Don't Leave Me This Way: Or When I Get Back on My Feet You'll Be Sorry (6 page)

IT’S YOUR FIRST SUNDAY EVENING AT REHAB,
and Mom and Dad are visiting. Dad likes to have missions, and he can see that food is going to be a problem. He goes to Davio’s in Cambridge, an upscale restaurant where takeout is not an option. He sits down and looks at the menu and orders the roasted halibut with black bean and mango salsa and says, “Make it ready to go.”

They don’t do ready to go.

To get the order, he tells a sob story—one that’s true and has you as the lead character. The waitress relates her own story to him: It turns out she had a serious accident and was badly disabled for a while. She was in the hospital for six months. Dad is psyched to see that it is possible to overcome devastating injuries. Here she is a waitress, someone with a physically demanding job. He returns to your room all excited: “I just met somebody who was injured and couldn’t walk but now is walking and working.” You know it’s a brass ring he’s putting out there for you, but it’s also one for him, too. He’s having difficulty dealing with your injury and doesn’t know how to express it.

YOUR BROTHERS BRING YOU LUNCH AND DINNER
for the two months that you are in rehab. They organize a weekly calendar in which each brother is responsible for a certain time slot. You’d get the daily call from the Responsible Brother for that day.

“What do you feel like?” asks your brother John.

“Can I have anything I want?”

“Anything.”

“How about Chinese without the chopsticks?”

“Really?”

“Really. I can barely handle a fork, really.”

“What kind of Chinese?”

“Whatever is easiest for you to pick up. Just make sure you get a few fortune cookies—I could use some good insights in bed.”

Your eldest brother, Jimmy, does his service on Friday nights, and he prefers to bring swordfish kebabs on rice with salad, and a blondie for dessert. He knows that you like it, so that’s what you got every Friday night.

John has Tuesdays. Sometimes John would bring his own favorite, caesar salad with grilled chicken. Joe brings pizza from Fig’s, a local pizza joint. It’s always half eaten by the time it gets to you.

“The smell got to me and I was hungry,” Joe says.

Jerry always brings a loaded tuna sandwich and fruit salad. Justin always brings lobster-salad rolls.

Jeffrey would travel over an hour to visit. He’d bring you a loaded sub and, although it was messy, he’d pick up the stray shreds of lettuce and diced tomatoes and help you get most of it in your mouth and not on your lap. “I love the smell of a sub when I’m starving,” you say. “I just hate the smell after I’ve devoured it.”

Your brother Tommy calls you one day and says, “I’m going to bring you some home cooking; it’s going to be a surprise.” He arrives that evening with a roasted chicken on the bone.

Now the rule is, supposedly, whoever brings the meal stays and helps you eat it. This is important because you have difficulty sitting up and even more difficulty eating one-handed. You also have to be monitored closely because you can choke easily. Tommy has to drop and run because that’s the way he is, off to another important meeting. He’s always on the go.

You had begged Jim to stay home that day because he was running ragged coming to the hospital every evening and most lunchtimes.

And Tommy just left.

So you’re all alone.

It’s you and the chicken.

You stare at it. You’re starving. It looks delicious. And you have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Hell, it’s dinnertime. You’re going to eat this damn bird.

You have some useless plastic utensils. You ponder why they even bother with plastic knives. “Self,” you think, “figure it out.”

You do a face plant on the roast chicken and start gnawing it like an animal. You know you look disgusting, but you don’t really care. You’re hungry.

Unbeknown to you, Jim has been standing at the doorway watching his lovely wife reduced to gnawing away at a carcass, like a fox in the pack. You both have a good belly laugh over this.

“There are going to be a lot of weird images of me, honey,” you say as Jim cuts the chicken into pieces for you. “Images of me coping with my situation, images that I want you to erase from your memory banks. This is one of them!”

YOUR DOCTORS HAVE A CAFFEINE RESTRICTION
on your chart. You think it includes chocolate. This was a self-imposed rule because none of your doctors restricted chocolate. You love chocolate with every cell in your body.

Eating chocolate is sometimes like sex. It feels great and you always want more. The day Jimmy brought you your first post-stroke blondie bar you were uncertain about eating it. But there’s an important moral principle at stake here: One should never be timid when it comes to chocolate.

The urge to have a piece of chocolate is greater than the fear of death. It’s only a few chocolate chips, and after all, it’s
blond
chocolate. You nibble and then wait, anticipating an explosion in your head. No trauma occurs, other than the realization that you can still eat chocolate and your hips can still expand.

PEOPLE YOU’VE WORKED WITH
often bring lunches. Yoshi, a coworker who handled the Japanese products at your company, visits often. He always brings you something interesting from his culture. One of these was a little plaster doll with blank eyes. He explains that it symbolizes a goal. You color in a black spot on one blank eye while setting the goal you want to achieve. When you have reached your goal you color in the other eye.

Yoshi explains that the doll represents a proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight times.”

“It’s pretty obvious what my goal will be,” you say, catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. “I want to be a glamorous Hollywood movie star.”

He laughs. You stare at that lifeless, blank doll and then color in the right eye, resolving to heal your broken body.

