Beds and Breakfast

THIRD PERSON POV

“Damn it!” Sam heard Amelia say after she heard the sound of glass breaking. 

“Are you ok?” Amelia asked with a towel wrapped around her, and her hair wet. 

“This fucking hand–.” Amelia groaned in frustration. Holding up her left hand as it shook.

“I’m sorry.” Said Sam. Although she didn't have much to apologize for. But it is difficult to love someone, and something hurts them, and have no say in the matter.

“I can’t even lift a fucking glass, how am I supposed to work again, how are we supposed to travel or go hiking again, or ever leave this fucking apartment if my hands don’t work." 

Amelia and Sam were known as the old married couple amongst friends. Whenever they were asked how long they had been together, most of the time they couldn't give an answer right away because once you've been together for so long, it feels like your whole life, and no number can properly account for. They met at a club downtown, Sam was singing that night, and Amelia wanted to forget someone. Now they're here.

Sam was the first one she called after it happened. Amelia sat there in her very first car that she bought. It was a 2003 Honda CRV, it was silver and the back windows didn’t work but it was the first thing that was hers, and the first thing that would grant her unconditional freedom.

“Sam?” She said, her voice hesitating, with her ear up against the phone, as she struggled to keep her eyes open. “I got in a little accident and I need you to come here.”

“Where are you?” Amelia had to pass the phone to one of the incredibly kind strangers who had stopped on the way, the woman told Sam that Amelia had crashed into the guard rail on an entrance ramp.

Sam got out of her car without closing her door, and ran to Amelia. It felt like torture not being able to hold her while the paramedics checked her out. Amelia could barely keep her eyes open. Both of her hands were weak, and although most of her faculties were intact her hands and motor skills were damaged. The car was totaled, which didn’t matter much to Sam but it did to Amelia. Soon after Amelia would find out that she had fractured one of her vertebrates in the accident, and would lose most of her mobility. That being her functional walking, standing, and she would rely on a cane, and Sam to move around. And she hated that. More than anything she hated that Sam had gone from someone she wanted, to someone she now needed. And it was unfair and infuriating, and one of the worst parts was that Sam couldn't have been angry about it even if she tried.

Sam would not deny that being a caregiver for a disabled person wasn't work, it was. Early on when Amelia was recovering in an inpatient rehab center, they made sure that they would both have the adequate mental and physical supports to support their well being. They found accessible clothing, and various items that would allow Amelia to have as much independence as possible, which she wanted. Amelia still went out, which although contrary to popular belief, disabled people can still do, when the world is accessible. That's not to say that all of this was not incredibly difficult and exhausting for the both of them, or that this life altering event was something inadmissible. They found ways to make it more bearable for the both of them, and one of those things was staying together.

It was a Saturday morning, and when they first got together, Amelia would always make Sam breakfast, and she wanted to be able to give that to Sam again. Sam woke up to the sound of Amelia cursing, and glass shattering. Sam opened the bedroom door and rushed down the hall into the kitchen. Amelia had dropped pancake batter on the flour, and was now standing amongst it, glass shards of the bowl, and the fallen spoon. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the edge of the counter. Her shoulders curled forward, as she attempted to remain upright but her exhaustion was eminent. Sam stared in shock.

“I’m giving you an out.” Amelia said, her eyes closed and her voice heavy. “I’m telling you right now, that I want you to be happy and sleep in on Saturdays, I want you to live your life, I want you to know that you don’t have to stay here with me, and I am telling you that it is ok to not want to stay with me, and that I understand that you didn’t sign up for this.” Sam picked up Amelia's cane from where it rest on the counter, she handed it to Amelia, and asked if she could put her arm around her waist to help hold her up, to give her a break since she was clearly exhausted. Amelia consented.

"I want you to know that I am not staying because of some obligation, or because of a guilt complex. I love you. And I don't want to sleep in every day, or go to bars and forget my name. I want you, and I am ok, I will tell if I am not. I want your cynical jokes, and your kindness, and I love how deeply you love other people and how deeply you care, and I want you, and I want to stay here, with you."

"I want to cook for you."

“Then we cook together.” 

Despite what Sam said, Amelia knew that Sam was tired, that she was patient and she would go for as long as Amelia needed, but she knew that she needed some rest too. She knew that Sam would give herself even when she had very little to give. She went and stayed with her mom for about a week while Sam was on a trip. Amelia’s Mom had helped her make dinner for Sam, but before she left she forgot about the bread in the oven. She went to grab it, with oven mites, and she made sure she had something nearby to set it down, just as she got it above the stove to set it down, she took one hand away to shut the oven. Except her one hand could no longer support a pound of bread by itself, the bread dropped to the ground along with the hot metal baking sheet.

