse to come in was there just to figure out what we were there for, which means the infectious disease warning made her think we were in the wrong bay, since usually patients with crazy diseases don't end up in orthopedics, but once she saw me in the chair, and Karlie on the exam table, it all made sense. The first order of business was to check Karlie for any signs of a concussion, asking questions and checking her pupils. Fortunately, aside from a headache and the obvious bleeding gash, she showed no signs of internal head injury. She remembered exactly what happened, that she'd reached a little too far to try to hang the lights and then she'd gotten surprised by one of the cats and tried to correct it but overbalanced and put her hand out to try to stop the fall, which probably saved her head, but led to the second reason we were currently sitting in the emergency room. Her pupils were equal and reactive, terminology I'd learned from television medical dramas. They reserved the option to send her for a head CT, just in case, but since she hadn't lost consciousness and wasn't showing any symptoms, they let us wait and watch a bit. Once we knew her head was okay, she had to change into a hospital gown. Getting her top off was like a war, making sure she didn't jostle her arm too badly while also avoiding the gauze they'd taped on her head to keep the blood from going everywhere, and really hoping we could avoid having to have her shirt cut off. She joked a bit about how it was usually me in the awesomely too short hospital gowns, and on Karlie the gown was practically obscene, though we weren't in any place to do anything about it. I decided that unless she wanted to show off ALL of Victoria's Secrets, she should probably put her pants back on. These days I'm the only one who gets to see her in sexy lingerie.
It seemed to take forever, getting all the pieces into place. She had to go to another department for x-rays, while I stayed in my bubble of germ-free air. When she got back, they'd wrapped her wrist in a special machine that worked like ice to try to bring down the swelling while we waited for a plastic surgeon to stitch up her forehead, and for the radiology department to process her x-rays and pass them on to an orthopedic specialist, to see if it was broken, though it was pretty clear that it was. They also had to determine how bad the break was, and if they could just set and cast it or if she would need surgery. She was really quiet. I didn't know if it was because she was in pain, or embarrassed to have fallen, or just tired. I got some increasingly anxious texts from security when they got home to find the ladder on the floor, and Meredith lapping daintily at the drops of Karlie's blood that had spilled, and the Highlander missing, and zero communication from me. We damn near burned the house down, because we'd turned on the over. Thank God we hadn't gotten any cookies in it yet, or we probably would have. I'd never even thought about it. All I cared about was if Karlie was okay. I told them where we were, but when they asked if I wanted them to come, I said no. No one knew we were there, and with the protections in place to keep me away from the germs, I was also kept away from anyone in the hospital who might squeal. We could do this ourselves, I thought. I was, however, grateful when they said they would clean up a bit of the mess we'd left behind, leaving in such a hurry.
She met with first one, then another plastic surgeon, trying to ensure the best possible healing process for the cut on her head. It was nearly an inch long and pretty deep, and had refused to stop bleeding no matter how long she held the towel to it. She was fortunate that it was fairly high up on her forehead, and would probably be easily covered with bangs, a must for her line of work. The general consensus was that there was no way to completely avoid a scar. The best they could do would be to minimize it, ensuring straight edges and careful, flat stitches, with special bandages to keep it from drying out at night. It would take longer to heal initially, but hopefully help her avoid needing scar revision surgery later. She hung her head as the second surgeon left, a slump in her shoulders I'd rarely seen. Between dance and modeling, holding herself with confidence is more natural for her than slumping. I slipped onto the table behind her, on her left side to avoid her injured right arm, and rested my chin on her shoulder. "You okay, babe?" I asked softly, taking her left hand in mine and turning it over to trace the lines of her palm, paying special attention to her ring finger, where the two I'd given her mere months before rested.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm good," she replied, shaking her head a bit like she was bringing herself back from somewhere else in her head. I was amazed at how like me her thought process was as she explained it, how she'd been worrying about the trip to Germany and her contracts and what would they do about her having a broken arm and fresh stitches on her face and what if the injuries meant she couldn't fulfill some of her obligations. She'd worked so hard to line up some different campaigns for the last month of the year, all of which were supposed to shoot in the next week and a half to let us just chill for my two week break from chemo and enjoy the holidays. Setting all this up was supposed to let her be more free in the New Year to chose her own schedule, and pick and choose who she wanted to work with and support. There were some cute holiday themed ones, besides the Adidas trip, and now she didn't know if she would really be able to do any of them. She was afraid she'd get dropped and her management would be upset at her, models are supposed to take extra care not to get injured 'in season' though in my time with Karlie it had always been pretty hard for me to tell when it WASN'T the season since she was constantly working. With her hand immobilized in the cryocuff, she couldn't text, so I did it for her, contacting members of her team and letting them know what was happening. Even if they were mad at her, I thought she would feel better knowing. I also contacted her rep at Adidas directly, and they assured me she was still very much in demand, even if she showed up with a bandage on her forehead and her wrist in a cast, which eased at least that fear.
