She nodded. “I know, but that’s the thing;
I
don’t even know who I am. I love the highs, it’s probably wrong for me to, but I feel so great, so excited. They are a part of me, and I should take medication but I haven’t been because I wanted the highs.”
She was crying again and I pressed her head to my shoulder, sensing there was more going on here. I didn’t prompt. Somehow, I knew I didn’t have to.
“I’m worried about the baby,” she whispered. “I don’t know if the medicine will hurt it, or… I’m just afraid, Jason. Afraid I’ll do or say the wrong thing with you and mess things up. I can get angry…”
Her head slipped from beneath my hand as she sat up straight and looked down at me. “I stabbed, Declan,” she whispered, her eyes dead serious.
She held out her hand which still bore the vicious red scar left by the cut she’d had the night I’d found her.
“I cut myself, too.”
I looked down at the jagged scar.
“I broke a mirror and stabbed him with a shard from it.”
I just looked up at her. “I know, Rach, you told me in Oregon. You said it was the worst thing you ever did, so I know you regret it. You argued with him, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“Did he know about your bipolar?”
“Yeah, we used to argue all the time. But at least with him, I didn’t have to worry about debts. He let me spend stupid money.”
I stroked back her hair.
“What happened the night you split, the night I found you?”
“I’d had enough of him treating me like a thing. He just used me for sex. He liked my sex, and I didn’t judge the consequences. I thought I didn’t care, that I just wanted sex too, and stuff, because all the stuff he bought me made me feel good, and having money made me feel good. I was on a high when I met him, manic and full of myself, and that’s what he liked, because he was self-obsessed and liked the adrenaline rush of living on the edge, even if living on the edge was having a thing with a crazy woman.”
“Rach, you aren’t crazy.”
“You don’t know the stuff I did with him, I did do mad things.”
I held her hand and my thumb rubbed over her scar.
She looked right into my eyes. “Jason, I can do bad things.”
It scared me. I didn’t really get what she meant. For the first time since she’d mentioned this, I felt a chill inside which feared for our future.
“How did he find out about your bipolar?” I wondered if she’d kept it from me but had told this guy who’d treated her badly.
“I told him after about six weeks, like I’m telling you. I… It isn’t easy to tell people. They tend to run a mile.”
I sighed. “I’m not running, Rach, and you could have told me.”
“I just… I didn’t know how, Jason… But I’ve been trying over the holidays, because I knew had to, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I’m listening now, honey.”
She nodded as her arm came about my shoulders.
I looked into her eyes. “Are you under a doctor?”
She shook her head.
“Have you got any insurance?”
She nodded. “Declan bought it a year ago in a fit of temper, when I spent twenty thousand dollars in a day. That was when I told him. I used to love spending his money just to wind him up. It was a game I played to see how much I had to spend before he got angry.”
I stared at her for a moment. That wasn’t the Rachel I knew, the Rach who’d insisted on paying me something back out of her first wage packet, and going Dutch on our first night. “You didn’t like him even then. Did you? Why the hell were you with him?”
Her smile turned self-condemning and she shrugged. She didn’t even know.
“You didn’t use his insurance?” I had a feeling I was right.
“I didn’t like to.”
“Rach, if you need help, you need help, honey.”
Her head dropped to my shoulder.
I felt that fear again. I had no idea what I’d taken on.
Both her arms came about my neck.
But I knew I loved her. She was my wife now. “We’ll work it all out, Rach. We’ll speak to a doctor.”
She nodded against my shoulder without looking up.
“Shall we get showered?” I whispered against her ear. Her head lifted.
I couldn’t see any horror or disgust in Jason’s eyes, just questions and thoughts.
I sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
His fingers braced my chin. “Rach, it’s not like you’re confessing to murder… You’re not are you?” It was said in jest.
I smiled, and shook my head.
“It’s going to be okay. You, me, the baby, we’re going to be just fine.”
