The Healing by Frances Pergamo Read Free Book Online

chink in her fortress. She had to disconnect, even if it branded her as cold and impatient. If she dared to look directly into Mike’s deep blue eyes—where more than half her life was written—she would lose control.
    The ensuing hour had been unequivocal torture for them both. Mike eventually cooperated with her, and she managed, with every ounce of her athletic strength and a helpful surge of adrenaline, to get him into the wheelchair. But then she had to strip him down and wash him.
    Her hands shook as she peeled the drenched pajamas from his body and wiped him down with a soapy washcloth. She tried to pretend it was like any other chore, perhaps on par with changing Lori’s diaper, clipping her grandmother’s fingernails, or massaging her father’s feet while he was on his deathbed. Those were things she had done without thinking twice. Why did her hands shake, when washing Mike should have been the easiest task of all? She knew his body as well as she knew her own.
    But this wasn’t Mike’s body.
    Silence hung between them, suffocating them, demeaning them. Something that should have been binding and natural felt awkward and humiliating. Karen knew Mike was mortified by his condition. Yet she couldn’t begin to reassure him when she didn’t know herself how she felt.
    â€œI’ll understand if you want to divorce me,” he told her as she rinsed him off. His voice was hoarse. He was a defeated human being.
    â€œDon’t be ridiculous,” Karen replied. She glanced up at him quickly, and it only took a second for his gaze to pierce her to the soul. He was watching her with all of his anguish laid bare, and the sight of his watery eyes sent a pain searing into her chest. As a result, her swiping motions grew quicker and more flustered.
    Divorce him? How could he even say such a thing?
    He was letting his shame become bigger than her love for him, and it allowed a spark of anger to intensify her grief. She finished drying him off and flung the towel aside.
    â€œI’m serious, Karen,” Mike said. “After you put me in a home, you should be free to go on with your life . ”
    â€œYou only make things worse when you talk like that , ” Karen said. Her knees clicked as she straightened up.
    â€œI don’t want you to live like this,” Mike said plainly.
    â€œI’ve got to do the laundry,” she announced, steeling herself by swiftly changing direction. She ripped the wet sheets from the sofa bed and carried them off in her arms, dropping a clean condom catheter on his lap as she rushed by.
    It occurred to her that he might have trouble slipping it on himself. Maybe that was why she was carrying a load of sodden bedclothes in the first place. But she couldn’t bring herself to ask him.
    Five minutes later, Karen stepped back into the living room. She found Mike slumped sideways in his wheelchair, weeping silently with his head propped in his trembling hand. He was still naked and shivering but refused to let her dress him or help him with the catheter.
    From the way he had been talking, he probably hoped to contract pneumonia and die. Or at least develop such a bad exacerbation of symptoms that Karen would indeed institutionalize him.
    That was when she had called the visiting nurse and requested a nonscheduled visit.
    She also had to call their friends and postpone their plans for the Fourth of July weekend. “Mike had a bit of a setback,” she told them. “I’ll tell you about it when things calm down a little.”
    By the time the visiting nurse arrived, Karen was ready to detonate. Her husband was suicidal, and her unstable daughter was off God-knew-where doing God-knew-what with God-knew-who. When the nurse told her to take a walk, she had started out fully intending to take a mind-clearing, cardiovascular-pumping, stress-reducing power walk to the town line and back. But she was too damn tired.
    So she ended up