I Gained You

by shouldbstudying

Me Before You from Will's perspective. He thought he'd lost everything after the accident but perhaps... perhaps, he gained.

I'd had it all.

The girl, the job, the life, the money.

There had been few things out of my reach. I had loved my life. The adventure, the exhilaration, the danger. I'd flown through the sky with only a parachute as my friend, I'd swam deep enough to forget that the sun existed. I had lived a life as fully as I could have managed.

And those thirty five years of mine had been so precious. Against my mother's will, I'd lived the single life, avoiding settling down and running when a situation became too serious. My mother would have no grandchildren due to that foolishness on my part - I doubted Georgie would ever be mature enough to have children.

They may not have pleased my mother, but my thirty five years had been wonderful. I'd travelled enough for ten people in a lifetime but my hunger for the world could never be filled. I was famished even now, deprived of the luxuries of leaving at anytime I wanted. There were things I longed for. I wanted to see the mountains once more, smell the spices of the east, feel the excitement of sneaking out of a woman's room who I'd met the night before. But things were different now.

I was powerless.

I don't think I've ever felt powerless, even as a child. I had bossed around my sister until she hated me and my parents had spoiled me with materialistic things in the hopes it would replace their presence in my life. It hadn't.

I grew up as a Traynor. I owned a castle. I had been entitled, right up until the accident. There was nothing that could bring me down.

Only there was. I had literally been brought down.

Alicia had been the first girl I had considered settling down with. She had been perfect - a woman with the body of a model and a heart of an angel. She humbled me, taught me to reconsider my lifestyle. She may have been the first girl I loved truly.

But I didn't deserve her. Not when I couldn't reach to kiss her in the morning, couldn't put my arm around her to show that she was mine when other men walked past, couldn't even hold her hand. Perhaps most terrifying to me was that I couldn't have sex. I'd never have sex again.

The whole idea left me debating the point in going on. I had lived fully - in more ways than one.

When I first found out I'd never walk again, never move again, Alicia cried. She latched onto my hand and pretended she wasn't but I could see the tears fall down her face. She tried so hard to stay composed for my benefit, to act as if this situation of mine was nothing more than an obstacle in the Adventures of Will Traynor. But she knew and I knew, that my adventures were over.

Alicia remained by my side, the angel she was. She did everything for me that I could possibly ask. To this day, I can't repay her. She took off weeks of work to be by my side as I recovered, unmoving from my hospital bed. When it came time to return home, she was the one who suggested turning the stables into a house for me.

"A granny flat," she joked. My sister, the self absorbed girl she was, had been heart broken.

"We can't get rid of the stables! What about Choc Chip?" Of course, her horse came before her brother. My needs won and the beloved Choc Chip and the other horses had a new stable built on the other side of the castle, earning daggers from Georgina. I swear she thought I went out of my way to upset her. I purposely got run over so I could ruin her life. It's all about perspective.

Alicia arranged the entire annex as it was now. She had an eye for beauty - the way she could move just a vase or a chair and the room light up always astounded me. I loved that about her, the way she could always see nobody else could.

I grew hateful. Not towards Alicia, the sweet girl she was. But towards the world. Towards my parents who couldn't spare a damn day to help Alicia with the annex. Hateful to my mother who had a look on her face that read 'what am I going to do with him?' Hateful to my father for his infidelity which he pretended I didn't know of.

Hateful to the doctors who wrote me off as a lost cause. And hateful to myself, for keeping Alicia to myself. I distanced myself to the point of barely speaking to her.

I didn't respond when she told me she loved me. It broke my heart to wheel away from her, to see her face crumple. It took a month of persistence but Alicia broke it off.

"I'm lonely, Will. I love you but I feel alone, even when I'm with you. I'll always be here for you but... we can't be together. Not right now."

Not ever. I didn't see Alicia again for a year but I received Facebook messages and texts every now and then. I was in pain, both physically and mentally. I'd let go of the first woman I'd ever loved. What else could I have done? I didn't deserve to be loved. I was a burden to those who loved me.

Due to my injury, I couldn't even open the messages Alicia sent me, or anybody else. My inbox read 132 unread messages and several hundred notifications, no doubt condolences. I asked my mother to delete my profile at some point.

My days were dark. Time passed slowly and I counted the days, not really sure what I was counting down to. After a hundred and forty four days, I told my parents I wanted to die. I was to the point, blunt. I pointed at my laptop screen, an application to an assisted suicide institution on the screen.

"Six months," I told them. "I've booked it for six months."

After a hundred and fifty one days, I met Louisa Clark.

I had thought my life was plain now, a lack of adventure and excitement. But I had my memories of my old life. This Louisa Clark, the strange woman who wore odd clothes and had her hair in two fluffy buns, had no adventures to remember. I pitied her. How could you spend your whole life in this dreadful town and not regret it?

I admired Miss Louisa for not hating her life though. She was persistantly happy. Perhaps too happy. She smiled even when I grimaced at her. She stayed beside me even when I wanted to cry in pain. She was a good friend... even when I was horrible to her.

