Wheelchaired Lover from Liverpool

"Sorry I couldn't tell you before, Alan," she said, "but the publishers were very strict about that. Anyway, I thought it would be a nice surprise... for you, when I found out you were coming."

"Well, it was certainly a surprise!"

I replied. She grinned, and said

"What about at the end, when they all stood up and clapped? Talk about taking the piss!"

"Oh really, Fiona!"

said her mother. Her sister and I stifled our laughter. I later mentioned light-heartedly, when we were alone, that her parents and sister all had dark hair, and not two freckles to rub together between them as far as I could see. She looked wistful, and said

"No. Granny - mum's mum - had red hair, though."

I squeezed her hand, and asked if she missed her gran. It seemed appropriate.

"No, I saw her only last week"

she replied brightly.

"She and Grandad are as fit... as two fiddles, but she's got white hair now. Ha! Fooled you!"

She grinned broadly. I gave her an old-fashioned look, and put her hand back in her lap. She made some of the national newspapers the next day.

"Revealed - tragic secret of children's author"

was a typical headline. Over the following weeks and months, I met her most days after work, at her place or mine, and rapidly fell in love with her. She repeatedly said that we mustn't get too serious, but made no more attempts to end everything. One

Saturday in late June, I got a text from her:

"Hi. I'm outside. Let me in."

I went to the door, and there she was, on her own, grinning. The silly girl had insisted on leaving her carer behind, and making her own way. She called her carer to say that she'd arrived safely, me holding her phone to her ear, and we went shopping, and had lunch and drinks in the Philharmonic. On the Saturday after that, the first in July, on the hottest day of the year so far, we had a day out in Blackpool. Before starting, I opened the passenger door of her adapted van, laid the seat back, undid her torso-strap, put my right arm under her back and my left under her thighs, and lifted and strapped her in. Once her chair was secured in place in the back, we were off. Parking as near as we could to the seafront, i did it again in reverse, doing up her torso strap over her white T-shirt, and arranging her hands on her lap.

She was also wearing knee-length, baggy shorts, to hide her catheter bag. I retrieved her right flip-flop, which had fallen off, and put it back on her dainty little foot. We walked and rolled the length of the pier and back, bought silly hats, and ate ice-creams. I sat on a bench with her to my left, and held her right hand. On a sudden impulse, I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it, and then stroked it, then abruptly stood up and said "Right - lunch." Then I kissed away the tears from her cheeks.

A girl of 12 or 13 approached, and said diffidently

"Excuse me, are you Midnight Blake?"

"Yes, I am!"

said Fee, smiling.

"Oh em gee! I knew it! I saw you on 'Newsround', when they

showed who you were! I'm your biggest fan in the world! I've read all your books! Please - can I have a selfie with you?"

"Yes, of course" said Fee.

"Mum! It is her! Will you take a selfie of us?"

the girl said to a woman of about 40 who was approaching.

"Is that all right, Miss Hutchinson?"

asked the mother.

"Yes, of course" smiled Fee. "Huskisson, actually. Have... you got any of... my books with you?"

"Yes, I've got the latest!"

said the girl, pulling a copy of 'The Redfern Abbey Mystery' out of her mother's shoulder bag.

"Good", said Fee. "Well, maybe you could... hold it up, so that... it's in the picture."

The photo taken, the girl and her mother thanked Fee, and left.

"One happy girl!"

I said. Fee was smiling.

"I always thought a... selfie was a photo... you took of yourself. If someone else... takes it, it's just... a photo, isn't it?"

I laughed.

"Good point! Kids today eh? 'Oh em gee' indeed!"

We had a few more encounters with excited teenagers and pre-teens before the day was finished. Each insisted that they were Fee's "number one fan", or "biggest fan in the world". She was becoming famous.

We had fish, chips, mushy peas and Fanta in Harry Ramsden's, then went back to the van, where I removed her T-shirt. Under it, she was wearing a yellow bikini top, which flattered her pert little breasts. I removed her catheter bag, and plugged the end of the tube, then took of her sandals and my own T-shirt, and smothered us both in sun-cream. I suggested putting the chair in the back of the van for security, and my carrying her to the beach, which was a couple of minutes' walk away.

"Can you manage... me that far?" she asked.

" 'Course I can"

I replied. I nearly added "You're as light as a feather", but had an uncharacteristic attack of tactfulness, and decided not to draw attention, even by implication, to her atrophied limbs, the main reason for her lightness. With my right arm round her back, her head resting on my right shoulder, and her legs dangling over my left arm, we set off. On the way, a child's voice behind me said

"Mummy, why is that man...",

interrupted by an urgent adult "Shhh!".

