“This is nice.” Winase was looking around the restaurant after their taxi ride from the bus’s drop-off point.
“For a special occasion, you being back,” Sabelo said. “I checked out the menu earlier. There are some diabetes-friendly meals.”
“You’re so good to me,” Winase said, and for a moment he saw the old sparkle back in her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he flirted, and she smiled.
“Even so,” she began, with the smile already fading, and he stopped her with a loud sigh.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said.
“I love you too much to want to … to tie you.” Winase’s voice shook.
“If we love each other, then there’s no problem,” he argued. “I’ve known from the start that you have a chronic illness.”
“It’s never going to be easy.”
“We talked about that, remember?”
“Some things we haven’t talked about very much.” Winase took a sip from the water bottle she had with her. “The eye thing, for one.”
“Oh yes, what’s it called again?”
“Diabetic eye disease. It’s got some other fancy-ass name, but really it’s fluid in the back of the eyes, and it happens with diabetes.” Winase paused. “I could go blind, if it isn’t treated.”
“Then we have to make sure you can keep on getting the treatments, that’s all.” He looked at her. “I know you’re not scared of the needles in your eyes, so why should I be scared? All I have to do is be there for you.”
Although if it was him getting injections in his eyes, he’d freak out, he was sure. She was so brave.
His words seemed to reassure her, but he knew she worried as much as he did about what would happen if she couldn’t eventually get medical aid or insurance.
They went back to her house after their meal, and it was a good evening. Sabelo was still surprised by how tolerant Winase’s parents were about him sleeping over, although they had explained that with their daughter facing so many challenges because of her condition, they just welcomed anything that made her happy.
Later, with Winase asleep beside him on her low bed, Sabelo closed his eyes. He was afraid of not waking if something went wrong, but he knew they had to get back to their normal way of being together.
If they couldn’t, Winase would carry on believing she needed to set him free.
***
Tell us what you think: Does it take a special kind of courage to live with a chronic illness like Winase’s? If so, where does that courage come from?