Page 31 of Midnight and Mine

“Yep, you’re wild in the best ways. Do you know who sings the song?”

Her eyes roll up and down and from side to side. “I don’t. But it’s a newer country singer. Do I like country music?”

I pull up the song on my phone. “You tell me.”

“Why did you pick that song?”

“You’ll have to figure that out on your own.”

We both let it go, and her monitors creep back down to normal beeping levels.

“I bet I have some shit-kicking boots, and I’m positive I like country music.” She smiles as she talks, obviously pleased with herself. The width of her smile matches mine. “Scott, thanks for not pressuring me.”

“I’m used to it.”

She swats my forearm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“In my career and as a volunteer for search and rescue, I have to be patient. That’s all. You need to sleep. They’re going to do an MRI tomorrow, and we don’t want any swelling.”

“Okay, can I ask you one more question?”

I nod.

“What do I do for a living? For a job?”

“I’m really not supposed to say. If you have a memory that gets close, I’ll confirm it for you.”

“Do you always play be the rules?”

“One of us has to.” I mutter under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing. But yes, I usually follow doctor’s orders.”

“That doesn’t seem like much fun.”

My lips lift on one side, giving her a crooked smile. I say, “I promise you; you think I’m fun.”

She seems to blush, as we both act like we’re fifteen again, and I’m here for all of it. After knowing someone your whole life, those first-time feelings are few and far between unless it really is a first like having a baby. As scared as I am that she won’t ever remember our life, our chemistry is bubbling. It may be under the surface, but we both feel the current running between us.

She mumbles, “I bet I do.” Her eyes flutter closed, so I tuck the journal under her leg like she had it when I came into the room. When I’m sure she’s asleep, I find a bottle of lotion in the cubby hole and lather her up. Her dry skin soaks it in as I push the moisturizer between her toes and maybe an inch into her cast.

Part of me wants to raise her gown and rub it over her baby belly, but it seems like that would be an invasion of her privacy. And even though I’ve rubbed emollients and vitamin E over her body every night since we found out she was pregnant. It has been my way of being dialed in to her pregnancy, wanting to feel her skin stretching and changing day by day.

I realize I haven’t looked at the photos on the camera, so I sit back down beside her and pull the camera into my lap and change the setting to view. The most recent photo is a breathtaking— one of the gorge. She took it from below looking up as streaks and shades of purple blanket the terrain. My wife is very talented, and it’s always amazed me that she can be still to take photos or write, but the rest of the time, she’s hell on wheels. Always going. Always wanting to be spontaneous. Wanting to reach the stars.

When she chose hang gliding as her phrase for Hangman, I knew my Wynter was in there and desperately trying to claw her way out. She knows who she is at her core; she just doesn’t have her memories. But if today is an indication, she’ll get them back.

I click through forty pictures from the gorge, and the last one is, by far, the money-maker photo. But before she traveled to the gorge, she took pictures of the Love Lock Bridge from underneath. The place where we stood and declared our love for the first time.

Another photo of an empty outside table at The French Kiss coffee shop where we go every Sunday morning.

Another of the elementary playground, specifically the spinning merry go round. On one of our first official dates, we went to the movies and afterward, I didn’t want it to end so we parked at the end of Main Street, bought ice cream, then walked to the playground. We lay back, and I moved us in circles with my toes pressing to the ground. She talked about all the days we had wasted being friends with benefits.

I assured her, “We haven’t wasted a single day. It’s gotten us to this point.”

But now, I know having to wait for her to come around meant something. It prepared me to be patient for this very moment in time. And patient is what I’ll be. I’ll keep playing games with her like I always have. I won’t pressure her. I didn’t then, and I won’t start now. But what I will do is make sure she knows I love her, even if she thinks it’s in a “friends” kind of way.

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