He nods and grunts and starts to back out of the kitchen.
“What time is your appointment?”
“An hour.”
I nod. I’m going to have to shower and get ready, but there’s no way I’m going to complain about the late notice. I disappear down the hall and get ready and meet him outside. He’s already in his truck and I climb into the passenger side.
Neither one of us says a word on the way, and it’s like I can feel him get even more tense the closer we get. I know he’s having second thoughts about inviting me. “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t. I can sit in the car.”
He doesn’t answer me, and my hope begins to fade. He pulls into the parking lot, parks and turns off the car. He’s fisting the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles are turning white. “I don’t want you to be disgusted when you see how weak I am.”
He’s not looking at me, and his voice is so thick I barely understand him. But there’s no way I’d ask him to repeat it. “You’re not weak, you’re the strongest man I know. Look at what you went through and you made it back home, Jeremy. Now I need you to find your way back to me.”
He’s silent for so long I’m sure he’s going to tell me to wait in the car, but he doesn’t. He opens the truck door, and I immediately get out and grab his chair from the back and wheel it around to his side. He’s standing on his prosthetic legs, clenching tightly to the side of the door. He hates the legs, I know he does. They’re painful reminders of what he’s lost, but he’s determined to walk again. He sits heavily into the chair and shuts the truck door.
I don’t offer to push him. I walk beside him toward the therapist’s office.
Dr. Greening is just as pretty if not more so than I remembered, but the young woman behaves professionally, even if her eyes do get all appreciative and adoring when they are on Jeremy.
I sit on the couch, next to Jeremy’s chair. Dr. Greening doesn’t waste any time in getting started, and it isn’t long before Jeremy is talking about the bombing. He’s staring at a white wall across the room, and there’s a glazed-over look in his eyes. I don’t move a muscle for fear he’ll stop talking. It’s the words I don’t want to hear but know I need to. I have no idea what happened that day the bomb went off. I know it hurt my husband and his friends, killing one of them. All of them are still battling with what happened that day, and listening to him helps me understand a little of what he’s going through. It helps me understand how he felt in that moment, and it’s carried over into his life, slowing his mental and emotional recovery. Jeremy has always been a man in control. He was a born leader. That was his team, and he feels like he let them all down.
When Jeremy finishes talking, Dr. Greening turns to me. She hands me a tissue, and it’s then I realize that I have tears streaming down my face. I didn’t want to wipe them when Jeremy was talking, but I take the tissue and wipe at my eyes. “Peggy, how do you feel about Jeremy’s progress?”
I know it would be so easy to point out how he’s pulled away from me in almost every way, but it isn’t hard to see how vulnerable and exposed Jeremy feels right now. I’m not going to add to it. “It meant a lot to the twins to have their dad take them to get their learner permits. I’m proud to be married to a man who is working to pick himself up after such a horrific incident that cost him his legs and one of his friends. I know it’s going to take time to get back to the way we were.”
Dr. Greening seems happy with what I said. She turns to Jeremy. “You have a wonderful woman by your side, and part of acknowledging that is trusting her and leaning on her as you continue to progress.”
I nod to Jeremy when he looks my way, and he reaches for my hand. I grab on to it like I’ve been drowning in the ocean and he’s thrown me a life jacket. He squeezes my hand, and for the first time in as long as I can remember he looks at me with love in his eyes.
Jeremy
The days following the last therapy session are going well. I start meeting Peggy for lunch when her work schedule allows. We eat in my truck or in a secluded location, but Peggy seems to appreciate the effort I’m putting in to make changes.