On the beach, the tide was half-way in. I'd have loved to lie on the sand with Fee next to me, sunbathing, but Fee can hardly breathe lying down (hence the ventilator at night), so I found a spot by the sea-wall and sat down with my back against it, still holding Fee. Actually, I thought, this was nicer, cradling her in my arms.

"I take it that's not... a gun in your pocket",

she said. It was just as well that I was wearing baggy swimming shorts, not tight-fitting trunks. We sunbathed and chatted and kissed. She fell asleep. I stroked her head with my left hand, my heart aching with love.

After ten minutes or so, she woke up again, and sighed happily.

"Do you fancy a dip?" I asked.

"Ooh, yeah!"

she replied. I put her against the seawall, stood up, and picked her up again, then negotiated the crowds down to, and into, the water. When I was knee-deep, I sat her down on the sand, supporting her with my hands under her armpits. The water came up to her breasts, the waves splashing her face. She smiled, and made the gasping sound which has to do service for laughing in her case. I picked her up again and waded further out, until her legs and bottom were under water. A woman to our right said

"Aah, bless 'er, poor girl!".

" 'Poor girl' my arse!"

whispered Fee.

"I'm the happiest person here!"

I kissed her, and waded back.

Back at the van, I put Fee in the passenger seat, went round the back, and put towels over her power chair. Then I carried Fee round and sat her on the towels, shut the van's rear doors, and removed her wet clothes, dried her thoroughly, and put her in dry clothes. Then I dried myself and changed my own clothes, opened the van doors, got Fee out in her chair (having removed the towels), and shut the doors and locked the van. Then we went to a pub, where she got tipsy on white wine, and I stayed sober on lemonade. A quiz was in progress at the other end of the bar, and we could hear the amplified questions clearly. We looked up in surprised amusement when we heard

"The real name of the children's author 'Midnight Blake' was recently revealed as what?"

"Ooh - that's a stiff one!" said Fee.

"Yeah - tough question, too!" I replied.

As I drove us home, Fee dozed next to me, and I pondered life's little ironies. I had fallen deeply in love with a woman paralysed from the neck down, and had been surprised - and, at first, shocked - to discover that I was also sexually attracted to her. On the other hand, she was a successful author, who would from now on be quite famous as well. Her income from her royalties was probably considerably higher than my salary - not that I was badly paid, by any means. I had literary ambitions of my own - I'd had poems published in a few specialised magazines that didn't pay royalties, had had a slim volume published by a small press with a commensurately small print-run, and had the text of a novel on my computer at home which I'd hawked around various publishers and literary agents, with no success so far. I could envy Fee's success, but I loved her far too much to be jealous of her - and in any case, how pathetically selfish would I have to be to envy a woman trapped in a useless body?

On a chilly October evening I sat with Fee on the settee in her front room, listening to a CD of Chopin piano music - another shared enthusiasm. I'd lifted her on to my lap, and her head was resting on my right shoulder. Her frail body was cradled in my right arm, and I was holding her right hand with my left. Her legs were stretched out on the settee.

"Fee", I said.

"Mmmm?", she replied lazily.

"Will you marry me?"

Her half-closed eyes opened wide in alarm.

"Oh no! I knew this... would happen! Alan, you know I love you,...but we can't. You'd be throwing... your life away. Have you thought... about what's involved?"

"Come off it, Fee"

I said, a little sharply.

"You know that's a load of bobbins. We've been together for five months - of course I know what's involved. I've done it all. I love you more than I can say. Besides, our combined income will be pretty good, especially now my book's being published, if it does at all well, so we can afford a mortgage on a bungalow and get itadapted, and you can still have your carers for when I'm at work, so..."

"Ok, ok. Oh Alan, I do love you. Yes! Yes, of course! Just this once, mind..."

On a pleasant, sunny late-October day shortly after we became engaged, Fiona and I went for a walk in Sefton Park. As I sat on a bench with Fee in her chair on my left, holding her right hand in my left, she asked me a rather serious question. She loved me, and she knew I loved her, and she knew I was sexually attracted to her as well, and that was what was puzzling her. Was I attracted to her in spite of her disability, or because of it? She found it a little hard to believe that anyone could find her withered, atrophied body attractive, especially someone who regularly did for her all the things that needed doing, such as washing, drying and feeding her, as well as the more intimate stuff.

She didn't let me answer until she'd emphasised that she didn't mind what the answer was: she know some men were attracted to women with disabilities, and she was cool about it, provided they behaved themselves. I gulped hard, and admitted that I was one of those men, though I'd only realised as much after meeting her. (It had already occurred to me that at school, in my early teens, I had had a bit of a crush on Sally, with her pretty face and grotesquely deformed and atrophied body, and had been heartbroken when she died during the summer holidays when we were 15, but I hadn't been aware of a sexual element in that.)

