Glass In The Bed

'Glass In The Bed'

Rose forced her eyes open. She felt the sticky lashes pulling apart from each other. She could hear their neighbor's band-saw and knew it was a Monday. His usual delivery of wood, as ever, would have arrived by eight o'clock, so Rose reckoned it must be nearer to nine now.
I must get up thought Rose. There were still the clothes to wash from yesterday and there would be more between them today. Rose wondered a while how much they now spent on washing detergent. Rose found some small pleasure in buying different brands each time. Each box containing numerous packets of two squarish shapes. 'Lumps', as Paul called them. Rose attempted a smile at this recollection but her lips cracked and a heavy drop of warm and strangely comforting blood dropped to the pillow as she turned her head toward Paul laying next to her. Rose wondered if he was still breathing. Her eyes registered no movement from his shrinking frame. Paul was weaker than she was. He had lost far more blood in the past week than she had and as Rose reached out to touch his back she could feel that the puddle of blood beneath him was cold and had a surface like a jelly not quite set. Rose pulled herself up onto her side and leaned on an elbow as she pressed her mouth to his ear.
'Paul', she whispered. Paul remained silent, but Rose could just feel a reasonable warmth rising from deep inside his ear. Rose looked out the window by the bed at the warming fields and wished they could help her. Rose was under no illusions. Paul, she knew, was dying. They both were. They lost more and more blood each day now. It didn't matter how many times they saw the Doctor and patched themselves up. It was hopeless but they did not despair. They could feel their love tighten around them, bonding them still further. But now, Paul seemed to be slipping much quicker and Rose's heart tore as she looked down him. Yesterday after Rose had returned home from her morning walk she had found Paul weeping as he held their cat, it's paw bloody and she knew that she would have to take control of their situation from now on. He'd had no need to tell Rose that he was no longer coping.
Rose pushed herself out of the bed, knocking Paul's leg to the floor with a thud. She was always careful not to disturb him in the past but now she knew nothing could stir him. Once Rose had her feet settled firmly on the carpet she stooped to pick up Paul's foot and pushed it awkwardly back onto the bed.
The carpets were looking bad now thought Rose. There was a wide reddish brown smudge circling the bed where they walked and attempts by Rose to clean it no longer proved worthwhile. Rose looked back to the bed and large pieces of jagged glass pleasingly sparkling back at her in the sunlight. There seemed to be more blood than yesterday but that was how it always seemed.
The sun illuminated a large piece of glass pressed against Paul's belly and Rose moved his hand so she could get to it. Paul's fingernails were thick with blood under the rims and cuticles. I must cut those, Rose thought and amused herself at the absurdity of such an idea. Rose carelessly grasped the hostile shaped glass and doing so, sliced open her palm. Despite this she still managed to pull it away from his belly and was pleased to hear Paul murmur slightly before she dropped it to the floor where it hit a cup beside the bed, shattering itself into pieces more lethal than before.
Rose left Paul and the sodden bloody sheets and stumbled to the bathroom to rinse another ruined night-gown that would never again be white. As the water filled the basin Rose thought back to when it all started. To the time before the sheets had to be laundered everyday. Before the bed had become entrenched with their blood. Blood they could no longer quite wash out and that left them with sheets that were dry and powdery to the touch.

It hadn't been long after they had met. Rose remembered the day when the first ugly word was flung at them. Like a little hard stone that was sudden and heart-stopping. They didn't realize then that the stone would weaken the existence they shared together. It hurt Paul that the initial attacks were aimed at dis-empowering him as much as Rose, maybe even more so. And it wasn't until after more stones were thrown that they had found the first piece of glass in the bed.
Rose had woken one morning and turned her head quickly on her pillow to reposition herself for a few more illicit minutes of sleep when she felt something on her cheek. She reached her hand up to touch whatever was there and found a little blood on her finger tips. Rose sat up and looked down at the pillow. Nothing. And then, as Paul stretched and moved his body from sleep, light from a gap in the curtains made something sparkle on the pillow. Rose found it to be a shard of glass no thicker than peeling paint and smaller than her little finger nail, but as shards always are, dangerous enough to discreetly splice open the skin. The next day there were several more shards on the bottom sheet and more lay innocently in the folds of the top sheet.
'How did they get there', Paul had asked Rose. 'I've no idea', Rose had replied. She knew they weren't there when she'd changed the bed the previous day and had smoothed the linen down with her hands as she had always done.
More stones were thrown. The gossiping continued. And in the same way that they could do nothing to shelter themselves from it, they could only fail to protect themselves from the increasing amount of glass that appeared in their bed each day .
Rose had the notion that something had shattered. And was aware that they were becoming weaker and more vulnerable as each new judgment was passed on them. Paul had sadly agreed.
One morning before Rose opened her eyes to the day she was aware that something was resting on her eyelid. Maybe a stray feather from the quilt she thought. In that same moment Rose had opened her eyes and in fell a small jagged jewel of glass. Rose panicked and let out a low fearful noise as Paul sat bolt upright to help her. As Paul held her head still and had instructed her to keep looking to the left so he could remove the glass from her bloody eye, Rose had seen no point in immediately telling him of the creeping blood stains on the patch of bed where he had lain.
After Rose had cleaned the wound between Paul's shoulder blades and removed what Rose hoped was the final piece of glass, Paul helped Rose to use a small blue glass eye-bath to gently cleanse the blood from her eye.
'You should make an appointment with the Doctor', Paul had told Rose, 'just in case'. And sensing she needed it, Paul held Rose to him tightly, feeling her fear as small tremors shook her ribcage.

