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Learning sign language wasn’t as easy as Karlie expected. She’d picked up python and C++ so easily that she figured this would be the same; once she figured out the grammar rules and expanded her vocabulary, she’d be golden. Except, that wasn’t how this language worked at all. The biggest problem lay with her clumsy fingers. Taylor, with years of practice and fluency, tried her best to guide Karlie’s fingers for the different signs, but it doesn’t matter how long Karlie works at it, she still fumbles.
There are times where the signs come easily, like when they’re in the club or at a bar and communicate with quick signs to be heard over the pounding of music and yelling. But then, there are times like this, where Karlie’s fingers shake so badly that she can barely spell her own name and her mind is racing too fast to remember the sign for it anyway. Times like this, where nothing she does will help, where she’s reminded that their world changed forever two years ago and they’re still healing.
Being jolted out of sleep by her wife having a nightmare is never easy, especially when Taylor can’t hear her right away. She knows what to do, but it’s been nearly twenty minutes and Taylor hasn’t calmed any, breaths still coming quick and fast, so instead of trying to get her wife to understand her shaky spelling, Karlie resorts to pressing simple signs into Taylor’s thigh. Taylor’s laying on her side, hands pressed against her ears and her face pinched in the way that it does when the world starts spinning inside Taylor’s head and it won’t stop, even when she closes her eyes.
The number of times Karlie’s come home from the gym to find Taylor on the floor are innumerable. Most of the time, she’ll crawl onto the floor with Taylor just to be close to her wife, use the press of the hardwood into her spine to control her breathing. Sometimes, a cat will join them, but most often, Taylor’s got a baby Levi propped up on her chest as she regulates on the floor.
But today, Levi’s with Karlie’s parents, and when she sees the tears on Taylor’s face, she’s secretly grateful that she won’t have to worry about their son for the next few hours. It’s been a long time since things have been bad enough for Taylor to cry like this. She sits with her back to the cabinets, legs sore from her run through the park, and tries to figure out what will be best for Taylor in this moment. Short nails dig into the skin behind Taylor’s ear that’s not pressed to the floor, and it looks suspiciously like Taylor’s trying to pull her ear off her head.
“Tay?” She hedges, voice quiet and husky from the chill in her lungs.
“‘S too loud,” her wife explains. Karlie can barely hear Taylor, words pushed out on a shaky exhale.
The doctors can’t do anything for the ringing in Taylor’s ears, can’t even really do anything for the vertigo that strikes so suddenly Karlie is afraid to be more than a few steps away from Taylor in case her wife starts to stumble. Often, the noise Taylor hears isn’t caused by any external sources, and that makes these moments even harder for Karlie to watch; there’s nothing she can do to help. Earplugs can’t block out what isn’t there.
Taylor stays burrowed in the pillows, her fingers gripping tightly to Karlie’s where they lay on the outside of her hip. Karlie holds onto Taylor as tight as she can, hoping to anchor her wife to the present. The nightmares never faded after the attack, but it’s been a while since she’s had a nightmare bad enough to trigger vertigo. After Levi had been born, things seemed to settle down for a little bit with Taylor’s mind, but now that their son is nearing three years old, Karlie is beginning to think raising a baby just exhausted Taylor to the point of decent sleep.
She can see the moment equilibrium returns to Taylor’s body; can see the way her muscles relax and her body stops shaking. After years of this, Karlie knows anything she tries to say won’t register in Taylor’s mind, damaged nerves making it difficult for Taylor to process sound when she’s half asleep, so she just rests her palm on Taylor’s shoulder and curls further into her wife’s back. A steady presence to help Taylor find her balance in the dark.
Eventually, Taylor reaches out with shaky fingers to pull Karlie’s arm across her waist and snuggles deeper into Karlie’s chest. She wants so badly to be able to tell Taylor how much she loves her; how strong she is. Her heart breaks with the knowledge that the damage in Taylor’s ears make it nearly impossible, that Taylor won’t be able to hear her just yet. They’ve found new ways to communicate over the years, but Karlie knows how much words and language mean to Taylor.
It doesn’t matter that it’s been years, that doctors had repaired broken bones and did their best with the damaged nerves; the ringing can be so overwhelming that nothing gets through to Taylor. She can tell, after all these years, how bad the ringing is by how hard Taylor grips at her hands. On the worst days – or on nights like this when nightmares make it difficult to parse out what’s real and what belongs to the depths of a very active imagination – Taylor will grip at Karlie’s fingers hard enough to pop knuckles. Karlie’s lost feeling in her fingers before, but she’d rather Taylor stifles the blood flow to her fingers than resort to more dangerous tactics.