I nodded, sniffing and wiping away my tears, then I got up, and left him to go and shower. Yesterday had felt like the best day of my life. Today felt like the worst––but I’d had a lot of worst days in my life.
I went into the washroom, and while I was stripping off, I heard his cell ring.
“Hi Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
“Right.”
“Thank you.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Goodbye.”
I switched the shower on pretending I hadn’t been listening and remembered only a few weeks ago when we’d first met––when he’d first rescued me––how I’d listened then, to a stranger talking. He wasn’t a stranger anymore. He was my husband.
The showerhead was a broad disk, and the stream of water came out really fast. I put my hand under it checking the temperature and then stepped in. It was like standing under a waterfall. The water teemed down on my head and I shut my eyes, lifted my face, and let it stream over my closed eyes, my mouth and my shoulders.
The first I knew of his presence was his hands touching my waist as he stood behind me. Then his teeth nipped at my neck. I leaned against him and rested my head back on his shoulder as his hands slid upward over my breasts.
When he clasped them I felt a spasm of longing slip through my body. It pooled low in my belly. Then his fingers pinched my nipples and a shooting pain followed it.
His hands slid down to the tops of my thighs and held me steady as he pressed against me from behind and sucked my neck. I melted inside.
Shit, Jason.
He created such a storm of tension in my nerves it swept my thoughts away from anything but this …
“Jason,” I whispered as the water poured down on us.
His head lifted a little and his lips brushed against my earlobe. “You’re beautiful you know.” He turned me to face him then and I expected him to be smiling but he looked serious. His hair was wet and he had water droplets caught in his eyelashes. My stomach did a double somersault.
“Dad is giving me half the store.”
“What?”
“He’s making me a silent partner, and Lindy manager.”
“I don’t understand.” I swept his wet hair off his forehead so it didn’t keep dripping.
“I’ll get a share of the profits, and Lindy will have no permanent links. He said I’d need it now we’re married.” The emotion in his brown eyes shone, but I couldn’t fathom it.
“Is that good? Is that what you want?”
“I guess. I just didn’t want the store going out of the family… And I’m grateful. He didn’t have to set it up so we’d get money now. He said him and Mom talked. They’re going to support us.”
“But they don’t like me still, do they?”
“I think they’ve accepted I do, finally. They don’t have any choice. They have to learn to like you, Rach. I think they’re going to try. But Dad said Mom doesn’t feel like talking to me right now. She isn’t happy.”
I could read the emotion burning in his dark eyes now. It said,
I love you
, and
I’m going to protect you and not let them hurt you
.
“But that’s enough of that. I want shenanigans.”
I kissed him, ignoring the water streaming over my hair and our bodies.
Our tongues danced, and then he was pressing me back against the shower wall and lifting my thighs to his hips.
It was stupid how much I loved him, I’d never felt anything near this attraction and dependence for anyone.
“Mrs. Macinlay.” Jason opened the door of his apartment, and threw me a grin as he held it for me to pass.
I smiled.
“Oh no, dammit, wait, not yet.”
He pushed past me, and went in, taking the cases into the living room, then he turned around and came back to the door, grinning again.
“I can’t believe I nearly forgot to carry you.” He bent and picked me up, I squealed as my shins dangled over his forearm and my arms grabbed about his shoulders.
We crossed the threshold.
“Shall I drop you on the mattress and have my wicked way with you?”
“I want to eat first. I’m starving, and thirsty.”
“What, not hungry and thirsty
for me
…”
I hit his shoulder with the heel of my hand.
He set me down carefully. “Well then, we’d better go out and get some food.”
“Can we go to the restaurant? I can check what shifts they want me to work then.”
“Okay.”
I picked up the post we’d collected downstairs, and flicked through it. There was one for me. It was from the hospital.
Rachel Shears, the name made me smile. I wasn’t Rachel Shears anymore, I was Rachel Macinlay.
I gave him the others and then opened mine.
“I got my scan date.”
He looked at me, and smiled.