They became quite good at bandaging themselves up after Paul had come home one day with a book on first-aid. Rose had been saddened at first but Paul assured her that it was best they prepare themselves. Even he knew now that the words behind their backs would still be spoken. The stones ricocheting frequently toward them. Following a row over their increasingly ..... situation, Paul, whose despotic-like mother was responsible for throwing the first stone, warned Rose that they were now in greater danger from the stones as he believed that what had once stood strongly in them, was weakening rapidly. He also told Rose that he was sorry. Little was he to know that by bringing Rose here, they had set up camp on an area of his Mother's ego was a punishing place to have mistakenly thought could be their new home.

They would buy fresh bandages, tape, plasters, both waterproof and 'breathable', large tubes of antiseptic cream and tweezers from the local chemist with increasing frequency. Rose had felt compelled to lie to the chemist, telling him they had embarked on a course learning first-aid. It felt to Rose like an admission of the serious danger they were in when she'd felt she now had to hide her life from the people that knew them. They had stopped seeing friends. Making excuses that Rose and Paul would exchange like football cards between them. Recycling them when they felt enough time had passed. Rose worked for a small publishing company in London. The majority of her work she could do from home and that was what she did once the small nicks and cuts had grown in frequency and in size. Rose had noticed her colleagues would look when they thought she was unaware and they seemed to be more uncomfortable than she. Paul had never had any such awkwardness as he would work out of his office at home. He was a small but established architect and had always managed to get enough contractual work through a network of his own creation.
One morning after Rose had bandaged a small deep wound on Paul's forearm as tightly as she could and filled the washing machine with bloody bed linen, she decided to set out for a walk. Paul was getting ready to leave for a meeting in town and Rose didn't feel like being in the house alone. It was raining out but that didn't deter her. Barefoot, she looked about for the sandals she'd been wearing most of that summer. She wanted to feel the rain on her ankles and around her feet. She put a mack on over her thin cotton dress and pulled an umbrella from the stand. 'Have you seen my sandals'? Rose called out to Paul. 'In the bedroom', he replied', 'I have to go', he said as he came up behind Rose as she started up the stairs. 'I won't be long', he said as he stepped toward her, kissing her gently, silently wishing her safe until he had returned.
Rose listened as the car left, went down the hill, turned left onto the lane, kept listening until she could no longer hear him before she moved. In the bedroom Rose found her sandals tucked under the bed and picked them up along with the cat she found hovering nervously beside them. Downstairs she put the cat out the door and slipped into her sandals as she closed the door behind her. The cat looked up at her briefly before shaking it's wet paws and disappearing into the hedge. Rose had been walking for about ten minutes before she noticed the strange exclusively familiar pain of a fresh cut. A special kind of hurt that sent a shock at once to your heart, sending it rapidly beating against your chest momentarily. As Rose looked down at her feet, she saw the blood pooling formidably where she stood. It swirled briefly and then drifted beautifully away on the rain flooded pavement like a cloud of garnet cordial. She hadn't noticed the glass in her sandals that had pressed fresh wounds into the soles of her feet as she walked. It had stopped raining now and from under her umbrella Rose looked out along the rain softened, buttery roads and didn't want to turn back home. The rain started falling again, softly at first. Once it had started to fall in heavier drops, Rose continued her walk. The blood ran from her feet mixing with the rain water and on she went. She wanted to walk away as much of the despair she felt in her heart and the rain somehow helped her, soothed her.
On her eventual return she stopped in a small hardware shop in the village to pick up some new fly-traps. They were going to need more than one this time Rose had conceded to Paul earlier in the week. The flies were currently ignoring the curled brown paper with it's sticky trap that hung over the bed. They were lured on by something better. Fresh blood or better, stale. She arrived home to find the cat wet and bewildered as to where she'd been and asking to be let in immediately.
Rose neatly packed away the supplies she'd bought reminding herself of films she'd seen of people in preparation of a nuclear war. It all seemed too much now but later it would prove to be far too little. Rose heard voices nearing the house and instinctively she crouched low, her body limp against the front door. There they are again she thought. Rose could hear them talking close to the house now. Could hear them exchanging between them the little information Rose and Paul would let trickle out in their courteous but brief exchanges. Times when Rose would shrink from the acrimonious smiles on their oily faces. While their hard wet black eyes silently spun scathing opinions. Rose listened as the stones scraped together in their hands as they shared them out and anticipated too little the impact of the coming barrage.

