When Clara woke again, she seemed more alert than before.<\/p>\n
She looked at the table, then at me.<\/p>\n
"Can you help me sit a little more comfortably?"<\/p>\n
I stood and adjusted the pillow behind her.<\/p>\n
She shifted carefully until she seemed satisfied.<\/p>\n
"Better?"<\/p>\n
"Much better."<\/p>\n
I returned to the chair.<\/p>\n
For a while, we talked about ordinary things.<\/p>\n
She asked whether the room had always been so cold.<\/p>\n
I told her I hadn't noticed until I had been sitting there for hours.<\/p>\n
She asked whether I had eaten.<\/p>\n
I admitted that I hadn't eaten much.<\/p>\n
She gave me the look I knew so well.<\/p>\n
"You should take care of yourself too."<\/p>\n
"I will."<\/p>\n
She seemed ready to argue, but then she smiled faintly.<\/p>\n
It was a small exchange.<\/p>\n
Nothing important on the surface.<\/p>\n
Yet I felt grateful for it.<\/p>\n
It reminded me that our relationship had not been reduced entirely to the difficult conversation waiting between us.<\/p>\n
We could still speak naturally.<\/p>\n
We could still care about each other in ordinary ways.<\/p>\n
I wanted to preserve that.<\/p>\n
I also knew that preserving it didn't mean avoiding everything uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
Clara looked at me for a moment.<\/p>\n
"There's something you want to ask me, isn't there?"<\/p>\n
My stomach tightened.<\/p>\n
I could have denied it.<\/p>\n
Instead, I nodded.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
She waited.<\/p>\n
I glanced toward the table.<\/p>\n
The phone lay beside the plastic cup.<\/p>\n
I returned my attention to Clara.<\/p>\n
"I noticed how worried you seemed whenever your phone lit up."<\/p>\n
Her expression changed slightly.<\/p>\n
I continued before she could misunderstand what I meant.<\/p>\n
"I haven't read your messages. I haven't tried to look at them."<\/p>\n
She nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"I don't want to invade your privacy."<\/p>\n
Clara looked down at the blanket.<\/p>\n
"But I also don't want to pretend I haven't noticed something that seems to be upsetting you."<\/p>\n
The room became quiet.<\/p>\n
I could hear the monitor beside the bed.<\/p>\n
I could hear a cart moving somewhere in the corridor.<\/p>\n
I waited for Clara to answer.<\/p>\n
She didn't immediately.<\/p>\n
I felt the urge to explain myself further.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell her how many times I had questioned my own judgment.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell her how frightened I had been of accusing her unfairly.<\/p>\n
But I stopped.<\/p>\n
I had asked the question.<\/p>\n
Now I needed to let her respond.<\/p>\n
Clara finally looked at me.<\/p>\n
"I don't know what to say."<\/p>\n
I nodded.<\/p>\n
"That's okay."<\/p>\n
She seemed uncertain.<\/p>\n
"I mean it," I added. "I'm not asking you to explain everything right this second."<\/p>\n
She looked toward the phone.<\/p>\n
Then she looked back at me.<\/p>\n
"I just don't want you misunderstanding me."<\/p>\n
I felt a familiar tightness in my chest.<\/p>\n
"Then help me understand what you can."<\/p>\n
Clara took a slow breath.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I thought she was going to tell me something about the message.<\/p>\n
Instead, she said, "I've been frightened too."<\/p>\n
I leaned forward slightly.<\/p>\n
"I know."<\/p>\n
"No, I mean I've been frightened in ways I haven't been able to explain."<\/p>\n
She paused.<\/p>\n
"The delivery was terrifying. Everything changed so quickly, and I didn't know what was going to happen."<\/p>\n
I listened.<\/p>\n
She spoke about the fear of not knowing what would happen next.<\/p>\n
She spoke about how difficult it had been to understand what the doctors were telling her while everything was happening around her.<\/p>\n
I didn't interrupt.<\/p>\n
I could hear how much effort it took for her to describe the experience.<\/p>\n
When she stopped, I reached for her hand.<\/p>\n
"I'm sorry you went through that."<\/p>\n
She squeezed my fingers.<\/p>\n
"I didn't want you to be frightened too."<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
"That was never something you had to protect me from."<\/p>\n
She looked away.<\/p>\n
I realized that I didn't know whether she had been trying to protect me or whether she was simply struggling to understand her own feelings.<\/p>\n
I had to let her words stand without forcing them into an explanation that suited my fears.<\/p>\n
After a moment, she spoke again.<\/p>\n
"I know you've been worried about my phone."<\/p>\n
I felt my heart beat faster.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
She looked at the table.<\/p>\n
Then she turned back toward me.<\/p>\n
"I need a little more time before I can talk about everything."<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask what everything meant.<\/p>\n
I wanted to know whether she was referring to the message, the delivery, or something else entirely.<\/p>\n
But I could hear how exhausted she was.<\/p>\n
And I remembered the promise I had made.<\/p>\n
I wouldn't decide what she was thinking before she told me.<\/p>\n
So I nodded.<\/p>\n
"All right."<\/p>\n
Clara watched me carefully.<\/p>\n
"You won't keep asking?"<\/p>\n
I considered the question.<\/p>\n
I didn't want to promise that I would never bring it up again.<\/p>\n
That would not be honest.<\/p>\n
But I could promise not to pressure her while she was trying to recover.<\/p>\n
"I won't push you right now," I said. "But I do want us to talk when you're ready."<\/p>\n
She nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
"Okay."<\/p>\n
I felt both relieved and disappointed.<\/p>\n
Relieved because we had finally spoken about the thing that had been troubling me.<\/p>\n
Disappointed because I still didn't understand what the message meant.<\/p>\n
Those feelings existed together.<\/p>\n
I didn't have to pretend otherwise.<\/p>\n
Clara rested her head against the pillow.<\/p>\n
I stayed beside her.<\/p>\n
The phone remained on the table.<\/p>\n
I didn't touch it.<\/p>\n
I didn't ask her to show me anything.<\/p>\n
For the first time, the device seemed less important than the conversation we had just shared.<\/p>\n
Not because my questions had been answered.<\/p>\n
Because we had finally stopped pretending that no questions existed.<\/p>\n
I could work with that.<\/p>\n
I could give Clara time without telling myself that time was a guarantee of any particular outcome.<\/p>\n
I could also be honest with myself about what I needed from our relationship.<\/p>\n
I needed trust.<\/p>\n
I needed communication.<\/p>\n
And I needed to be willing to offer those things rather than simply asking for them.<\/p>\n
Clara closed her eyes.<\/p>\n
I held her hand until her breathing settled.<\/p>\n
The room grew quiet again.<\/p>\n
This time, I didn't mistake the silence for a rejection.<\/p>\n
She had spoken.<\/p>\n
I had listened.<\/p>\n
And although we hadn't reached the end of the conversation, we had finally begun it.<\/p>\n
When Clara woke again, she seemed more alert than before. She looked at the table, then at me. "Can you help me sit a little more comfortably?" I stood and … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37517,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37497\/revisions\/37517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}