Ever since she became a quadriplegic at the age of 13, Fiona has been rather prone to leg spasms, especially her right leg. They usually take the form of a gentle jiggling up and down of one or both legs, which bother Fiona not at all, so she usually ignores it.

("It's probably good for me.... It's the only exercise I get!", she once joked.) Occasionally, though, it progresses from that as her leg (or sometimes legs) straightens and stiffens at the knee and ankle. She finds that rather uncomfortable, so whoever's with her needs to deal with it by massaging her leg and carefully bending it back until it relaxes. I've done it many times, and took the opportunity of this little heart-to-heart to admit that I found it intensely erotic.

"Yes, I'd noticed"

she said. As a matter of fact, both her legs had been bouncing up and down most of the afternoon, one slightly faster than the other, so that they kept going in and out of phase with each other. We wandered back to my place, her legs bouncing out of synch all the way. I lifted her up and changed her position, then went into the kitchen to make tea, while she watched the early evening news. As I poured boiling ware into the teapot, she rolled in to join me. "Al -- could you oblige?" she said. Her right leg was straight out in front of her, rigid. I took hold of it and started stroking and squeezing. I was slightly alarmed -- what was left of her muscles were rock-hard, her leg much stiffer than usual.

"Oh God, it hurts!"

she said, between groans -- she was clearly in a lot of pain. As I tried to relax the muscles, her left leg straightened at the knee and ankle as well. I looked at her -- her face showed fear and pain in equal amounts, and now her arms were going into spasm as well, which had never happened before.

"OK, I'm calling an ambulance" I said.

"Don't worry."

I explained the situation to the operator, and within a few minutes an ambulance had arrived. By that time, her entire body was rigid, and she was in great pain. One paramedic gave her an intravenous injection of an anti-spasmodic drug, which took effect quickly -- she went limp again. I held her hand as she was put, still in her chair, into the ambulance. She was admitted for observation, and eventually I was able to be with her. She had a cannula in a vein in her left arm, for further intravenous administration of anti-spasmodics, and a ventilator tube attached to her tracheostomy. Her face appeared slightly lop-sided, and her speech was slurred as she said

"Al -- I can't feel my left side".

I called a nurse, who called a doctor, who established that she had had a mild stroke, probably at the height of the crisis. She was obviously going to be in hospital somewhat longer than originally thought.

After four weeks, she had regained on her left side the limited sensation she had previously had, and after six weeks she was discharged. She still had a cannula in her left arm, and I was shown how to administer the anti-spasmodic drug from a syringe in case of a future emergency. I took a week off work to look after her full-time. She was chastened and frequently tearful, far from her usual unreasonably happy self. She didn't like letting me out of her sight, and often asked me to lift her out of her chair and hold her. Sometimes she rested her head on my chest and sobbed. I was becoming seriously worried; she was very depressed, and seemed in some ways to be emotionally regressing into childhood dependency.

Then, one morning six days after she had been discharged from hospital, as I dried her after showering her, she said

"shouldn't you be back at work?"

I replied that I was supposed to be going back the next day, but could take more time off if she wanted.

"Don't be daft" she replied. I've got my carers to look... after me, and I think... we need to get back to normal. Besides, it's about time... I got back to work... on my latest book."

"OK", I replied. "I'll go back tomorrow."

I kissed her with tears in my eyes. The real Fee was back.

We were married in March. The Matrons of Honour was Fiona's sister and Sandra, a tall, plump, remarkably ugly woman who had been Fiona's "bezzy" since they were both 10. Sandra had stuck loyally by Fee during and after her illness, fiercely defending her against any of the nastier children at their school who might be tempted to make fun of her. No-one did while Sandra was around after the day when a boy, notorious as a bully and all-round nasty piece of work, called Fee a "useless cripple", and got a bloody nose from Sandra, who was given a detention. She was a big, loud, jolly, loyal, kind-hearted woman, and I loved her for loving Fee. She had a four-year-old daughter who was one of the bridesmaids, Fee's niece, also four, being the other.

At the reception, Fee and I took to the dance floor, me standing in front of her and holding her hands while she expertly manoeuvred her chair around the floor with her chin control. There was much amusement when she ran over my right foot, to a yelp from me.

On the first morning of our honeymoon, as I gave her her breakfast, she said

"Funny old business, life, ain't it?"

"Is it?" I replied.

"Yeah" she said. "I mean, take me. Paralysed... from the neck down,... have to be washed, dressed... put to bed, got up, fed... I piss into a bag... and have to have... my arse wiped for me. I should be as miserable... as sin, but I'm... insanely happy!"