Robert
Thankfully, Rhiannon passes me my prosthesis. It’s only been a few days, but the darkness sucks all energy from every part of your body. I’m simultaneously sore all over and exhausted right down to the fabric of my DNA.
As if she can tell that even breathing is tiring for me at the moment, she silently seeks permission to put my prosthesis on my leg. I nod, but she pauses. “Are you in pain?”
I nod again.
“Okay, then maybe we should try to get you up and into the shower without adding more pain. Would that be okay?”
My residual limb almost cries with relief, and I’m not far behind it. I nod, afraid to speak in case my voice fails me. She helps me to my feet, and I use my crutches to get my unsteady arse to the stairs. After putting my arm around her shoulder, she puts hers around my waist and braces herself against me. “Easy does it, okay? We aren’t in a rush.”
She hauls me up the stairs like I’m made of lead and sits me on the edge of the bed. “Tell me what you need.”
Normally, stairs don’t scare me. Today, one leg, a couple ofhundred pounds of despair, I hate this house. Hate it. Every step feels like punishment. Today, I regret buying a two-story house when I only have one leg.
Iusuallyjust climb the stairs with my prosthesis on, but everything’s just too sore, too raw, too damn hard right now.
It takes about forty minutes for me to shower, change, shoo Sully from my driveway, and for food to arrive downstairs. At one point, I thought my Rhi-Bird was going to invite him in to help get me into the shower.
I draw the line at Niall O’Sullivan seeing me naked.
Rhiannon draws the line at eating kebabs in bed, so we eat on the sofa in the spare room to avoid having to do the stairs again.
“How are you feeling?” She searches my face like she’s looking for some sign that I want to drive my car off a cliff again. I can hardly blame her. This is my first depressive episode since we met, and as expected, it came at the worst possible moment.
“Tired. And reluctant to admit I feel better after the shower. I need you to know that this has been coming for a while, though. Looking back, there have probably been some signs.” I take a bite of my mixed meat kebab on naan while Rhiannon digs in the box on her lap for her next bite. “On chips, really?”
She grins. “You get more, well, everything, if you get it on chips.”
I wave my kebab at her. “Yes, but you can’t eat it with your hands, nor do you get delicious naan with it.”
She points her fork at me, a giant chunk of tikka chicken covered with house sauce on the end of it. “You get more food.” She pops it in her mouth. “I shouldn’t be having this the night before a game. Even if it’s preseason.”
“Is tomorrow Wednesday? Already?” I rake my fingers through my unrulymane. “I didn’t realize.”
“Your next story is going to be about how the professional rugby player shit herself during the first preseason with Leinster. They’ll go to town about scaring the literal crap out of me.” She shakes her head but searches the container on her lap. “I’ll never live it down. It’ll be the only thing I’m remembered for. It’ll blow this week’s headlines out of the water if I mess myself on the pitch.”
“And yet, you’re still eating it.”
Her eyes widen. “There will never come a time where I decline a kebab from Naan the Wiser. Even if it means I might shit myself on the field in front of thousands of people.”
“So noted.” I tip my food to her before taking a bite.
We fall into silence for a few moments, both of us enjoying the mildly spicy-tinged food we’re tucking into. “I really am sorry for ghosting you.” Even though it wasn’t entirely in my control, I feel like I should still apologize for not reaching out. I could have; I just didn’t. Instead, I sank deeper into the depressive darkness and ignored the outside world.
“I don’t want to say it’s okay. But I understand your mental health played a role in the decision making, and we both now know I’d have liked you to handle it differently. Don’t shut me out next time, okay? I’m not sure what I could have done to help, but I’d have tried.”
“Something no one tells you is that when you’re in a bad mental health space, often the last person you want to talk to is the one closest to you.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.” She pauses, her fork halfway to her mouth with a massive piece of kebab meat and a chip on the end. “For the record, I only wanted to talk to you.”
I sigh, guilt twisting its blade in my chest. I think it’s time to tell her the truth about what happened with the story that involved her father. “When I was in uni, I had a roommate. He was chasing his dreams of playing professionally witheverything he had. I knew he was pushing hard, but I didn’t realize how hard until it was too late.”
I swallow down the bubbling bitterness at the back of my throat. “I should have paid more attention. Reminded him of everything he was outside of rugby. But I didn’t. He got caught up with a shady ‘performance coach’ who promised fast results. Then his behavior started to change.” Another slash of remorse crosses my heart, stealing its rhythm for a beat. You’d think after all this time I’d be used to the survivor’s guilt that comes with living when someone you love dies, but it sucks the oxygen from my body like a porthole being opened on a spaceship.
Her eyes widen. She knows where this is going but lets me continue anyway.
“He started taking erythropoietin.”
