I loved making coffee in the morning from my coffeemaker, pouring it in my cup (well, ones I’d borrowed from Gray but still, I’d have my own soon) and standing by the window at the front, watching the town of Mustang wake up. I loved pouring my own cereal using my own milk. I loved going to the corner market on the square to get bits and pieces. I loved going to sleep in a bed I knew I’d go to sleep in the next night, and the next, and the next.
And then there was Gray who I loved most of all.
Truly, completely…I fell hard and I didn’t mind the fall, it didn’t hurt a bit so I stayed down.
Since I was going to church with them and I spent all day at Gray’s yesterday, instead of taking me back into town only to go back in and pick me up in the morning, I crashed in his guest bedroom.
And I spent half the night trying to find sleep instead of throwing back the covers, wandering down the hall, finding Gray and convincing him to disrespect his grandmother in their home.
Luckily, I succeeded in this endeavor.
But I had the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before I had Gray, all of him, and I…could not…wait.
I looked at myself in the mirror and even to me, taking in my swollen lips, dreamy eyes; I saw that I looked happy.
And that was something else I’d never seen, I’d never had, never felt, not in my life.
“Dollface.” I heard Gray say and at his strange tone of voice, I whipped around to see he also had a strange look on his face.
I studied him a moment and saw it was concern.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly, moving quickly to him.
“Don’t know. It’s Gran. She’s in her bathroom, tellin’ me to call her friend Shirley. She says I can’t go in. She doesn’t sound right.”
Oh dear.
I held his eyes even as I made it to him then moved by him and hurried into the hall, down it and down the stairs.
Grandma Miriam’s room was around the stairs and at the end of the back hall that ran parallel to the front hall which went to the kitchen. Gray told me he renovated their old den with a handicapped accessible bathroom after she had her accident but I’d never been back there.
Still, upon entering her room, it didn’t look like a renovated den. It looked like it had been a bedroom since the house was built. Clearly, he’d moved everything as she had it wherever she used to sleep and put it in here.
Again, an indication of how sweet Gray could be.
The bathroom door was closed. I went to it and knocked.
“Mrs. Cody, are you okay?”
Silence then, “Gray call Shirley?”
“Gran,” Gray called from behind me, “Shirley lives forty-five minutes away. Ivey’s here, you need somethin’, she’ll help you out.”
Gray had shared that his grandmother’s spinal injury was located low on her spine and it was a “partial” which meant she had total control of her torso and some control of her legs. That said, they were weak and the control unpredictable so her legs couldn’t support her if she was in a walker or they would give out at random times. They knew this because they tried.
He also told me a nurse came every day but Sundays and Wednesdays to help Grandma Miriam get showered. Grandma Miriam’s best friend Shirley, a retired hairdresser, came every Wednesday to give her a shampoo and set. But she could mostly clothe herself just with the use of the parts of her body that she had but also she had a bunch of tools she’d been trained to use at the rehabilitation hospital. He shared further that from all that wheeling and moving herself around, she had the upper body strength of weightlifter and she could also do her bathroom business. From what Gray said and what I’d seen, she was incredibly self-sufficient though Gray had assisted in some of this. For instance, he’d installed a mirror over the stove so she could cook on the two front burners and see what was happening on the stove by looking up at the mirror.
It was ingenious.
It was also sweet.
But Gray did not help her with personal stuff. She changed into her nightgowns; he just lifted her into bed. Or out of it. He didn’t dress her and he didn’t bathe her.
And now she was behind a closed door in the bathroom.
“Call Shirley!” she shouted and I understood Gray’s concern. She sounded funny, not herself. It wasn’t pain but I didn’t know her enough to know what it was.
Though some of it was impatience and irritation, I knew her enough to hear that.
I looked up at Gray whose jaw was hard, he also looked impatient as well as worried and he was moving to her phone on her nightstand.
Before he made it there, I turned back to the door, knocked twice, put my hand to knob and called through the door, “Mrs. Cody, I’m coming in!”