My brain had been going so many directions since the fall. Taylor had been awesome, taking charge and doing everything she could do to make sure I was as okay as I could be, given that I was uncontrollably bleeding and my right hand didn't work and my wrist felt fine as long as I didn't move, at all, whatsoever, which meant that most of the time I alternated between a dull throb and shooting pain. I've spent so much time and energy focused on her, and making sure she's feeling fine and gets to treatment and I had this whole day planned and now, instead of having this fun day decorating the house and making cookies and dancing around and being goofy, here we were, in the hospital again, and it was all my fault. If I'd been more careful, we wouldn't be here. Just being here with me put her at risk for infection, which killed me, but I knew there was no way she would have left me alone here, and I was really grateful that the hospital was working so hard to keep her as safe as possible. Between worrying about Taylor, being in pain, and worrying about just how bad this was going to be for my career, I guess I had gotten pretty quiet. And Taylor did her best to bring me back and lift me up, which was amazing, and exactly what I needed.
And just as it seemed they might have forgotten about us, the plastic surgeons returned, this time with trays of sterile supplies, sutures and syringes of local anesthetic, and the special moist dressings that would do the most to reduce scarring. I held her hand and let her squeeze as she hissed her discomfort through her teeth, the result of the burn from the injections, a pain I'd experienced more than I would have liked just recently, but one Karlie wasn't so familiar with. Once the numbing took effect though, she handled the stitches like a champ. She had to sit super still while the surgeon worked extremely carefully to make sure the edges were as straight as possible, and met neatly, and that the stitches laid flat and neatly. It seemed like it took as long to stitch up her head as my entire port-placement surgery, but then, with my surgery it was more about making sure they didn't damage the veins leading to my heart while inserting the catheter, not so much about the cosmetic result. I wasn't fond of the scars left behind, but I knew they wouldn't hurt my career. Assuming I was able to get better and put this all behind me, a few unsightly scars wouldn't stop me from writing songs or performing. They would, on the other hand, have a really detrimental effect on Karlie's modeling career, so I thought it was good the surgeon was taking his time and doing his best to minimize the scar. It would still need time to heal, and she would have to get creative to hide it in the mean time, but they were going to do their best to make sure this would eventually only be a story we would tell our kids one day, about how our first Christmas as a married couple, Karlie fell off the ladder and scared me half to death.
It wasn't until the alarm on my phone went off to remind me that it was time to take my meds that I realized I didn't have them with me. I was pretty proud of myself when I thought to call Dr. Miller's office, in another building of the same hospital complex. When I explained what had happened, she actually sent Andy over with meds for me and to check on us both. He praised our handling of the situation, getting the emergency department to take steps to reduce my exposure to other patients and germs, and also me for calling to get meds rather than just skipping. He even gave Karlie a little side hug and encouraged her to feel better soon, while insisting that we dress festively for my next appointment, the last infusion before the holidays. He was disappointed to hear she wouldn't be at the infusion appointment, but was so excited to hear she was meeting with one of her big clients and maybe working on her own designs. I thought it was hilarious that he had no idea who she was, other than my wife, but as she talked, I could hear her getting more and more excited about the trip, and it was distracting her from the pain. The light was back in her eyes, and I tried as much as I could to convey my thanks for that to Andy, without actually saying anything. As he left, he squeezed my shoulder, and I hoped that was his way of saying he understood my message.
It seemed like we'd been in the ER for an entire day by the time we finally got the x-rays and the orthopedic doctor back. Karlie and I had actually taken a nap on the bed in her room, her bad arm stretched out in front of her on a pillow, me playing the big spoon, which felt weird but was the best way to make sure I didn't bump her arm and cause her pain. It hadn't lasted long, or been much of a nap, but we tried. The nurse actually had to wake us up and re-check Karlie's vitals since the sleepiness could have been a sign of a head injury that they'd missed. It wasn't, fortunately, we'd just been up early for radiation, and then all that time trapped in one section of the ER had been pretty draining on top of working to get out all the decorations. We were just tired. Fuck it, I was always tired. But even my ball of energy wife was exhausted by being in pain and all the tests and the waiting.
