Good Vibrations Magazine

David and are driving through a cold, misty night to pick up his new power wheelchair — the one I forced our HMO to cover after a protracted fight. I pull up to the rehab center’s garage and lift David out of the car. Theresa, the lead therapist, meets us with the wheelchair. I open the hatchback and she explains how to disassemble the chair so I can lift it into the back.

“Are you sure you can do this?” she asks again. Most wives, she’s told me, refuse to lift wheelchairs, insisting their husbands are lazy and should walk.

David cannot even make it to the mailbox.

I practice manipulating the wheelchair, which is a handsome dark purple. I break it down, heft it to and from the car, reassemble it. The chair is 211 pounds assembled; apart, the heaviest piece is about 80. Satisfied, Theresa turns to David.

“Ready?”

My husband sits and rolls around the parking lot. He is 29 years old.

“Outrun your wife!” Theresa yells gleefully. The other therapists laugh and applaud. Slowly I back into the shadows of the garage, attempting to compose my expression, myself. I manage a cheerful façade.

Outrun your wife!

It was my 31st birthday.

I always knew David would end up in a wheelchair. I viewed this fact like the knowledge of mortality: unavoidable, but far in the future, beyond my control and therefore not worth dwelling on. As his strength waned, my workload in taking care of him slowly increased. I devoted little thought to this until he needed the chair and our relationship tipped precariously into “me nurse, you patient.” The lines between caretaking, loving, and retaining my personhood vanished. So did my libido.

Welcome to caretaking’s dirty secret: you don’t want to fuck someone you’ve just picked up off the floor.

Our sex life dwindled. A week, two weeks, sometimes three passed before my guilt overwhelmed me and I smeared his dick with lube, climbed atop him, fucked him with a few quick strokes, and rolled off, dry, disinterested, guiltier than before. David, always a quiet man, grew quieter. He felt responsible for the turn our lives had taken and did not pressure me for sex. Instead, he handled the sickening trip into a wheelchair with uncomplaining dignity. Despite our problems, I encouraged him to express his feelings.

“I had hoped,” he said one late night, “I would make it to 30 before I needed a wheelchair.”

The next 18 months were a nightmare. My physical and mental health broke. Doctors prescribed steroids and tranquilizers to no avail. Therapists “actively listened,” offering me a smorgasbord of antidepressants. I refused, repeatedly pointing out that my problem wasn’t a skip in neurotransmitters, that happiness in the face of my lover’s illness would be an inappropriate response.

I also brought my sexual dysfunction to every medical professional I saw. The ones who didn’t avert their eyes and dismiss me outright were simply sorry.

I didn’t have the energy to be enraged.

Throughout this sexual drought, David and I talked openly, often before intercourse, now relegated to Sunday afternoons after I’d done all the laundry, snuck in a nap, and was nominally rested. I remained jumpy, often drinking to calm down and crying while we talked, trying to hash out some way around the imbalanced mess we were in. Predictably, our problems revolved around money.

The disabled represent a captive audience. Attendants, wheelchairs, breathing equipment, modified vehicles, and shower bars come at enormous costs. Nobody wants to pay, even when they’re supposed to, leaving the patient, or in this case, the patient’s wife, to wage battle. I fought our HMO for the aforementioned wheelchair, then engaged in a two-year fight with the state government for assistance with a modified van. Stress left me pulling handfuls of my hair from the shower drain.

A few months ago, I met a young man whose sister was shot and paralyzed from the neck down. He left college, moving in with his mother to help care for his sister. He was kind, intelligent, and appeared happy.

“The first two years are the worst,” He told me. “After that, you get your van, you get used to it, you figure out how to live with it.”

On December 7, David finally got his van and resumed driving after a two-year hiatus, calmly learning an entirely new system of driving. Sitting in his wheelchair, he accelerates by pushing the small steering wheel forward, braking by pulling it toward him. All other controls are on a button panel.

“What’s the hardest part?” I asked.

“I keep wanting to move my leg. My knee is sore.”

I no longer have to lift the wheelchair. I no longer have to overstock the pantry for fear I’ll catch flu and he’ll have nothing to eat. I can say: “Go get the dry cleaning, will ya?”

From such prosaic things comes respite, equality, and the flickering of my sex drive rekindling. We spent a recent Sunday in bed. The entire Sunday.

“When’s the last time we did this?” I asked. It was cold out; the space heater hummed. We’d been caressing each other for hours. The overheated room smelled intensely of aroused female.

“Too long.”

I lay on my back, cupping my hands over my torso. David slowly maneuvered himself over me, leaned onto my hands, and lowered into me, sliding his arms around my back. We tried to go slowly. We failed.

All we can do is try.