The room is filled with heavy exhales and Karlie props herself up on her hip to look over at Taylor. Her wife has tears streaming down her cheeks, but they seem to be slowing. Carefully, Karlie tests the waters with a quiet, “hey.”
Her eyes track as Taylor’s ear wiggles and then Taylor is turning in her arms to bury her head in Karlie’s chest. Tentative lips press at her sternum and Karlie folds one hand around Taylor’s head, pulling her closer. Fingers track across her ribs and Karlie pays close attention to what they say.
“I – Love – You.” A hasty spelling followed by a reverent palm holding the words to Karlie’s skin.
“Love you too, bug,” she responds.
There were days Karlie knew to expect calls from Brandon; days where Taylor had hours blocked out on their shared calendar for the studio or for choreography sessions. Usually, Brandon was calling to let Karlie know that things had run overtime and when to expect Taylor home. Today was not one of those days. Taylor was supposed to be out with Emma and Selena, a lunch for them to catch up while they were all in the city together.
“Hello?” She answers on the second ring.
“Karlie? There’s been an accident. I’ve sent Jeremy to get you.” Karlie’s never heard Brandon sound anything but steady. He’s been Taylor’s bodyguard the longest, has seen them through sneaking around in the dark to getting married, and the only time she’s heard him speak with even a hint of emotion was the day they tied the knot. Immediately, her own heart pounds when she registers the anxiety in his voice.
“Brandon? Is she okay? What happened?” Questions swirl through Karlie’s mind, each one more desperate than the last, so she only focuses on the essentials.
“I don’t know,” he whispers down the phone. In the background, Karlie can hear sirens getting closer and her concern grows. “I’ve gotta go, the EMT’s are here. I’ll send you what I know.” Professional Brandon is back in a second, voice strong and all business.
With that, Brandon hangs up, leaving Karlie to stare at her phone in shock and watch as Twitter notifications and text messages flood her screen. Eventually, it returns to black at her lack of input, and it’s only then that she realizes there are already tears streaming down her face. Her stomach turns, reminding her that she’s not alone anymore and her emotions are all out of whack, and she’s leaning over the sink in the kitchen vomiting up lunch before her brain even registers the movement.
On autopilot, Karlie puts together her backpack – laptop, phone charger, snacks, her water bottle, a sweatshirt. Her body goes through her early morning routine – forgetting the fact that it’s well after lunch – without any input from her brain and by the time Jeremy is buzzing the door open, Karlie looks like she’s ready for a day at the office, not to spend an unknown amount of time in the hospital.
“Thought I died,” Taylor husks out. Her voice is scratchy and thick with tears but hearing her voice calms Karlie’s beating heart. The motion of Taylor’s fingers hasn’t stopped against Karlie’s ribs, and she tries to keep her body still when Taylor hits a ticklish spot.
Karlie wouldn’t say Taylor’s ever been a particularly still person, always moving, always fidgeting, but these moments remind Karlie how much has changed. Now, too much movement too soon can leave Taylor so off kilter she retreats to the bedroom or the living room to lay down. Even when they’re in bed, when there’s no chance of Taylor tripping over herself, the fidgets have ceased. No longer does Taylor wiggle her feet when she’s trying to sleep, nor are there any phantom beats that get kicked into existence, not until equilibrium totally returns.
So, it’s nice, when Karlie picks up the distinct patterns pressed into her skin by Taylor’s fingers. It’s been a long time since she’s felt something like this; it feels a little like Taylor’s playing the piano on her ribs, and Karlie holds her breath so she doesn’t ruin the moment. She had worried that the damage to Taylor’s brain had been severe enough that her wife would never be the same, and while there are things about Taylor that aren’t the same, Karlie can’t help but be selfishly grateful that her wife is still able to put together haunting poems.
The fact that Taylor is even able to hear, let alone talk, is a miracle and now that she’s feeling well enough to think about music? Karlie’s chest warms. It’s been a long two years, brightened only by the birth of Levi, but part of Karlie is grateful for the way this break has slowed Taylor down. She knows it’s frustrating, has been on the other side of several discombobulated rants, but it’s also been freeing; Taylor’s anxiety has calmed now that she’s stepped away from music more fully and she’s been able to devote more time to her writing than she could while touring and churning out album after album.