"I get it," she said suddenly, as we sat together at the end of the bed, hoping that since they'd bothered to wake us we might be getting her test results soon. "I've been dealing with this for a few hours. This is your life. It's hard on my side, but its really hard on yours. I thought I understood before, because I held your hand and was there for every test. But I didn't. Not at all. The way you've handled all of this, everything that's been thrown at you...I love you even more, and I didn't think that was possible. Thanks for being here for me today. No one else would understand exactly what I'm going through right now." She leaned in to kiss me, and so of course at that moment, the doctor finally came back with the images of her wrist.
It was definitely broken, not badly, and not too far displaced, but in need of setting and a cast for probably four to six weeks. The cryo cuff had done its job, the right wrist was only slightly larger than the left, despite the time that had elapsed since the injury. She didn't need surgery, which was a blessing, but setting it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. The bone was slightly out of place, which was why she'd been struggling to move her fingers, and why she was still having more pain than was usual. The doctor explained that there were a couple options to set the bone, but the quickest would be for him to just move the bone back where it belonged. The downside was, it would hurt like a bitch while he did it, though he assured us she would feel much better with the bone in place. He estimated it would take less than a minute. Otherwise, he could numb her up using regional anesthetic, but it would take time to actually work. Hearing that, Karlie held out her arm and said "do it." She held my left hand in hers (I'd seen enough movies of childbirth to know better than to give her my right, she's a beast, even left-handed), and gritted her teeth while he squeezed her bad wrist with both hands, maneuvering the bone back where it belonged. Typing can't replicate the noise she made, but suffice it to say it was nearly inhuman, but as soon as it popped back into place, she released her grip and unclenched her jaw, the pain left behind. It took much less time to get the results of the second x-ray, that the bone was aligned correctly and she could get her cast.
So she would be able to keep working out, they gave her a waterproof cast, wrapping her arm in a kind of squared-off bubble wrap, held in place with a strip of tape and then wrapped over and over with fiberglass tape to create the hard outer shell. If she got sweaty or swam or got soap in it, she needed to run lots of plain water through it to prevent skin irritation, but otherwise she could live her normal life, which was incredible to me. The doctor said the padding for the arm was what usually made casts unable to get wet, because most of the time the under-wrap layers were cotton. The air-filled squares and special mesh allowed the water to dry from under, rather than trapping the moisture and germs in there. They asked what color she wanted, and Karlie immediately turned to me with a question. If she got it in white, would I paint it red and green plaid for Christmas? Once I laughed and told her yes, the color was chosen and it took less than five minutes to get the cast in place, and only a few more for it to dry enough that she could get dressed again, very, very carefully. I had to stretch the heck out of the sleeve of her shirt to get it wide enough to go over her cast, but we got it on. She even put her antlers back on for the ride home. I was so glad the valet could bring the car around for us, I couldn't imagine having to go find it in a parking garage somewhere after the day we'd had. It was already dark as we left, we really had spent our entire day at the hospital.
We were both absolutely exhausted by the time we pulled into the garage, and I was a little nervous about what we were going to walk into. But the guys had worked really hard, finishing most of the work we'd started, just leaving the ornaments for the tree for us to hang, and the stockings to put by the fireplace. They'd even left food in the fridge for us to make, though they'd given us a pretty strong note about not leaving the oven on again. They'd even replaced the bloodied rug from the living room, unable to get the stains out. We barely stayed awake long enough to eat before Karlie took more of her pain meds and she and I both passed out in bed, still dressed from the day and completely drained from everything that had happened.
* * *
I dreamed I won the Album of the Year again. We were front row at the Grammys. I was sitting on Karlie's lap, and Ed was on one side of her, with Jack and Ella on the other. Mom and Dad and Austin and Abigail sat in the row behind us. Everyone else was wearing dark colors, black and dark blue, but I was wearing this super sparkly silver dress. I had hair, hanging long and loosely curled down my back, a silver circlet woven through at the crown of my head, which gave me the impression this was sometime in the future, since I hadn't gotten to take Karlie to any of my past Grammys. And Karlie looked older to me, fine lines beginning to form at the corners of her eyes and mouth, slight bags under her eyes betraying sleepless nights. I wasn't sure why I was on Kar's lap instead of in a seat, but I figured I'd done that so someone else could sit up front with us, like maybe Ella or something. Karlie was holding both Ed's and Jack's hands, which seemed weird, but I had my arms around her so I was pretty sure she was holding their hands so I could hold her. As you do in dreams, I knew we were nervous because I was nominated, even though I didn't really know what was going on. I had barely any time to wait before I heard them say "And the Grammy for Album of the Year goes to: Forever by Taylor Swift, produced by Taylor Swift-Kloss, Ed Sheeran and Jack Antonoff!" The whole room erupted into cheers, but it was a weirdly subdued sort of cheering where everyone leapt to their feet, but yet somehow seemed sad. I had jumped off Karlie's lap in my excitement, but I was surprised to see her hug Ed and Jack without even glancing at me. She even hugged my parents and brother and best friends while completely ignoring me, though they all seemed to have tears in their eyes. And so did Jack and Ed. I mean, they hugged each other without hugging me. And then Ed began escorting Karlie to the stage, so I tried to latch on to Jack but it seemed I couldn't quite get hold of him.