Amelia

I feel like a failure. I feel like I am being yelled at for giving the wrong answer to a question I was never told how to answer. I hate that my body won’t do what I want it to, I hate that I feel weaker than I was before. 

“Did you do this for me?” Sam asked, I wiped away my tears, and smiled. Sam was smiling from ear to ear. I loved seeing her smile. “Your mom just left, did she help you?” I nodded. “What’s wrong?” I wanted this one thing to be untouched by my grief. My grief for a body that I don't have anymore, my grief for the life that I lived before. I wanted it to be free of the despair of what had happened. But grief and pain do not disappear. Instead you grow, and make space around it, but it will never leave. I burst into tears when she asked me. 

“I am trying so hard, and I go to the doctor and I do the exercises but I just can’t fix this, and I feel like I’m failing you, and that you are the only one who ever has to sacrifice anything, or care for me, and I hate that feeling, and all I wanted was to do something that would make you feel loved, and instead you come home to a mess in the kitchen, and I am a mess.” 

“Come here.” She said as she wrapped her arms around me. I didn’t want her to have to give me another part of herself, but I think that Sam is the kind of person who doesn’t see these things as giving or taking. She mostly feels them as opposed to seeing them. She feels peoples pain in her bones, and to her, this is what you do. It’s beautiful, and she is beautiful. And I had no idea that something so beautiful would make me feel so guilty and so small about myself. Maybe it was something that was always there, maybe I am grief that everyone else will grow around, grief and pain and agony that will never go away but instead people just find space to between themselves and it. 

Sam 

We sat on the kitchen floor, and ate the bread, it was fucking delicious, I don’t care that she needed help, she still made some really good fucking food. We laughed about it. Amelia was one of the most thoughtful people I had ever met. That is what made me fall in love with her. 

You can be on someone's body for a moment, you can feel their body on yours, but to be on someone's mind to live in thoughts that are autonomous of conscience, and Amelia thinks all the time, and I have never felt more loved. She knew that I loved spaghetti, and I loved when she made the garlic bread, and she arranged it with her mom so she could have a meal ready for me when I got home. And sometimes I wish it was me in the car, and not her, so that I could take her pain away. I wish there was a trading system but there isn’t, because if there was, there would be no pain and peace that lived together and unfortunately for us, they are a packaged deal. 

“Do you remember the first time I made this for you?” 

“In your dingy little uni apartment, with the door handle that didn’t work, and you had to get all your roommates out so you could have me over.”

THIRD PERSON POV

Sam loved the way a story would dance through Amelia's eyes, as she told it. She didn’t have to know what Amelia was talking about, or remember it, because getting to watch Amelia remember it, and know exactly how it made her feel was enough

“I was so nervous.” Amelia recalled. 

“Why?” Sam put her hand on Amelia’s. 

“Because I wanted to make a good impression, and I was worried that if I didn’t you wouldn’t want to meet again, and so I made sure there was music that you liked, I wanted to look nice.” Sam smiled. 

"You always look nice." Amelia stared at the oven. Sam stared at Amelia.

"Are we really going to be ok?" Amelia asked. "I don't need you to talk em out of being guilty but I don't want you to resent me, because I can't give you, everything that you give me, it just doesn't feel fair or equal anymore, and I want you to know that I love you. I really really love you, and I need you to know that because I feel like I can't do anything to show you." Sam held Amelia's hand.

“You always put the seat warmer on when you were picking me up from work.” Sam said, smiling. “And you always fill my glass of water in the morning before I wake up so I have it when I brush my teeth, and you vacuum the kitchen because you know that I hate when there’s crumbs and they get on my feet.” 

“I remember when we were at that place with the fairy lights, and the really good curly fries, and we got the call about your Grandma, and I remember that you thought about everything before you could feel any of it, and I,” Sam put her hand on Amelia’s face. “You think more than anyone I know, and that must be exhausting, and I hate that that’s because you’ve been hurt, and I love that you know everybody’s birthday and not because you know it off the top of your head but because you make sure to write it in your calendar, and you will say happy birthday to anybody because you want everyone to feel happy on their birthday, and you know that I love your spaghetti, and you are exhausted and sick and trying to recover, and you made this meal for me, so it would be ready when I got home, and I don’t care about the bread on the floor, I care that you thought about making it, and that I know that I will never need a list of my medications because you have one because you know I’ll forget, and you open the curtains before I wake up because you know I love the sunshine.

“I don’t count the times you drop the bread, or I hold you while you cry, I feel it in every fiber of my being when you hold my pinkie at dinner, or you bring my sunglasses in the car, I count those because I feel so loved knowing that you think about me, knowing that you care, that that is something you do because that is how you love, and it will never be a cliché, because I know that you are tired, and your body hurts, but you do not need to love me with a body that runs marathons, because it is not the miles, but it is the thought that counts.”