Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

‘Good to meet you, Patrick,’ Will said. ‘And thank you for the … advice.’
‘Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job,’ he said.
‘That’s all.’ There was a definite emphasis on the word my.
‘Well, you’re a lucky man,’ Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. ‘She
certainly gives a good bed bath.’ He said it so quickly that the door was closed
before Patrick even realized what he had said.
‘You never told me you were giving him bed baths.’
We had gone back to Patrick’s house, a new-build flat on the edge of town. It
had been marketed as ‘loft living’, even though it overlooked the retail park, and
was no more than three floors high.
‘What does that mean – you wash his dick?’
‘I don’t wash his dick.’ I picked up the cleanser that was one of the few things
I was allowed to keep at Patrick’s place, and began to clean off my make-up with
sweeping strokes.
‘He just said you did.’
‘He’s teasing you. And after you going on and on about how he used to be an
action man, I don’t blame him.’
‘So what is it you do for him? You’ve obviously not been giving me the full
story.’
‘I do wash him, sometimes, but only down to his underwear.’
Patrick’s stare spoke volumes. Finally, he looked away from me, pulled off his
socks and hurled them into the laundry basket. ‘Your job isn’t meant to be about
this. No medical stuff, it said. No intimate stuff. It wasn’t part of your job
description.’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘You could sue. Constructive
dismissal, I think it is, when they change the terms of your job?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. And I do it because Nathan can’t always be there, and
it’s horrible for Will to have some complete stranger from an agency handling
him. And besides, I’m used to it now. It really doesn’t bother me.’
How could I explain to him – how a body can become so familiar to you? I
could change Will’s tubes with a deft professionalism, sponge bathe his naked
top half without a break in our conversation. I didn’t even balk at Will’s scars
now. For a while, all I had been able to see was a potential suicide. Now he was
just Will – maddening, mercurial, clever, funny Will – who patronized me and