And then I heard it. The voiceover talking about the award to fill the time between the announcement of the winner and us all taking the stage. "This is the third Album of the Year win for Swift, and the thirteenth Grammy overall. Swift wins the award posthumously. Accepting the award on her behalf is her wife, Karlie Swift-Kloss, along with her co-producers Ed Sheeran and Jack Antonoff." Posthumously. POSTHUMOUSLY. I was dead. Maybe a ghost? They weren't ignoring me. They couldn't see me. I stood to the side of the stage as my wife addressed a crowd of my peers, all standing on their feet, most crying.
"My wife was the one who was good with words. I know if she were here, she would want to thank her parents, her brother, and her friends for being the ones who helped her get here. For supporting her no matter what. She would want to thank the fans for all the love and support they showed her, us, especially at the end. She would have been twenty-nine, now. And I know she would be incredibly proud to be not only the first openly gay woman to win this award three times, but also the first PERSON, period, to win this award three times. And she would have been even more proud to achieve that feat before her thirtieth birthday. I know I have always been proud to be her wife, and I am proud to accept this award on her behalf. Thank you." There were tears in her eyes, and her voice broke a couple times, but no one seemed to want to hurry her off the stage.
Ed stepped up next. "Taylor was my best friend. I'm proud to have been a part of her life, and a part of this album." He turned his eyes upward. "Tay, this one's for you, innit." He was actually weeping, tears running down his face, but he didn't seem bothered.
Jack couldn't speak. He simply raised his Grammy over his head, to a slight increase in the level of cheering.
I rested my hand on Karlie's shoulder as she walked off the stage, the Grammy that should have been mine in her hand. She shivered, just a bit, as my hand touched her skin. "Tay, you did it," she whispered. "Somehow, I know you know. You won, baby. I wish you were here. So much."
"I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," I replied, trying to make her hear me, even though by then I'd accepted that no one could see or hear me. And then she was enveloped by my family who had made their way backstage to comfort her as she broke down, completely, into a weeping mess, sobbing my name.
Taylor woke me up, repeating over and over, starting in a whisper but becoming louder and more passionate "I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," which wasn't so bad, except that as she said it, tears began to stream down her cheeks and I realized this wasn't a declaration of love, exactly, but more of an impassioned plea for me to hear and understand she wasn't going anywhere, which is when I started trying to wake her up, gently shaking her and calling her name. When she finally woke up enough to realize, I expected her to break down, like I had the night I had my nightmare, when Austin was here. But she didn't. Without her glasses, she couldn't totally focus on my face, but she peered up at me anyway, saying, with wonder in her voice "you're okay? you're not crying?" like she expected me to be upset. The only thing that was upsetting me was the fact that my wife had been calling out in her sleep in and crying. Once she accepted that I was really okay, that we were both okay, I knew I had to ask what happened. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I knew that we needed to talk about it, just like she'd pushed me to tell her about my nightmare about losing her, she needed to tell me whatever happened.
When she told me she'd dreamed about the Grammys, I felt better, like this was going to be a good dream. Maybe they were happy tears. Maybe "I am here, Karls. I'll always be here," was her response to positive news, like "I'm okay! So I'll always be here!" But as she began to tell me about the way we were seated and the outfit she was wearing, I knew. As surely as I had known in my own bad dream that Kimby was trying to get me to leave for a funeral, I knew this Grammy awards show hadn't gone well. As we talked it through, I knew this was coming from anxiety, but I wasn't sure what sparked it. She wasn't sure either, at first. She'd worried about me, when I fell. She was used to me being the stable, healthy one. But today I'd given her a scare, falling off that ladder, breaking a bone, hitting my head. She'd been the one taking care of me. I needed her. But now, just as she'd gotten me put back together, I was going, and I wasn't sure leaving her right now was the right thing.
