Hands

Part 1

I've never realised the importance of my wife's hands until the night of the accident. The day had started like any other, she being the first thing I saw when I woke up. But of course, that would be the last time I would ever see my wife. The catalyst to this new life? Icy roads, failed breaks and a truck. 

The accident changed my entire life forever. I went blind.

I woke up in the hospital, but I didn't see it. I could smell the cleaning agents and the metallic scent of my own blood, could hear my wife's cries as she sat beside me. I could feel her hold my hand, her own little and warm, the fingers long and thin, fitting inside my palm like a missing jigsaw piece. I heard the beeps of machines and tried so earnestly to get my eyes to adjust to the room. They would not. They never would again.

I remember the doctor coming into the room after I had awoken. There were bandages around my head at the time, they were bloody and mangled from a day and a half unconscious. It had been a miracle I had lived, he had said. The truck driver couldn't control his eighteen wheeler, the snow and ice were too thick and heavy. They had came close to loosing me at many points during the night. I would live. Well, I would be alive.

The glass of the windshield had went into my eyes. There was nothing anybody could do. I would spend the rest of my life blind. All I had were my mind's eye, and that was a cold comfort. 

The morning the doctor told me, I don't really remember what happened. What I said, what I did. All I could remember were my wife's sobs as she was pulled out of the room and away from me. That sent me into even more of a fit, for she was my strength and had been since we were children. I had been sedated, and they calmly explained to me that I would never see again.

From that point on, Mary's hands became my eyes.

The first few months had been the hardest. I had been moody and crabby and unhelpful and vulnerable and angry and upset, leaving it to her to try and comfort me, as well as move us both into a new manor home that she and my parents had paid for and renovated to make it habitable for me. It was close to my mother and father and my littlest siblings. Not that it mattered, but it was closer to the eye hospital. They couldn't do anything, but they could try and help me as much as possible.

Years passed. I had became attuned to my new life with my wife's hands becoming my eyes. We had made the best of it, even got a guide dog -an impressive Czechoslovakian wolfdog named Alpha- to help me around whenever Mary was working and not with me. 

We were young and wanted children after we settled and wed. I remember the first time I had known my wife's body intimately after the accident. It had been a long process, not believing myself to be desirable to her anymore. I wasn't sure if my body could physically desire her as it once did, now that it couldn't see her. Mary understood, and she took my wrist and slowly guided my fingertips all over her exposed flesh, encouraging me remember each and every curve caged in by her soft, warm flesh. My fingertips became my eyes, that night. That night had been -if possible- more powerful than any other time together. I became more attuned to her body than ever before, listening out for the increase in breath, the change in pitch of her moans and whimpers as my fingers explored her body curiously.

It was then that we attained another roadblock. Unexplained infertility. 

Five miscarriages. One after the other within eighteen months. We had both so desperately wanted children, so this news was an even bigger blow to us than my accident had been. The doctors couldn't figure out why it kept happening. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was wrong with me, nor with Mary. We passed every single test we had with flying colours. We never lay with anybody else, infection couldn't be a factor.

I remember each one like it was yesterday. The excitement of a positive test, then the devastation of blood appearing on her thighs not that long later. Again and again. Nothing had happened to her. She didn't smoke, she cut out all drinking, she exercised and she ate well. It was just sudden, blood appearing upon her. I couldn't see the blood, but I could smell it. I could hear her cries of pain and grief as more and more blood appeared from her body.

I will never forget the vulnerability and the fear as we came home from the fifth miscarriage. She had been fourteen weeks along, the longest gestational age yet. Against doctors orders after the D&C, she had driven the three of us home and walked away from me to cry. It was agonising, hearing her cries and not knowing where they were coming from. I frantically stumbled around our home, trying to find her. Alpha hadn't been with me. He had been comforting her due to the fact that his master could not.

I had found them in the living room. Hearing me try and find her, Mary seemed to realise that I was there and that she wasn't alone. She hit the chair she had been sitting on, audio ques had been essential in our relationship due to my blindness. I had came over to her and held her, promising her that we'd find a way through this darkness. She was my light through it all.

Then, things started changing. Our next pregnancy, she was so scared through it all. For many months, Mary refused to bond with the life growing inside of her, fearing another loss. Slowly, the fear of another loss ebbed as her stomach grew and our baby started to turn and kick. I had seen her grow with my hands, regularly cupping her growing bump and whispering my adoration do the child that I would never see with my eyes, but I would see with our hands.

Mary's hands guided me through the pregnancy. Every kick and turn, every appointment and consultation. I had been there for her when she had been there for me. I may not have seen the blue confetti fall from the sky at our gender reveal, but I heard everybody's cries of elation of our unborn son. But I heard no voice clearer than hers.

The labour had been the most frightening time of my life. Because neither of us could drive when the baby came, my mother had been staying with us, to be the one to drive Mary to the hospital. The labour had been long and hazardous. I never wanted to hear those cries of pain ever again. Somehow, I thought that they had been louder than they would have been if I had the use of my eyes. I was more sensitised and attuned to her this way, but I never left her side as she never left mine.

Thirty two hours of labouring later, our son James slid into the world. After over a day and a half of my own fear and holding onto Mary's hand, smelling nothing but the sterility of the birthing room and the blood that escaped my wife, it was such an exhilarating sound. I waited impatiently as Mary was handed the baby and I was gently coaxed and assisted to cut the chord. And, just as she had done on the day I lost my sight, Mary had taken my hand in hers and coaxed it along skin.

Her hand moved mine over our baby's face, over his tiny body and legs. James' cries silenced soon after. I didn't take my hand off him.

"Look at him, Francis." Mary had whispered. And I could. I could see him. I could see both of them. Not with my eyes, but with my hands. "Look at our son."