Saturday's Storyteller: "I watched as her sleeping form slowly moved up and down in time with her breathing."

by Belinda Roddie

I watched as her sleeping form slowly moved up and down in time with her breathing. She was beyond beautiful. Her tangled hair lay in mossy, brown-blonde clumps against the pillow, her hand still gripping the fuzzy arm of a teddy bear that had belonged to her for many, many years. Her other arm was around me, stiff and insistent, her palm pressed almost compassionately against my chest.

Anna had been completely blind for nearly two years now, and since then, she absolutely hated to sleep alone. I certainly was not against being beside her - after all, I needed her almost as much as she needed me, just for different reasons. When she wasn't dreaming, her eyes, though glazed with a faint fog like you were overlooking San Francisco from a ferry, were still a gorgeous green that captivated me every time I gazed into them. Whether or not she could do so, I know that Anna wanted to gaze back.

I had become her caretaker when she had first started losing her sight. It had begun with her peripheral vision, and she had first noticed it while she was driving across the Bay Bridge, suddenly terrified by the concept that she could no longer see which cars were passing her on the left side. Unfortunately, it was going to be much worse. Anna was a musician and knew that she could still play piano regardless of blindness - it was the fact that she could no longer read while needing Braille that nearly defeated her. For years now, I had read to her as she went to sleep, revisiting classics like The Hobbit and making her laugh with Catch-22. I believed that it was our reading sessions that really first allowed us to fall in love.

Was it difficult to now be in the role of both spouse and helper for Anna? Of course it was. Neither of us denied it. And now, as we lay in a hotel bed thousands of miles away from home, I wondered how I could possibly make this trip the best it could be. We were in Ireland - Cork, specifically - and I knew that Anna would not be able to see the lush green of the hills, the silver glow of the cobbled streets, even the reddish tint of the Guinness we drank. But I could get her to listen to the River Lee, or a bodhrán and accordion in a local pub. I could get her to smell tobacco and taste lamb stew. I could get her to dance in the cold Irish air if I held her tightly enough. And I could make her smile as I tried to speak Irish to her, garbling the words as I attempted to sing a classic sean-nós song.

But now, it was dark, and the small room was filled with humming from the heater and outside traffic close to Stephen's Green. Despite the fact that my vision was sharp, I felt nearly assaulted by the noise. I was acutely aware of nearly everything affecting my other four senses, given that it was too dark to discern anything farther from the bed besides faint shadows cast by the lamp and night tables. I smelled the hot air billowing from the wall. I almost tasted the drizzle from outside.

My shoulder was beginning to ache, and I tried to shift my body against the mattress, attempting to make myself more comfortable. Anna's grip on me slightly loosened - she was waking up; I had startled her. As I rolled onto my side, I felt my arms splay together Anna's waist, my long fingers grazing her hips as I held her against my chest.

"Honey?"

"Shhh," I whispered, then smiled. "How's Robbie doing?"

Robbie was the name of Anna's teddy bear. She let him dangle in the air by one foot and sighed. "Restless," she replied. "I was having an odd dream. You had gray hair."

I giggled. "My hair's gotten a bit gray lately, Anna. Comes with age."

"Or stress," she countered, and I sighed dismissively. Her lips naturally came into contact with mine. She had gotten very good at finding my face in permanent darkness.

"Sleep, m'dear," I said. "We have a long day tomorrow. Few hours on the bus."

"Dublin?"

"Dublin," I confirmed. "And we'll go to the Old Brazen Head. And they'll be playing fiddles and banjos and seeing 'The Spanish Lady' for you..."

I kept talking like this until I could hear Anna's deep breathing again. Sometimes, dreams was where she was most comfortable. In those dreams, she could see again, and maybe for a moment, she could look at the Cliffs of Moher with delight and run her hands across my still brown hair.

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.