I hated that I'd had this dream when Karlie was getting ready to go to Germany. That trip was everything, and she had to go. This partnership with Adidas was huge for her, the first step toward maybe having her own line one day, not just under Adidas, but under her own label. It was her dream to own her own company one day, and this was a good step in that direction. She wouldn't let me help her, and I loved her for it. She wanted to pave her own way, and I didn't want to hold her back. Being sick sucked, but thinking I might be keeping Karlie from where she belonged sucked more. That, really, was what I was anxious about. And once we'd talked our way around to that point, we could go back to sleep, arms wrapped around each other.
* * *
In the morning Karlie took off, promising to be back shortly, and insisting that I get out my paints, because she was holding me to my promise of a Christmas plaid cast. After my nightmare, I wasn't sure how we would be together in the morning, but we seemed to have an unspoken agreement to try to recapture the amazing mood we'd been in the day before, even trying again for the Christmas cookies and decorating the tree. I actually felt good, like getting dressed in something a little better than workout clothes, so while Karlie was off doing whatever she'd come up with, I pulled on a dress, covering my head with a pretty scarf instead of just a beanie, even putting in my contacts and doing my makeup. I thought if she was up for it, we might take Christmas photos, at least, after I'd finished painting her cast and maybe cutting her some bangs to cover her stitches.
When Karlie came back, she'd bought a huge cinnamon roll somewhere, but I was pretty sure that hadn't been her main errand. She had this huge, goofy grin on her face as she bounded up the stairs, the cinnamon roll in her good left hand. I could tell she'd intended to say something clever, but she did a double take, seeing me actually dressed, like, in a dress, for the first time since I started chemo. I'd been mostly wearing workout clothes, occasionally spiffing it up with an actual jeans and sweater or flannel ensemble. To be honest, I thought our date night from right after surgery might have been the last time I'd worn a dress. And I thought it was time to change that. Dressing up, in an outfit like I would have worn on any random Thursday before I got sick, was one way of saying I wasn't giving in. And it appeared my wife approved. She leaned in and kissed me, remarking "I guess I'm not the only one full of surprises today!"
After gorging ourselves on the cinnamon roll, we put on Love Actually while I got to work with the paints, carefully painting red, green, silver and gold lines up and down and around her cast, until barely any white showed through. I was actually really proud of my handiwork, and I guess Karls was too, since she insisted on Snapchatting the process. I was even more glad I'd dressed up for the occasion, since I was definitely in every shot. But it was fun, taking something not so awesome, like Karlie's broken wrist, and making it pretty. Then I turned my attention to her forehead, and cutting a nice fringe to hide her stitches while she healed. I was maybe even prouder of that than I was of my painting skills, because they looked really good. I couldn't believe that she'd agreed to let me cut her hair, but when I was totally done and had taken a pic for posterity, she admitted that she'd had it in the back of her mind that if I totally screwed it up, she could just shave it and wear a wig. She admitted she was relieved I'd proven totally capable with scissors, then cracked up because she's apparently a middle schooler inside and she said I was good with scissors.
We spent the day decorating the tree and baking cookies, even called Jeff up to take some pictures of us with our fur babies in front of the tree. It was our first Christmas together, and I wanted the memories, especially of a day like this one, a good day, where my wife and I did domestic things, and watched my favorite movie, and I got to be crafty and mess around and just be. She had another temporary tattoo for my shoulder, this one a simple rainbow heart, a reminder that I carried a piece of her heart with me always, even when she and I were apart. We were both more apprehensive than we wanted to acknowledge about the fact that we were about to be separated for the first time since the night before our wedding, and separated by an ocean for the first time since I was diagnosed. But we also both knew it was the right decision, and that we couldn't let life stop just because I had cancer. Mom was arriving in the morning, then Kar would be gone only a few days, and once she got home, it would be time for my chemo break, and my birthday, and those were both things I was very much looking forward to. Just like everything else that had been thrown at us, from allergies to adhesive to a broken bone and a bleeding head, we could handle this. And there was always Facetime, just in case we needed to see each other.
Author's Note:
Hi mom! No, seriously, my mom is reading this monstrosity. She's back somewhere in September, I think, I don't even think she's read the wedding yet, but she's here.
So there's that :)
More than 8000 reads, y'all! And over 500 votes. Unreal. Just, unreal.
Also, Taylor is back on tumblr. That bitch is planning something. I'm a little scared.
So, yeah, this chapter wanted to go in like twenty different directions, so if it's a little disjointed, I'm sorry. I've actually started a second word doc to hold deleted scenes that I love but just don't fit the chapter or make it too long, or whatever. Because I can't let go.
Next up, Tay's birthday!
Thanks again for reading, have an amazing New Year!