Love for You

"Welcome home, sweetie." Anna wheeled her daughter inside the house with the help of John. James grabbed her bag from the car and followed. Jo winced with every bump they hit up the stairs. Even the slightest move of her arm had her biting her lip and felt the soreness of her muscles all over. That was one reason she didn't want to come home just yet. She knew the drugs that kept her pain free for the past three days would wear off. Though she was sent home with a bottle full of pills, she wasn't looking forward to the minutes she had to wait before the meds started to work.

As James helped her out of the wheelchair, she fought the urge to cry out in pain.

"It's OK, baby." James whispered in her ear, trying his best to guide her without hurting her. Once she was on her own two feet, she was completely winded.

"Where's Jackson?" She asked, eyes already searching upstairs and ears listened for the sound of his laugh or cry.

"He's upstairs taking a nap." John said, folding the wheelchair and placed it by the door.

"Come on, I'll take you to him." James helped her walk up the stairs, seeing her fight through the pain. Three steps up, he decided that he would make it easier for her and carried her bridal style up the stairs.

"OW!" She cried out as she was lifted off her feet.

"Sorry," he apologized with a sheepish smile. "I figured this would be a lot easier."

Jo felt helpless. Independence was something she took pride in. Asking for help didn't come easy for her. Unless she had done everything single thing without getting the result she wanted, that would be the only time she would even consider asking anyone for help. James might be her husband but that didn't mean that he would be an exception to her I-don't-need-your-help rule.

The smell of baby powder and a newly open box of diapers calmed Jo's senses. Before she left the hospital, she had been on the edge, not sure if she wanted to go home just yet. She didn't want to face her baby knowing that there was something wrong with her. If her baby was going to see her, she would be her best self and her best self wasn't there just yet.

They didn't tell her what exactly was the diagnosis. She asked a million and one questions on the way home which were answered but she needed a name or a title to what was happening to her.

She turned to James as soon as he set her down.

"Now that we're home, would you please tell me what the doctors said?"

"You're fine, Jo. That's all that matters." He said, walking over to the crib to look down at his sleeping baby.

Jackson looked so peaceful, completely oblivious to the chaos around him. Was that how it was when he was a baby? Had his parents gone through something terrible that he was too young to be aware of? Parenthood was tough, he knew that for a fact. But trying to hold his family together without falling apart himself proved to be much more of a challenge than he expected. He imagined that the hardest part about being a parent would be arguing with Jo about whose turn it was to change Jackson's diaper.

Jo pulled on her thick, warm cardigan tightly, wincing again at the slightest move.

"Hiding stuff from me isn't helping at all," she said. "I already feel so lost. Help me out a bit, OK?"

James sat on the chair by the window and saw that the sun peeking through the clouds. He looked at Jo who waited for him to answer her.

"Let's just relax for today, alright? I'll tell you everything tomorrow."

"Why can't you just tell me now and we'll relax tomorrow?" Jo frowned.

James pushed himself off the chair, "It's just been a long week. Let's just have a quiet day indoors, hang out with J as a family. Doesn't that sound nice?"

She looked down, hair falling on her face. James used his finger to tilt her head up, "Hey, are you OK? We could just rest if you want."

He placed a palm against her cheek--the warmth of his hand contrasted with the coolness of her cheek. She leaned into his touch, memories of their time before Jackson and their marriage flashed in her mind. They had been so happy, so carefree. She wanted that back. At that point, she would choose struggling to make her deadlines in school, wondering when James will text her back, getting angry at the elevator in her apartment that just would never work, over the unexplained feelings she had, the sudden detachment and attachment happening all at the same time with her son.

At times she thought about her relationship with James, asked herself whether they should've waited a little longer before moving in together or before getting married. Everything that happened between them had always been done in a rush like her surprise pregnancy. The memory of her going to James' childhood home back in Canada on a whim after her breakdown in the driveway of her parent's home replayed over and over in her head, wondering if that had been the right thing to do. To her it felt like she gave James the green light, the signal to go and move their relationship along when they hardly had one in the first place. They had only known each other for a couple of months and most of those months were spent in two ends of the country.

Her time in Canada was also the first time they had been intimate--another thing she thought they had rushed. She thought maybe they would wait until they got to really know each other before touching that part of their relationship. Again, the word 'rushed' came to her mind.

"Tell me a story," she told him, trying to forget what she thought about their past. "Tell me anything."

"What to do you want to hear?" He asked, stroking her cheek with his thumb. He didn't ask when a tear escaped the corner of her eye.

"Anything," she repeated. "Just tell me a story."

James said no more and walked them over to the chair. He sat her down on his lap and she placed her head on his shoulder. She felt like a broken down child, so helpless and so tired.

"There was this one time when I was kid, me and Mike were playing outside on the pond. It had just froze that morning and we were so excited because we had been waiting for that day for so long..."

Jo listened to him talk, using his story as an excuse from the reality that played in her head. She wanted to escape all that she felt and just listen to someone speak other than her own brain doing all the talking. Another tear fell from her ear and she let it fall on his t-shirt. She laughed through the pain searing throughout her whole body as he recalled the time him and his brothers faked a fight on the pond just so they could say that they had gotten a penalty for fighting--something they had wanted to do since they watched a fight on TV. He even used the term "bad guys" as he described them cheering while skating their way to the makeshift sin bin. She laughed and laughed, though it wasn't that hilarious, until she was in tears--a way for her to mask the pain she felt inside.