Page 102 of One Year Ago in Spain
“I’m sorry.” Matías stroked her hand.
Claire took a deep breath. “But after everything that’s happened since, I get it now. We’re perfect togetherbecausewe’redifferent. You push me to think outside of the ordinary and to try things I wouldn’t otherwise contemplate. And I get to be the eye of your cyclone, where there is predictability and order, so that you can whirl around as long as you need to, but still have a place to come home to.”
“You are the other half of my orange,” Matías said.
“What?” Claire laughed, through her tears.
“It’s a saying in Spanish—mi media naranja. In English, you just say that someone is your better half. But in Spanish—”
“We’re halves of the same orange.” Claire smiled.
The door flung open, and Claire threw herself over Matías to protect him.
But it was Abuela Gloria creeping through with her walker, followed by Soledad and Armando, then Luis and Aracely, who was shooing away the night nurse who was trying to tell them that visiting hours were over. Claire wondered briefly if they had also snuck in through the laundry delivery entrance, but then she remembered that Soledad could talk her way through any rules when her suffering son was involved.
“¡Mati!” Soledad sobbed. Claire stepped back as his mother rushed in to hug him.
“¡Ay, Matías! ¡Has despertado!”You woke up!Aracely covered her mouth as she started crying.
Armando and Luis also approached, unable to speak, eyes red.
“Os dije que ella lo iba a lograr,” Abuela Gloria said. She was the first of the family who seemed to notice Claire was there. Not that there was a problem with that. Matías had just woken from a coma. Of course they should pay attention to him.
But whatever Abuela Gloria had said to them, they all looked over at Claire at the same time.
Soledad scrubbed away the tears from her face, even though more fell to replace them. “Claire, lo siento, we are very sorry. We treated you badly. We lost our faith. We prayed for a miracle, and when it arrived, we did not believe it. Thank for saving my son.” She burst into sobs, and Claire started crying, too.
Aracely walked around the bed and wrapped her arms around Claire, pulling her into one of her long, soft embraces. “I am sorry, Claire. I hope you can eventually forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Claire said into Aracely’s shoulder. “You were protecting Matías because you love him. He is lucky to have a family full of such love.”
“Sometimes our love is also smothering,” Aracely said wryly. She held on to Claire for a moment longer before she let go. “But you learn to live with it. Right, Matías?”
“They never gave me a choice,” he said, and that broke the last of the sadness in the room, because everybody laughed—one part relief, one part happiness, and one part semi-delirious exhaustion.
But there was still something left for Claire to do.
On the bedside table, there was a spool of blue medical tape the nurses had been using to attach Matías’s IV tubes to his skin. Claire reached over and picked it up.
She tore off a piece a few inches long and folded it lengthwise over itself several times, so it was a long, thin strip. Then she looped it into a circle and used another small piece of tape to stick the ends together.
“I am glad you’re here to be part of this,” Claire said to his family, who instinctively ceded the space next to Matías’s bed to her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Algo muy importante.”
Something very important.
“Matías,” Claire said, getting down on the linoleum on one knee. She held up the ring of blue tape. “I have lived most of my life without you, but I wasn’treallyliving until we met. You are the chaos to my order, the color to my black and white.
“These past eight days have been the worst time I’ve ever been through, but they were also some of the best because I see you—and us—clearly now. I am better when I’m with you, and I like to think that maybe you’re better with me, too.”
He nodded, his eyes glistening.
“So, I know you were going to ask me,” she said, “but I’m going to do it first, because let’s face it, I like being in control.”
He laughed.