Initially, her wife had fought so hard to get back to who she was, get back to creating music every few years, but she’d eventually come to the realization that there are things more important in life than making music for public consumption. A lot of the music she’s made in the last few years have been for Karlie’s ears only, and then eventually Levi when he was born; yet those were poems more than any actual music.
Taylor hasn’t sung a single thing since the accident, refusing to make anything less than perfect and the damage to her ears only ever brought out imperfection. But the way she writes? Oh, Karlie knows exactly how something is meant to sound, where each breath should be taken in a stanza, how long to hold onto a syllable. They’ve been together long enough that she knows her wife’s intonations. She imagines the words Taylor reads to Levi at bedtime are songs, not poems.
Stalkers aren’t something new in their lives, but this is the first time somebody has actually gotten close to Taylor and if Karlie has her way, it’ll be the last. A car waiting outside the New York house and shit luck have landed them here, at the hospital with Taylor bleeding and with at least a concussion. Karlie gets updates as they come, but the last she’d seen of her wife, Taylor had been spaced out and half-conscious as the doctors took her in for a CT scan.
The longer it takes for the scan, the more her worry builds. Brandon sits beside her, on his phone with a friend in the police department and Tree sent her a text saying something about restraining orders and pressing charges this time, but Karlie had shut her phone off when it started buzzing with calls. She doesn’t know how long it’s been, not really, but eventually, there’s a doctor calling her name and Brandon’s pulling her out of her chair, a careful presence by her side.
“The damage to your wife’s face is unfortunately more extensive than we thought. Scans show there’s a series of fractures in Taylor’s jaw as well as indications of a traumatic brain injury.”
Oh god, Taylor’s going to lose her mind. That’s the only thing Karlie can think about even as the doctor continues talking. She remembers that episode of Grey’s Anatomy when Meredith gets her jaw broken by the patient and gets it wired shut to heal. Taylor will go absolutely insane if she can’t sing.
“The fractures to the lower jaw will most likely heal on their own, but the maxillary fractures will require surgery to fix.”
They lay in silence for almost an hour. Part of the silence is driven by the fact that Taylor struggles to vocalize her thoughts prior to a cup of coffee, part of it is driven by the comfort they get from just feeling each other. Karlie’s ears are tuned into the monitor on her nightstand, listening to see if Levi was awoken by his mother’s nightmare, but he seems to have slept through it, for which she’s grateful.
Taylor has a few different nightmares, each as horrible as the next, but the times she dreams of dying tend to stick around longer, tend to hover at the front of Taylor’s mind and haunt her even into the daylight. They’ve shuffled so that Taylor’s head is on Karlie’s chest, carefully measured breaths spanning across Karlie’s stomach while Karlie runs her fingers through Taylor’s hair. She’s braided and re-braided the same section of hair four times now, practicing the different styles she used to do as a kid in middle school, when Taylor shifts.
Signing is not a one-handed language, but they’ve created a sort of shorthand in the two years since they’ve incorporated the second language in their household.
“Levi was with me,” Taylor says, fingers reverent with Levi’s name like she always is.
“Oh, Tay,” Karlie whispers. They’d talked extensively about the whole stalker situation before they decided to start trying for a baby. And while it’s impossible to completely shield Levi from the people of the world, they had plenty of protections in place, had friends in the paparazzi who did a good job of keeping his face out of publications, but there’s no saying what might happen when a stalker comes around.
Despite being out of the limelight for nearly three years, interest in Taylor Swift hasn’t disappeared. Despite having been injured by an overzealous man who thought Taylor was his. Despite the increased security detail, there are some things that they just can’t control.
“Died for him.” Taylor continues. Karlie isn’t sure she means Taylor died for Levi in her dreams or if she’s promising she’d die for Levi in the future. Either way, it’s a sentiment that Karlie knows well.
“I would too, daisy. But you’re okay and he’s okay. Do you need to go see him?”
Taylor shakes her head and sits herself up so she can use both hands. “I know he’s safe with us, but I just. It hurts to imagine him growing up without both of us.”
Karlie never imagined they’d get here, get to be able to do this, but as Taylor helps her into the house following the implantation, she’s excited. They won’t know if it worked for a few weeks – two, to be precise – but she’s hopeful. Nearly three years of planning to get to this point, and Karlie can’t keep the smile off her face. Taylor practically carries her up the stairs to their bedroom before fretting about to make sure Karlie has everything she’d possibly need for the next few hours.
