life is short and time is always passing
but love is everlasting
-Nick Fabian
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Warm beams of light hit her face, and she awakens. She opens her eyes and smiles. She stretches and tries to banish the hope she feels rising inside. There are no promises that today will be a good day just because yesterday was. She doesn't want to spend the day hating everything—herself, her life, and her dearest Dez. Still, she can't stop herself from sitting up to see if perhaps she will feel as energetic as she did yesterday.
She slowly pulls herself up into a sitting position and finds that her body is not too tired. Sitting up feels good as if her body and not just her mind is trying to tell her it's ready to do more than just lay around. She's ready for this. It's been too many weeks of staring at these grungy cream walls and wishing she were anywhere else. Maybe it's finally arriving—the day the doctors promised would come when she would finally be well again. She can't believe it. The life she has been dreaming about is barely beyond her grasp.
She slowly makes her way to the couch and sits down on it. It tires her, but not like that would have even a week ago. She's improving; there's no doubt about it. She reaches for her phone and types out a quick text to Dez. He's got to hear the good news.
Just after arriving in LA seven weeks ago, she had come down with the nastiest virus and was so exhausted that she hadn't been able to get out of bed. She had been puzzled; she had been the healthy one growing up—the one who had skated through when everyone else had come down with the flu. Here she was sick less than two weeks after getting married. Dez ever patient had encouraged her to wait it out. But when she hadn't improved even after the week passed and the next one began, she had gone to see a doctor only to learn that she had mononucleosis.
She doesn't have words to describe the past few weeks. At first, she enjoyed the freedom from job hunting it brought her as well as the ability to spend her days reading her favorite magazines and binge watching her favorite shows. As the days passed, however, she realized that she was practically a prisoner in their apartment. She didn't have the energy to leave, so she had just stayed-hour after hour, day after day. Dez's filming internship which had precipitated their move to LA in the first place kept him away from her for hours on end. She was left waiting for his return doling out her energy hoping that she would have enough for all the trips to the bathroom and fridge she'd need to make during the day.
This was not the way moving to LA was supposed to go. She had known that money would tight and their apartment tiny and grungy, but she hadn't anticipated spending her first few weeks in bed. She has been here for almost two months and has not been on a single date or gone shopping once or made a single friend. No, her only accomplishments are all the complaints she left unsaid and the degrees that they didn't turn up the heat because she piled on the blankets.
Worse than her dismal surroundings has been the way it all made her feel. She has never exactly had a reputation for being hardworking, but she has always felt like she had something to give. Performing let her share joy with others, and running the music factory gave her the satisfaction of knowing she was helping kids achieve their dreams. Now, she's dependent on someone else for her very survival. It is Dez who has made all the trips to the grocery store, paid the bills, and made the money that mostly goes to rent. Without him, she doesn't know what she would have done. As tired as he is from long days on set, he always hopes she is awake when he gets home because he wants to talk to her, to rub her feet, and to tell her she looked beautiful even though she is wearing the same pajamas she has for days.
It hadn't been the world's easiest day. Her sore throat and fever were so bad that she could hardly remember what it felt like to be well. Getting out of bed was unthinkable, and even watching a show didn't sound that appealing. She spent most of the day lying on her back with her eyes closed counting down the hours until bedtime—twelve, eleven, ten, nine…
As the day passed, she only grew more miserable. Why was this her life? It was so unfair that she who had waited so patiently to take on an new adventure would have it turn into this when she finally reached it. Right outside her window were people enjoying life while she was stuck inside in bed feeling worse than she ever had in her entire life. She could do absolutely nothing about it. She couldn't make the days pass more quickly. All of the wishing in the world couldn't make her healthy again. She just had to wait until this nightmare was all over. From what the doctors had said, that was so far off that it may as well be forever from now. She was not sappy in the slightest, but she had expected things that would only get better after she and Dez married and moved to LA. Instead, she found herself hoping that someday she would all but block this time from her memory.
She jumped as she woke up. It was dark, and she couldn't imagine what was happening, but it was only Dez lifting the covers as he tried to sneak into bed. His attempts at being sneaky were so terrible she would have laughed if her head hadn't been aching so badly.
In a moment, he was lying beside her. "Trish?" he whispered gently. "You okay?" He reached for her and pulled her closer.
He was so cold she flinched at his touch. "No," she said in a tone she would have recognized as whiny if she were in a better frame of mind. "My head hurts so bad, and my throat is so sore it's awful."
He brushed the hair from her face and smoothed it down gently. "I'm so sorry. I wish I could do something to make you better." He reached out and kissed her forehead.
