After my husband’s accident, he begged me to hire a nurse to care for him. Weeks later, the sweet young caregiver lingered at my door, trembling. “I can’t stay quiet anymore… It’s about Craig.” I braced myself, unaware that her next words would destroy my marriage.
The call came from the hospital at 11:47 p.m. Craig’s car had spun off the road and hit a pole. The hospital staff were preparing him for emergency surgery.
Memories flashed through my mind: Craig’s smile the night we first met, and how he’d made me feel like the only other person in the room, how quickly we’d become inseparable. Craig was the other half of me. How would I live if he didn’t survive this?”
I drove to the hospital in a daze, my eyes filling with tears as I thought about the day he proposed.
We’d only been dating for two years, but when it’s right, you don’t question the timing. Just last night, we’d been fantasizing about our future children. “Two kids,” Craig had said.
“A boy and a girl, with your eyes and my stubborn streak.”
“God help us if they get your stubborn streak,” I’d teased back, and he’d tickled me until I was breathless with laughter. Now, the whole world had turned inside out. Craig was already in surgery when I reached the hospital.
His right leg had been shattered, they told me. I waited for hours. It felt like forever before a doctor in scrubs appeared to talk to me.
“Your husband is doing well,” the surgeon said. “We stabilized the bone, but he did suffer some nerve damage. He might walk again, but only if he commits to months of rehab.
Physical therapy, pain management, the whole process.”
My knees almost gave out from relief. He was alive. But the words “nerve damage” and “might walk again” echoed in my head.
“Can I see him?”
A nurse showed me to Craig’s room. He was hooked up to monitors and still groggy from the anesthesia, but when I took his hand in mine, he squeezed it gently and whispered my name. “We’ll get through this,” I whispered to him.
“We’ll do whatever it takes.”
But reality hit harder than romance ever could. Craig had to wear a full leg cast and needed help with just about everything. He couldn’t shower, dress, or even fetch a glass of water.
My life became a loop of lunch breaks cut short and sleepless nights spent hovering over him. Have you ever been so tired that your bones ache? That was me every single day for weeks.
Between helping Craig to the bathroom, propping his leg on pillows, and doing the awkward “bed-to-chair shuffle” the physical therapist had shown me, I felt like I was running a marathon. “I can’t just sit here useless while you run yourself ragged,” he grumbled one evening, eyes glossy with what I thought was self-pity. He begged me the next morning.
“Please, hire someone. I can’t be alone all day like this.” Then, with a hesitant glance, he added, “Or maybe Mom could come? I need family, not strangers.”
The thought of Sharon living with us made my skin crawl, but Craig was insistent, so I called anyway.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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