“Taylor,” Karlie tries to get her wife’s attention. Either Taylor doesn’t hear her, or she ignores her, because Taylor walks straight out of their room, only to return a few moments later with extra blankets from the hall closet.
“Tay,” she tries again, and this time it seems to click. Taylor looks up at her with wide eyes, ready to complete whatever task Karlie sets for her. “Cuddle me?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” her wife stammers out.
“I’m not fragile, Tay. Just want some cuddles.”
Her wife crawls into bed and carefully spreads the additional blankets out. Karlie’d been freezing since they entered the doctor’s office, so she burrows into Taylor’s side and pulls one of the fuzzy blankets up beneath her chin. It’s easy to drift off, medication still in her system from the procedure, but when she wakes up again, she can feel Taylor’s anxiety simmering beneath her ear.
“Wha’s wrong?” She asks, tongue clumsy with sleep.
“It’s nothing,” Taylor responds quickly. Quickly enough that Karlie knows something is wrong, but she knows her wife well enough to know that Taylor isn’t going to want to talk about it just yet, so she lets it go.
“Mmkay. Love you.” And then she’s asleep again.
Karlie’s nearly asleep again when her alarm goes off for work, and she’s quick to silence the device. Given the way the night had gone, she’ll most likely call in sick to stay home with Taylor and make sure her wife is steady on her feet for today. Carefully, so as not to disturb her wife who’d fallen back asleep a little before five, Karlie leaves their bedroom to check in on Levi.
He’s awake in his room, lining his stuffies up in a neat row along the side of his bed that touches the wall, and Karlie can’t help but smile. It’s the little idiosyncrasies that she loves, seeing what he’s picked up from her and Taylor versus what he’s learned on his own in preschool.
“Levi, bud.” She greets. When he turns to look at her, she asks, “do you want to help me make breakfast in bed for Mama T?”
A small body is quick off the bed, all his weight pressed into her shins in his excitement at the idea of helping her with breakfast. She carries him to the kitchen, sets him on the counter so he can hand her ingredients for French toast, and then carefully ties his apron on so they match. He babbles on about one of his stuffies while Karlie cooks and part of her aches that Taylor isn’t here for this because she knows how much her wife treasures being able to hear Levi talk, but she also knows Taylor will appreciate not having to struggle down the stairs for breakfast.
“Strawberries?” Levi asks as soon as they’ve got the eggs and milk whipped together with cinnamon and vanilla into a custard.
“Sure, bug. We can do strawberries. Can you grab them out of the fridge?” She asks. When he nods, she pulls him off the counter and turns him in the direction of the fridge, following close behind in case he needs help. The appliance isn’t super heavy, but he is only three, so she helps him with the door and picks him up so he can grab the strawberry container with both hands.
She gives him the very important task of washing and drying the berries while she soaks bread and places slices carefully in the hot pan. Normally, the smell of cooking eggs would be enough to bring Taylor downstairs from the bedroom, but Karlie’s betting on her wife still being shaky enough that she won’t risk the stairs.
“Those look delicious, Levi. Should we put them on a plate for Mama T?” He nods, his tongue sticking out in concentration as he places strawberries on the plate in a flourish. Clearly, they need to stop watching cooking shows because he spends so much time making sure the little green leaves on the top of the fruit look nice. “Okay, kiddo, let’s get this plate up to Mom.” She laughs after he’s fixed one berry four times.
With the plate carefully situated in his little hands, Karlie walks behind him to make sure he doesn’t trip on the stairs. She comes armed with coffee and forks, her own plate of French toast loaded up with enough for her and Levi. Gently, she knocks on the bedroom door to make sure she doesn’t surprise her wife. They learned early on after the attack that the vertigo was triggered more by surprise than anything else, and Levi has a tendency of sneaking up on them, so they’re trying to teach him how to knock on every door.
They’ve done a plethora of tests trying to figure out the triggers. It seems like there’s no rhyme or reason to what causes the vertigo or tinnitus, so Karlie’s started a list. Standing up too quickly, stepping out into the sun (usually followed by a series of the cutest sneezes she’s heard), sitting in one position too long, sudden sounds (the sirens are the worst offenders), small frights, too much caffeine, not enough caffeine, wearing the wrong sunglasses, overcast days, summertime, sudden movements, concentrating too hard on things for longer than a few hours.
