Axis

august 5th

        WHEN I WAKE UP the following morning, two unpleasant things catch my attention. The first of which being that according to the digital clock that resides tactfully on my bedside table, it is almost noon and I’m only now waking up to face the world, Jasper still dead asleep beside me, meaning I’ve already wasted the morning away. And the second being the fact that the bed feels like a hole found its way in the roof and drenched my sheets in rainwater overnight. Except, the weather didn’t call for any kind of precipitation, and there most certainly is no hole in the roof.

        I lift the sheets up a bit and promptly let them flutter back down when the strong and somewhat repulsive stench of urine greets my nostril.

        Yep. Just as I suspected.

        I sigh for a moment, knowing I need to wake Jasper up but feeling awful about disturbing his innocent restfulness to inform him that he just so happened to wet the bed—my bed.

        It’s not even that I’m mad—how could I be? It’s not his fault his diabetes makes his body store up a surplus of glucose in his blood that needs filtered out and as a result makes him have to pee a lot. He didn’t choose this. And it’s not like there’s really even anything he can do to prevent it; there isn’t.

        But he’s gonna be mortified all the same when he wakes up and realizes.

        Gently, I shake him awake, rocking his shoulders back and forth until his face twitches and his green eyes flutter open, landing immediately on my bleary face.

        He yawns and rubs his eyes awake, and it only takes him a couple seconds to finally process the situation, realization smothering his features.

        “Tell me I didn’t,” he pronounces gravely, his voice low and a bit croaky.

        “Jasper, it’s okay—”

        “No it’s not!”

        He looks at me desperately and I sit up, trying hard to ignore the dampness on my bare legs. If it were anyone else, I would be highly repulsed right now; maybe even too mortified to ever face them again. But this is Jasper—my Jasper—who carved our initials into a tree to remind me that he’s here for me, even when no one else is; who is always feeding me stupid little compliments every chance he can get in hopes to boost my Dead Sea self-esteem; who was willing to sacrifice his Friday night last night to work with me and then transfer the money he earned over to my paycheck, even after I told him not to.

        For a brief moment, neither one of us says anything, and I take the opportunity to climb out of bed to retrieve a couple of towels from the hall closet, tossing one to Jasper, who doesn’t make an effort to catch it, and holding onto the other to use for the shower I’m going to be taking in a few minutes.

        “I can’t believe this happened. It hasn’t happened in almost two years.” For a moment, he remains sitting rigidly in place, his eyes glazed out of focus as he tries to come to terms with the situation. And then he looks up, alert, and there’s a discernible self-loathing evident in his features that makes my skin crawl in overprotectiveness. “Look, I’ll take all your sheets and everything to the laundromat and get them washed right now,” he asserts, crawling out from my bed and already getting to work bundling all my covers up into one giant pile.

        I step forward and rest a hand on his arm, promptly stopping him from continuing his efforts.

        “You don’t have to do this right now,” I tell him gently, honestly. “Take a shower first. Go home. Get changed. It’s really not a big deal; I’m not mad.”