It was the sweetest gesture, but the warning bells went off in her head. He couldn't do that. It was not called kissing disease for nothing. Dez couldn't get sick. His life was harder because of her in too many ways already. He was doing the laundry and cooking and grocery shopping. If he were to get sick…
"Why don't you just leave?" She was filled with regret the instant her mind grasped the gravity of her words.
"What?" Dez sounded genuinely shocked. "Never. I just promised you forever. Why would I do that?"
She rarely cried, but as she would realize later, the past few weeks of illness were taking a toll. She couldn't stop the tears from coming to her eyes. Before she knew it, she was sobbing. "You can't keep doing this. You can't keep working all day and taking care of me and the house and not seeing anyone and not talking to your family…You're not being careful enough. You're going to be sick, and it's going to be all my fault. If only you didn't have such a deadbeat wife…" She choked back a sob. "Don't argue with me. I literally can't do anything right now except lay here. Go, go sleep on the couch. You can pack your bags tomorrow."
"Trish." He dragged out her name like he had only done a few times in the history of ever. "Come here." His arms were out, and she felt herself pulled to his chest. "This is not going to last forever." He had just a hint of harshness in his tone. "Let me say it again. This is not going to last forever. You're going to get well, and life is going to be good again. It will."
"But it's not fair," she argued. "You're taking care of me and making all the money. It's not fair. You should just leave."
The room grew silent, and she felt his heartbeat, and with that, her breathing slowed. "Now, now," he said softly stroking her hair. The last thing she knew before she fell asleep was him singing to her—she thinks it was Austin's Superhero.
In the days that followed, Dez was solemn, and Trish knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had hurt him deeply. Somehow, despite all of her grumpiness and insecurities; he loved her deeply. He was committed to her and found it impossible to understand that she would imagine anything else. After that, she knew that no matter what happened or how horrible she felt she could never say that to him again. She might be more miserable than she had ever been in her life, but making him miserable too was completely uncalled for. She could tell him about the suffocating way her throat ached or her pounding headache, but she should never ever tell him he should leave. He loved her too much for that not to cause him excruciating pain. Remembering back to that day, she feels a twinge of shame for what she did, yet that memory also gives her a new consolation in the depths of her sorrow and misery—how deeply Dez loves her.
She has known he loved her for quite some time. Thinking back, she has to say that she knew that even in the Austin and Ally days when they were just friends who bickered all the time. There was this undercurrent of understanding, respect, and love that began the day they met and never stopped. She has always known that Dez would always be happy to see her no matter what the circumstances of their reunion were. Their very souls have always been fond of each other, and deep down, she has always known that.
Things changed when they got together, and he told her he loved her all the time and hugged her every time he saw her. He showered her with kindness often in the form of little surprises that she would have thought very dorky if they hadn't pointed back to the king of dorkiness himself who she happened to love very much. She had always been sure of the genuineness of his love. He wasn't like Chuck who had always left her wondering why he was making such gestures to her and not someone else. No, Dez was the real deal-warmhearted and endlessly devoted to her and only her.
Yet, she hadn't realized until now how much she had assumed his love depended on her. She was always quick to point to something as the reason for his love for her—their similarities, her charm, or on a good day her looks. But these days, she can offer him literally nothing. She's not good company; she's whiny and has no news to tell. Heck, she's not even awake most days when he gets home or when he leaves. She can't clean or run errands or do the laundry. She's stuck in bed where she's sucking what little energy he has left after his long days of work. Still, he loves her just as much as always.
She has always understood unconditional love with her head. She has always been the daughter who wants to do things for her parents and is deeply grateful for what they have done for her. She appreciates her friends and when she can tells them so. Still, she has to say that she's never really understood what it means to be loved before now. She has always tried so hard to be lovable and to prove to herself that she is worth all the love she receives. It always made her feel strong to imagine that she was giving as much as she was taking and helping others as much as she was helped. Now, she can see that she doesn't have to do that. She is loved—simply because she is loved. It is the most beautiful—the most freeing thing in the world. She doesn't feel that she could ever deserve it, and maybe that's the point.
She is up to a little more these days. She's job hunting from her bed and still awake when Dez comes home. But she doesn't want to ever go back to trying to prove she's worthy of everyone else's love. It's a deep pit—deeper than the darkness of her illness. She wants to remember that she is loved because that's what unconditional love does and she is lucky enough to have people who love like that in her life. As hard as these past weeks have been, she'd say they've been worth it in the end. How can you put a price on truly understanding what it means to be loved?