From then on they had had to wake carefully each morning. Knowing they were surrounded not by the comfort and familiarity of a soft warm bed and each others bodies, but by the glass whose shards had now become thick perilous swords.
They would help each other up out of the bed so that the injuries they had sustained during the night would not be added to. Cautiously they would make their way to the shower to rinse away their trauma before tenderly bandaging each other with coils of sterilized muslin and loving kisses. One morning Paul helped Rose into the shower and left her to go make coffee and warm some croissants. They had taken to buying themselves small luxuries everyday now. They drank single estate coffee and good wine. They took care when selecting the best cuts of meat, aware of the bandages under their clothes as the butcher sliced the tenderest fillet steak. Paul delighted Rose with his selection from the finest bakeries and patisseries he could find when he went into town.
As Rose smelt the warm aroma coming from the percolating coffee, she decided to quickly wash her hair. Squeezing shampoo into her palm she vigorously rubbed it into her scalp, closing her eyes as she felt the lather foam down around her face. Rose wiped her eyes and took a quick shallow breath when she saw the pink suds in her hands and delicately running the length of her body. She wiped deeper pink and crimson colours from her head now and stood in the shower with hot indiscernible tears bouncing from her eyes.
'You still in there?', Paul called as he poked his head around the bathroom door with the breakfast tray. Immediately setting down the tray on a chair, Paul rushed to Rose and tenderly washed the shampoo out of her hair whilst supporting her sad and stunned body firmly against his own.
The thin glass shards that had hidden themselves in the morning muss of Rose's hair had sliced her scalp and the tops of her ears quite badly. Rose felt it to be a reminder of her place in this waxing war of vicious words. A place that was no longer safe and lacked all assumptions. She had to wait until the myriad of small cuts had formed soft scabs to halt their blood flow before Rose saw any point in washing hair that was now stiffening with clotted blood.
They had sat in silence on the bathroom floor looking at one another as they ate the cold croissants and drank lukewarm coffee. Rose huddled in an over-size toweling robe while Paul, in his damp shirt and jeans gently pleaded her with his eyes to stay with him. To see it through with him wherever it may lead.
In the following months they would see Doctor's and nurses, continually explaining their situation and why they would not give up on each other. Telling how it was impossible for them to part and that they would stay together until the last drops of blood left their bodies. And that was how they had been continuing until now.

As Rose remembered all of this, water had over-flowed from the basin splashing Rose's feet, and broke her from her sad reverie. Rose felt something else now. Something other than sadness as she recollected. She felt strong and proud of what they had done together and how they had never wavered in their support for one another.
As expected, Rose heard the familiar voices outside under the window and refreshingly, she felt no fear. There was not much more they could take now from their frail bodies Rose mused as she turned her body to face the window. She had no problem standing still and waiting for the stones to fly as she had so little movement left. And once she had arrived at this stillness, Rose saw that perhaps if she tried to catch the next stone it would leave the last of them intact. Rose thought cautiously about her next move. She knew if she missed the stone it would be too late for them. Perhaps she was misleading herself. Had the final shattered pieces of their life already fallen brittlely to the ground.
Rose's hand instinctively reached out and a small stone hit the back of her hand hard and ricocheted back outside culling the laughing voices.
The silence that followed let Rose know it was over. And with that thought she took fresh bandages and other supplies from the medicine cabinet and returned to Paul who she found sitting up in bed with joyful tears wetting his face.

THE END