Supposedly, overtime, things will get better. Each doctor they see about it says that brains are funky, that brains can do a tremendous job healing themselves, but there’s nothing specific that they can do to help Taylor. One doctor suggests stimulants instead of coffee, a controlled dose, and it does well for about three weeks and then the vertigo gets worse, so they go back to one cup of coffee a day. Another doctor gives Taylor a special pair of glasses to ease eye strain when she’s working long hours, and it seems to do the bare minimum.
Karlie’s on a mission to get her wife out of the house, and since they can’t fly out of the city yet, she’s planned an excursion to the botanical gardens. She sits next to Taylor in the back of the car, her hand held tightly in Taylor’s own while she runs gentle fingers up and down Taylor’s arm in comfort. Security had driven the SUV off in another direction, leaving Jeremy to drive them to the Bronx in a more subdued car. It’s a thirty-minute drive, give or take a few minutes with traffic, and Karlie hopes it’s not too much for Taylor’s head. The city is loud, even as they head up Manhattan, but once they get above 125th street, the number of sirens seems to diminish significantly, and she can see Taylor’s body relax.
They spend nearly all day in the gardens, walking through the greenhouse when the wind picks up and raises goosebumps on their arms. Fall isn’t the prettiest time of year for the gardens, but Karlie’s always been a fan of trees more than flowers, and she’s grateful that there aren’t a lot of patrons; it gives Taylor the chance to be out and about without being overwhelmed by too many people. When they come across a particularly gorgeous exhibit of orchids, Taylor asks Jeremy to take a picture of them and plants her lips on Karlie’s cheek.
Karlie watches as Taylor fiddles with the picture in the car on the way home, trying to find the right filter for an Instagram post, and she can see the moment the concussion strikes.
“Jer, can you pull over for a second?” Karlie asks, never taking her eyes off Taylor. Her wife has turned green around the gills and as soon as the car stops on a side street, Taylor opens the door and pukes up the salad she had for lunch. Karlie wraps Taylor’s hair around her fingers to keep it off her neck and runs a soothing hand down Taylor’s spine.
Touch has been a weird little predicament to this vertigo situation. Normally, Taylor loves feeling Karlie’s hands on her skin, loves to cuddle into their friends on the couch, but when the world starts spinning, touching Taylor can make things worse. The sensation of a spinning world triggers a flight or fight response, and the first time Karlie had tried to help anchor Taylor, she’d ended up dodging a fist flying her way.
Learning Taylor’s new idiosyncrasies has been difficult, especially because each episode has a different response, but she’s grateful that Taylor lets her touch her now, takes comfort in the fact that she can offer comfort. The only problem is that she’s growing a baby and her body is very sensitive to things like her wife throwing up and so she’s forced to swallow down the feeling so she doesn’t puke up her own lunch. Even with her eyes closed to block out as much of the stimulus as possible, Karlie can feel her stomach twisting.
“Thanks, Jer,” comes Taylor’s voice from beside her and Karlie can hear a bottle cap snapping and then there’s water at her lips and Taylor telling her to sip at it slowly. As soon as Karlie’s settled, she opens her eyes to look at Taylor. Her wife has a wry smile on her face, bottom lip tucked between her teeth as she tries not to laugh.
She fails.
“What a sorry state we are, huh?”
Karlie helps Levi set the plate of French toast on the nightstand before settling him in the bed next to Taylor. Carefully, he places a hand on Taylor’s shoulder and gives a light shake, whispering next to her ear a, “Mama, wake up.”
It takes a minute, and Taylor really only starts to wake up after Levi gives her shoulder a harder shake, but eventually, Taylor is rolling over and pulling Levi back under the covers with her.
“No,” she mumbles, and Levi laughs.
This, right here, is Karlie’s whole world, and she’s so glad that she gets to live it. She’s so grateful that Taylor loves her, that she gets to love Taylor, that despite all the hardship in the last few years, she gets to watch as her wife and son cuddle together. When Taylor looks up at her over Levi’s head, there’s a mischievous smile spreading across her cheeks and Karlie can’t hear what she whispers to their son, but then Levi is turning over in the bed and scrambling up to pull her down and soon enough, all three of them are laughing and burrowing in under the blankets in a makeshift fort.
“I love you,” Taylor says, her voice solid as she eats breakfast and Karlie can feel tears in her eyes.
“Love you Mommy!” Levi echoes, his little hands pressing into her tummy and then he knocks his forehead there and says another “love you” to the baby growing there.
Karlie’s learned a lot of languages since she met Taylor, but this? The love that gets spoken in their house through fingers and actions and words? That’s her favorite and she’ll never give it up.