Coda

“Be careful,” I gasp, settling down onto the bed.  “My chest hasn’t stretched this far – it’s hard to breathe…”
“I’m careful,” Gini tells me.  She moves slowly, tentatively, sliding in next to me, looking to me for reassurance that she isn’t causing me pain.  My sternum was snipped open when they operated on my heart, breaking all my ribs, and as such any weight on my chest is like having them broken all over again.  She rests her head lightly on my shoulder, and I sigh.
“Not on – my belly – “I tell her, the pain in the hollow of my throat, moving her arm away from its usual resting place.  “Down here.  On my thigh.  Take my hand.”
She does.  “Does it hurt?” she asks.
“Yes,” I tell her.  “A little.  But it’s worth it.”
Click.
For the first time in two weeks, we are snuggled together.
It’s been hard to be together since the surgery – a held hand, her massaging my feet, an awkward pained hug in the kitchen.  We’re a physical couple.
“I can’t believe how sleepy I am,” she says.  I stroke her hair, feeling the muscles in her body untense, because her body finally understands what her mind has been trying to tell it: Ferrett is back.  “I’m sorry, I know you’re not tired….”
“Sleep, my love,” I tell her.  She curls up against me, relaxed in a way she hasn’t been since that first awful text I sent her two-plus weeks ago, pressing up against me, needing me in the way that I have always needed her, and as she starts to snore it is like the pound of sea on the surf, the righteous tide which we are owed, this rhythm of our bodies together again.