A long surgical scar ran down the center of Jeffrey\u2019s chest.<\/p>\n
It was still pink in places.<\/p>\n
I stared at it, unable to make sense of what I was seeing.<\/p>\n
Then I noticed another smaller scar near his collarbone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened to you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeffrey sat on the edge of the bed.<\/p>\n
For once, he couldn\u2019t look at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring your third round of chemo, I started having chest pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
My legs suddenly felt weak.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was stress. Then one morning at work, I almost passed out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He had gone to the emergency room without telling me.<\/p>\n
Tests led to more tests. Doctors discovered a serious heart problem that required treatment, followed eventually by surgery.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had heart surgery?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
I actually stepped backward.<\/p>\n
Seven weeks ago, Jeffrey had told me he was traveling overnight for work.<\/p>\n
I remembered him coming home exhausted.<\/p>\n
Moving carefully.<\/p>\n
Refusing when I tried to hug him too tightly.<\/p>\n
I had thought he was tired.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou lied to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The word landed harder than I expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho knew?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother. My boss. A couple of people at work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone except your wife?\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes filled.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou had just gotten good news from your oncologist. You were finally sleeping again. You’d started eating normally. I couldn’t put you back into another hospital waiting room.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wasn’t your decision to make.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, Jeffrey. Do you?\u201d<\/p>\n
My voice rose.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor months, you told me we were facing everything together. You wouldn’t let me hide when I was scared. You sat beside me while I threw up. You helped me shower when I couldn’t stand long enough to do it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lowered his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then when you were sick, you decided I was too fragile to know?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo was I!\u201d<\/p>\n
The room became quiet.<\/p>\n
That was when I finally understood the separate room.<\/p>\n
\u201cWere you afraid I’d see the scar?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPartly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat else?\u201d<\/p>\n
He rubbed his palms against his knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy doctor still has restrictions on some physical activity. And I’ve been having trouble sleeping because I’m afraid something will happen at night.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked embarrassed saying it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we’d get here, you’d want everything to feel romantic again, and I’d ruin it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat beside him.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you ran away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite everything, a small laugh escaped me.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey laughed too, but his broke halfway through.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw the way you looked at yourself during treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cI knew how badly you wanted this weekend to feel normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJeffrey, nothing about us has been normal for a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at his scar again.<\/p>\n
For months, I had believed I was the damaged one in our marriage.<\/p>\n
The patient.<\/p>\n
The person being carried.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Jeffrey had been buttoning his shirts to the neck and pretending his own body hadn’t betrayed him too.<\/p>\n
I reached toward his chest, then stopped.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded.<\/p>\n
I touched the skin beside the scar very gently.<\/p>\n
He flinched.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill tender?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA little.\u201d<\/p>\n
I pulled my hand away.<\/p>\n
Then I started crying again.<\/p>\n
Not because the scar frightened me.<\/p>\n
Because he’d been frightened alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should’ve told me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would’ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I need you to understand that. I would’ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeffrey finally looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so focused on being the strong one that I didn’t know how to become the sick one.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sentence stayed between us.<\/p>\n
After a while, I walked to my suitcase.<\/p>\n
I took out the dress I’d bought.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey looked confused.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChanging.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt midnight?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s our anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting on the hotel balcony.<\/p>\n
I wore my new dress under a blanket.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey wore a loose T-shirt that didn’t hide anything.<\/p>\n
We ordered cheesecake and coffee from room service and watched the lights in the valley below.<\/p>\n
There was no romantic night I’d imagined.<\/p>\n
No attempt to recreate our honeymoon.<\/p>\n
Instead, we talked.<\/p>\n
Really talked.<\/p>\n
About cancer.<\/p>\n
His heart.<\/p>\n
My scars.<\/p>\n
His scar.<\/p>\n
The fear that my illness might return.<\/p>\n
The fear he’d had every night after surgery.<\/p>\n
And the ridiculous way both of us had tried to protect the other by pretending we were less afraid than we actually were.<\/p>\n
The following morning, Jeffrey canceled the second room.<\/p>\n
Not because everything had suddenly been fixed.<\/p>\n
We simply didn’t need a hallway between us anymore.<\/p>\n
Back home, we made a rule.<\/p>\n
No secret medical appointments.<\/p>\n
No protecting each other with lies.<\/p>\n
If one of us was scared, we said it.<\/p>\n
If one of us needed help, we asked.<\/p>\n
Months later, I found our twentieth-anniversary photograph on Jeffrey’s phone.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t the picture I’d imagined.<\/p>\n
My hair was barely two inches long.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey’s shirt was open at the collar, and the top of his scar was visible.<\/p>\n
We both looked tired.<\/p>\n
But we were laughing.<\/p>\n
I used to think our wedding photographs showed the strongest version of us.<\/p>\n
We were young, healthy, untouched by everything that would come later.<\/p>\n
Now I think that anniversary photograph does.<\/p>\n
Not because we had survived illness.<\/p>\n
But because we’d finally stopped confusing love with protecting each other from the truth.<\/p>\n
That night, I had been terrified Jeffrey no longer wanted me because my body had changed.<\/p>\n
The truth was almost the opposite.<\/p>\n
He had been hiding because his body had changed too.<\/p>\n
And after twenty years of marriage, we had to learn something neither of us understood on our wedding day:<\/p>\n
Being loved isn’t being seen only when you’re strong.<\/p>\n
It’s allowing someone to see you when you aren’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A long surgical scar ran down the center of Jeffrey\u2019s chest. It was still pink in places. I stared at it, unable to make sense of what I was seeing. Then I noticed another smaller scar near his collarbone. \u201cWhat happened to you?\u201d Jeffrey sat on the edge of the bed. For once, he couldn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7435,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions\/7435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappyli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}