Days of You and Me Read Free Page B

our odd situation.
    Sheri muttered softly to herself now as she counted out more pills into the reminder container. She had lists and folders and reminders set on her phone, making me aware for the first time what it must have been like all these years, keeping Nate as well as he had been. The rest of us had only known a sliver of that worry and weight; we only saw the occasional dosing or a little bit of her anxiety. I hadn’t realized how much it had cost her to let him have a normal life all that time, and some of my resentment ebbed away. After all, Sheri was about to lose her only child. I couldn’t begin to imagine how she was feeling.
    “Quinn, if you can’t handle this, then I’ll continue to be in charge of Nate’s medications. It might be easier that way. I’m used to how everything has to happen.” She smiled, but the sentiment didn’t quite reach her eyes.
    “No, Mom.” Nate spoke up at last from the couch, where he was half-lying, half-propped up. “Quinn needs to know how to do this so that you and Dad can have some freedom. Besides, there may be times we want privacy, and the last thing I want to do is call for my mom when I’m with my wife.”
    I flushed, embarrassed that Nate would go so far as to make Sheri believe there was more between us than there really was. I understood that Nate wanted the illusion of a real marriage, for the little bit of time he had left. It was important for him to believe that we were really in love and that we could be a normal couple. The truth was that aside from our wedding night, when I’d allowed him to touch me and when I’d given him as much pleasure as I could, not much had happened. Down at the shore, in my family’s beach house, we’d shared a bed, and Nate had held me every night as he fell asleep. But I’d never made a move to offer more, and Nate hadn’t pushed me.
    Since we’d been back here, I sure as hell wasn’t going to go down that road. Nate’s bedroom couldn’t accommodate the special bed his doctor had recommended to make it easier for him to breathe at night, so instead we slept in what used to be the living room. Mark had moved the coffee table and one love seat out into the garage and pushed the sofa against the far wall. Nate’s adjustable bed—which was basically just a glorified hospital bed—took up most of the room. Sheri had managed to squeeze a small dresser so that I had two drawers to keep my clothes. She used the rest of it to accommodate Nate’s equipment and meds.
    Mark had suggested that I could sleep in Nate’s bed, in his room, which seemed to make sense to me. But Nate was stubborn, and he wanted me with him at night. He said that if I was going to sleep in his room, so would he, at which point Sheri had gotten upset. I’d solved the problem by offering to sleep on the sofa, which made both Nate and Sheri happy.
    Unfortunately, I was sacrificing both comfort and quality slumber. The living room was open to the rest of the house, and since Nate was usually asleep before ten, I’d lie in the darkness, listening to Sheri and Mark moving around the kitchen and den, talking and watching television. When I did finally drop off, I slept so lightly that the slightest noise woke me up. Add to that the fact that the sofa was narrow and hard, and I was surviving in a constant state of near-exhaustion.
    The only thing that kept me going was the light in Nate’s eyes when he looked at me, and the absolute peace on his face whenever we were together. I knew with certainty that I was giving him the best last months of his life. I was allowing him to live the dream he’d always desired; if I was sacrificing was a little sleep and happiness, that was a small enough price to pay.
    Nate had been trying to talk his parents into living as normally as they could for now, pointing out that he had a wife who could take some of the burden of his care from their shoulders. Most of that was completely unreasonable; Sheri and Mark were