After 32 years together, I thought I knew every version of my husband, even the helpless one he became whenever something hurt. But after an accident, Conor stopped letting me help him. The more protective he became of one simple injury, the more certain I was that something else had happened.
“Don’t touch the cast.”
Conor’s voice came out so sharply that my hand stopped inches from his right leg.
He was sitting on the bathroom floor beside the tub, one crutch under the sink and the other across the doorway. The top edge of his cast had cracked when he fell, and the padding had shifted.
“You’re on the floor,” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I can handle it.”
“Don’t touch the cast.”
“You just lost a fight with a bathtub.”
“Cynthia.”
Something in the way he said my name stopped me.
It wasn’t irritation. It was fear.
