Asher (Ashes & Embers 6)

This isn’t the confident, full-of-hope man I’ve grown to know, rely on, and love. This is a side he’s been struggling to hide, silently battling. A vulnerable, confused, in-over-his-head-with-trauma man who fought with every fiber of his being for eight years to keep his wife alive.

My stomach sinks with the realization that the problem could be that sometimes when we fight for something we want so badly, we lose sight of how we’ll handle it when, by some miracle, it becomes a reality.

I gather up as much inner strength as I can and ask the question I’m not totally sure I want the answer to. “Confused how?” The words come out as a trembled whisper.

“I’m not even sure how to begin to explain how I feel.”

“Try…please.”

He’s never like this, and I’m tempted to grab his shoulders and shake him, get him to just spit it out already before the unknowing eats me from the inside out.

But at the same time, I want to hug him, kiss all this confusion away, tell him it’s okay. We’ll be okay.

“We’ve talked about it a little, but I guess I didn’t realize it’s worse in my head than I thought.”

While I wait for him to continue, I stare at Teddy, who’s sitting patiently by his bag of things, waiting for us to leave. I’m filled with sadness and worry at the sudden turn the day has taken. I wish we were in the car right now on our way to Maine to visit my sister. This was supposed to be a happy weekend, and we were so looking forward to it. Our first trip together, my first visit with my sister at her home. I had hoped being in a different bedroom together, in a romantic place, would be good for us.

One thing I do know is I’m never, ever going to click on an unknown folder on an iPad again.

“For years, I sat by your bed,” he says slowly. “I massaged your arms and legs with lotion. I saw your head swell. I saw your hair fall out. I watched you stare blankly at absolutely nothing…for years. I watched your body wither away, bit by bit.”

“Asher…” I don’t want to think about what the coma did to me—how it destroyed my body and my life—and I don’t want him to think about it, either. It’s becoming clear that that is where our problems lead back to.

“It was like one day you were this gorgeous, sexy woman. So vibrant and alive. I knew your body like my own. I completely worshipped you in every way…mentally and physically.” A faint, sad smile touches his lips at the memory. “Then—out of nowhere—you were just…here, but not here at all. Everything shifted. Suddenly there were IVs and feeding tubes and catheters, and I don’t even know what the hell else. Our physical connection was taken away. Everything was taken away. You became like this sort of vessel that held my wife. And we had to feed it and water it and turn it to keep you alive.”

He takes a deep breath and slowly blows it out. “I still kissed you hello and goodbye, I still talked to you, I even lay next to you, but you were just gone. And of course touching you in any intimate way was just considered wrong, and I obviously wasn’t doing that or even thinking about it.” He screws his eyes shut and rubs his hand across his forehead. “The only thing I could do, the only thing that mattered to me, was taking care of you. Keeping you alive.”

I gulp uncomfortably over the lump in my throat. I feel sick with heartache and so incredibly gutted on so many levels, I don’t even know how to process what I’m feeling.

How do we overcome this? How can he possibly see me as a woman again? Especially as the woman in the photos and the videos, the woman he needs and loves and desires, with absolutely no hesitations and no horrible images forever haunting him?

He can’t.

“Like a plant.” My voice is flat from the numbness creeping over me. “I basically became the equivalent of a plant.”

He nods sadly. “Yeah, I guess as fuckin’ awful as that sounds, that’s true. After so many years, I got stuck in that mindset: take care of Ember. Having fun with you, growing old with you, making love to you, all that became the stuff of dreams for me. Now that you’re here, I’m having a hard time getting my mind and my body to accept that you’re okay. That you’re not gonna break, or leak, get unhooked, or slip away again. That it’s not wrong to want you, be turned on by you. I still feel like you’re not to be touched that way.” He finally looks up and meets my eyes, and the tears streaming from his break my heart into a thousand pieces. “I don’t even know if that makes any sense. It hurts really fuckin’ bad to say all this, Em,” he chokes on a gut-wrenching sob, “because I love you so, so much.”