“Will you come with me? It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“What time?” His eyes glowed.
“First thing in the morning.”
“I’ll tell work I’ll be late in.”
“Thank you.” I hugged him. I couldn’t believe it; I was a wife now, and I was gonna be a mother soon. Who was I? I laughed. He just smiled.
~
Half an hour after Rach fell asleep, I got out of bed. I couldn’t sleep. I’d lain there with my thoughts spinning. There was so much going on. There was the marriage, and the baby, and her bipolar, which I still didn’t understand.
I picked up my cell.
In the living room, I sat on the floor, my back against the wall.
Moonlight poured in through the long window.
I turned on my cell and went onto the internet, and searched ‘bipolar.’
A part of me felt disloyal, but I wasn’t doing it to spy or condemn, only to understand.
The ten signs of bipolar… They included talking lots, and I thought of how Rach had spoken a monologue nearly all the way to Vegas. On the way back, she’d been as silent as the grave.
It talked of extremes, of different forms of the illness, hypomania and mania, and severe depression, and then it spoke about people being normal sometimes, and sometimes people not even being able to tell they were in a manic state.
Then it talked of the worst extremes. People thinking they were someone else, or superhuman.
It spoke about sex drives, too, and as I read the words my mind filled with images of Rach, when we did it in the alley in the beginning. Then there was the first night, when she’d sat naked in the bath of a stranger, and let me tend her hand.
My heartbeat thumped all the time, as I read the words.
I watched videos, too, of people who had it, and people who knew someone who had it.
They all said it was treatable, and people implied the best way to support someone was to just keep talking, and not smother them, or try to fix them, but to just be there.
I ended the internet connection.
The bedroom door opened.
“You’re up.” Rach’s brow furrowed.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
I was going to stand up, but before I could move she sat down beside me.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
I looked sideways at her. I had a feeling she knew. “Searching bipolar disorder on the internet. It’s what they used to call manic depression, isn’t it?”
She nodded, looking at me with eyes that asked what I thought.
My cell in one hand, my other caught hold of her hand.
With my knees still bent up, I just draped my forearm over my knee and our joined hands hung in midair.
“Tell me what your worst day was.”
“I don’t know, Jason. I don’t remember a lot when I get really down, but I spent years in deep depression during my teens. I was a mess when I left home. I didn’t have any respect for myself, or other people either. I used to just let guys treat me like trash.”
“And the worst thing you did, stabbing Declan, right?”
Her eyes widened. “I suppose, it depends on what you judge as bad. You might think it was sleeping with a load of guys at once. I’m not proud of anything I’ve done like that, but at the times I did them, I wasn’t thinking straight … ”
“And me?”
“You?” There was confusion in her eyes.
But this was the question which had been haunting me since I’d started reading all these blogs. “When we got together, the night we went out. Was that because you wanted me, or because you were high and you just wanted sex?”
Her eyes glittered in the moonlight which spilled through the long window and fell across the room. “I wanted you. I think I was already in love with you, Jason. But I didn’t plan to have sex with you. That just happened. And, yes, maybe it was because I have bipolar disorder. I don’t know any more than you do. It’s in my head. I can’t pick out which thought comes from it, and which doesn’t. I don’t know what it’s like to think like someone who doesn’t have it any more than you can imagine what goes on in my head.”
I nodded. I think I understood more now and I did believe we were just about us.
I squeezed her fingers.
“Do you still love me?”
I tugged her against me and kissed her hair. “No. I’m fucking fanatical about you… Of course I still love you.”
She lifted her head again and looked at me, a silhouette in the dark with her back to the moonlight.
“But you have to take the medicine,” I said.
“I know. I was going to ask for it, it just makes me drowsy sometimes, and I feel like it holds me back when I could be high … ”
“Until you go too high…” I lifted my eyebrows at her. I knew what that meant now. “You don’t want to hit an extreme when we have the baby. I know they’re rare, Rach, but you have to be sensible.”