I tried pushing her away, I really did. But there are some people in this world who are so damn stubborn. Louisa was one of them and she stayed by my side, even managing to make me feel like a real person, to make me smile. I begun to see outside of the darkness that had covered my life since the accident. I began to see a light and that light was in the hands of Louisa Clark.

My days grew remarkably less terrible. I still counted the days but sometimes I forgot and had to check the date. I ignored the thought that told me maybe I should reconsider my choice. I ignored the voice that told me Clark was something special, not just my carer.

So I pushed again.

"You need to travel, to see the world. You've been nowhere, seen nothing. How do you know what you want?"

I'd seen things, I'd been places. Unfortunately for me, as my days ticked down, I realised I no longer wanted to smell the spices of the east or leave my one night stand's house. I didn't want to see the mountains.

I wanted to be with Louisa Clark.

I had just eighty days to fall out of love with Louisa Clark. Just over two months.

Everyday was an adventure in it's own with my carer - she attempted to keep a smile on my face, not hard when she was around. She drove me somewhere new everyday, even on the days where I barely wanted to leave my bed.

"Come on Will," she whispered, leaning in close to my ear and holding my hand. "You won't keep me from an adventure, will you?" She knew I could never say no to her.

I forgave her easily for the mishaps of the horse races and a failed attempt at taking my swimming. She had acted to head strung, so confident in her attempts to please me. I almost didn't recognise her from the day I met her.

If there were ever a moment I considered cancelling my appointment at Dignitas and professing my love for my carer, asking for an eternity by her side, it was at Alicia's wedding. Louisa was perhaps the one woman in the world I didn't feel guilty about loving, about wanting her to love me.

Perhaps because I didn't feel like I was a burden. There were things I could give her, even trapped in my chair, that she wouldn't have had before meeting me. We could travel together, she could get an education, she could leave this dreadful town. And when she broke up with that blinded boyfriend of hers, I thought, maybe, just maybe things could work out.

The wedding had been painful. Seeing Alicia look like the angel I knew she was, watching her walk down the aisle to one of my eldest friends. When she kissed him... I wanted to cry. And like clockwork, Louisa's hand dropped onto mine and she squeezed my fingers, her eyes never leaving the happy bridge and groom. She knew. Without a word, she knew exactly what was on my mind.

As Lou finished off her fourth drink, I saw her guards drop and an excitable, chirpy Lou evolve. She sat herself neatly on my lap and instructed me to dance with her.

God, I could smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her skin on mine. So few people touched me for non-medical reasons. Lou was the one exception.

She stayed close to me as if she knew how much joy her touch brought me. I felt her lips on my neck, on my cheek, her drunken words coming out in jumbles.

"You're brilliant... Love you so damn much, Will... Traynor." And then her lips were on my mouth and in the middle of my ex's wedding, I was kissing the woman I'd known I'd loved for one hundred and fourteen days.

Forty days. I was greeted with kisses and caresses and promises of a future I could never commit to. My parents saw Lou and I's exchanges and shared glances, hope and wonder in their eyes. I was too much of a coward to tell them otherwise and too in love to stop the happiness I'd only just found.

Suddenly waking up was not a chore. Thirty three days before my appointment and my parents suggested inviting her to move into the spare room.

My parents had been less than helpful most of my life but this was perhaps the one suggestion I ever paid attention to. In pure selfishness at wanting Clark beside me more often, I invited her to stay. And I got to see her at all states of the day.

There is nothing more beautiful than Louisa Clark, freshly awoken in the morning with an over-sized t-shirt and her hair sticking up in all directions. Every morning she'd walk into my bedroom and if I was awake, crawl into bed beside me and curl up to my chest, yawning her good mornings.

My final thirty days were the best of my life. Louisa didn't leave my side and I felt so completely, foolishly in love with her that my heart ached.

My heart also ached because I had reconsidered. I'd thought about cancelling my appointment, about staying with Louisa in our routine. And everything in me told me no. I'm done, I realised. I was tired of my body aching, tired of headaches and needing people to help me move even my hand. I was tired of not being able to grab Louisa and kiss her whenever I liked, tired of not being able to pull her to me and promise her the world.

But I realised that the book of the Adventures of Will Traynor had not closed with my accident as I had assumed. It had kept going, filling to the brim with pages and pages of the wonderful being that was Louisa Clark.

She had been heart broken when I'd told her what was happening in just four days. She had cried and screamed and walked out of the annex. I didn't expect her to come back. I'd leave the world as lonely as I'd felt for majority of my time in my new life.

But she did. Louisa Clark was stubborn and irritable but she never let me down. She climbed into my bed at half past eleven at night, sniffling and wiping away tears. She pulled my arms around her and lay beside me, staring at the ceiling.

"You're sure this is what you want? We could be happy Will..." she did not beg, she did not go out of her way to guilt me into staying. But she made her intentions clear. "I love you, Will."

"I love you." How else could I respond? "But I can't... I have to go, Clark. I have to go."

And while I thought I had lost it all: the girl, the job, the lifestyle...

I realised I had not lost anything at all as Louisa squeezed my hand into my final sleep in the quiet room of Dignitas. I had gained.