Me Before You: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Will asks what Lou plans to do tonight once she gets home from work. Lou makes up an adventure, then admits that she will probably just finish her book. Will then asks Nathan for a ten-pound note, as he had bet Nathan earlier that Lou would be reading a book tonight instead of watching TV. Lou gets angry that they expect so little of her, and plucks the ten-pound note away from Will with a plan to go see a movie instead. She is smiling at the joke, but also oddly close to tears.

Lou still works on Will’s adventure calendar every chance she gets. She is rapidly running out of feasible ideas and is starting to feel as boring as Will and Nathan seem to think she is. After Nathan leaves, Lou tells Will how much the bet hurt her. Will responds that he wanted Lou to take a fresh look at her life. If he were in her position, he would be doing as much as humanly possible, just like he did after work before his accident. Will reminds Lou that she has just as much potential as he did and that it’s now her job to live the life that he no longer can.

Two days later, Will gets an infection that lands him in the hospital. Lou gets some days off while Will recovers, and she spends her time in the library. She finds internet support groups for quadriplegics and their caregivers and feels endlessly comforted by the range of emotions that others talk through. Lou writes a message under the username “Busy Bee,” asking for advice on how to change Will’s mind about life as a C5-6 quadriplegic.

The next morning, Lou scrolls through the responses to her message. Some are not helpful, while others are not. One even questions why Lou feels the need to change Will’s mind for him at all. The suggestions continue, but the one that sticks in Lou’s mind says that Will can change his mind if he has a partner who loves him.

On Thursday, Lou picks Will up from the hospital. He is exhausted from the lack of sleep, and Lou’s planned adventures for the next week all go varying shades of poorly. Finally, Lou takes Will to a wine tasting where Will manages to get himself a little tipsy. On the way home, Will manages to convince Lou to stop at a tattoo parlor, despite all of Lou’s protests about Patrick’s dislike of tattoos and the chance of hepatitis from dirty needles.

After two hours at the tattoo parlor, Lou leaves happily with a tattoo of a little bee on her hip. Will had seemed relaxed and happy in the shop, as the tattoo artists were used to working with quadriplegic people. Lou complains about the fit that both their parents would have if they found out, and insists that Will show her the tattoo he got. On his chest is a small rectangle that reads, “Best before: 19 March 2007,” the date of Will’s accident. Will thinks it’s funny, while Lou can’t decide if the dark humor is truly amusing. Nonetheless, Will gives Lou a ten-pound note as repayment for his bet that she wouldn’t actually get a tattoo.