The next time he brings you the most beautiful candy from Chinatown. Each piece is a work of art. They could have been glued in a frame. You don’t want to eat them because they’re so pretty, but then you decide to go for it. You take a big bite, expecting the beauty of the candy to enchant your tongue.

It doesn’t.

“What is it?” you ask as you try to think of a way to spit it out without hurting his feelings. Yoshi says, “It’s bean paste.” As soon as he says that, you don’t care about feelings. You only care about saving your taste buds from this foul trickery. You blast it right into a napkin.

After that episode, you enjoy offering this oriental “confection” to your guests.

YOUR FOLKS FILL ANY GAPS
in the meal schedule. Dad brings you many meals. He calls too and says, “What do you feel like?” Then he goes to the pub below his office. You know he enjoys picking out your meals, because he orders all the things he enjoys but shouldn’t eat. Sometimes he brings elaborate meals and other times it’s something simple, like a burger and fries. Sometimes you’re so hungry, you’ll eat anything.

Except bean paste.

JASON, YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER,
doesn’t bring you meals. Instead, he brings you a steady diet of humor. He usually brings his milky morning beer breath too, while describing his single-life escapades. The rehab hospital is, conveniently enough, right next to the T station which is J.V.’s primary means of transportation. He is living at home with the folks in Andover while completing law school. On weekends he comes into Boston. He hangs out with his buddies, and then he strolls into your room on a Saturday or Sunday morning all ratty looking. Sometimes you get his funny visits coming and going.

You call him Bubbalubba. He describes his personal dating scene. One date he knew had ended early because he saw her slip out a side door with another guy. Once, you ask him what happened to the woman who had achieved girlfriend status (because he had more than one date with her).

He says, “I think we broke up.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because she had a party and didn’t invite me.”

Apparently she didn’t know she had a boyfriend.

The support system seems infinite. Between family and friends, you’re taken care of. One friend brought your absolute favorite chocolates, Stowaway Sweets. Not as pretty as the flower candy Yoshi brought, but it’s edible. And it’s real chocolate! To keep yourself in check, you make Jim keep the box out of reach and out of sight (“Put it on my left side”) and dole out two or three onto a tray before he leaves. You savor those chocolates every night and feel like a princess as you do.

You want to make sure that you don’t have any visitors who have a “pity attitude.” You don’t want the negative comments: “Oh I can’t believe this happened to you, Julia.” You want to keep yourself—and everyone else who crosses your threshold—positive. It’s a form of protection. Jim spreads the word. Your close friends understand.

Mom is in the room when Jim is working. Mom oversees the meal and visitor schedule. If you don’t have a lunch coming in with your brothers or friends, she’s there with a home-cooked meal—and it is never roast chicken on the bone! She is always mothering: straightening and cleaning the room, bringing in necessities, laundering your clothes, taking clothes home, washing them, folding them, putting them back, hanging cards, putting pictures up—you really appreciate her efforts. You know she has suffered, seeing her only daughter in this condition. You know that, for you, it would be agonizing to watch someone you love being in this devastating and uncertain condition. You’re relieved that you’re the patient, and not the visitor.

You spend a lot of time pondering why someone staying in the hospital is called a “patient.” Eventually, you come to a true understanding of the term. You have always had a very impatient personality, whether the problem is sitting in traffic, expecting someone to arrive for an appointment, or waiting for anything. In the hospital, though, you have to learn to be patient for someone to answer the call light, to help you go to the bathroom, to get something for you that is out of your reach.

You learn to be patient about everything.

You also have to be patient for your body to heal.

Your belief is that people who are truly patient live longer. In our society we are taught to do everything expeditiously. When you enter a hospital as a patient, you need to make patience a part of your anatomy.

Edie made bumpers for Rory’s crib. Edie said, “These are for Rory’s crib, and you can use them for all your children if you want. The color scheme works for a boy and it works for a girl, so you can use it for your next baby, too.”

That’s what Edie said to you.

“I’M STILL GOING TO HAVE A BABY.
Right, Jim? Hop on, let’s make one right now.” Your speech is slurred and sarcastic.

Every day, it seems, people arrive and kneel by your bedside. The room is overflowing with flower arrangements. It gives you the feeling that you’re awake at your own wake.

Today Jim and your parents are kneeling at your bedside—Jim on one side, Mom and Dad on the other side.

You think it must be because they like to get eye to eye with you, so it’s okay. You’re all for that. If they want to kneel, let them kneel.

“Stop squinting,” Dad says, as if it was a helpful instruction.

“I’m not squinting,” you bark back.

“Yes, you are.” It’s like two kids bickering.

“Give me a mirror,” you demand.

He does.

“There, see?” He’s defiant.

The face in the mirror looks different than the one you remembered. The shaved scalp has shifted everything, and there are strange new hairs in unbecoming places. Your overall countenance is bloated. The eyes of the reflection are foreign and asymmetrical. The left eye remains wide open with a blank stare. The right eye is in fact squinting. But that’s only because it’s doing what it’s supposed to do—reacting to light and showing expression.

You stare at the eyes in the mirror and notice that tears are welling up in both of them.

You are still going to have a baby, though.

Dr. Neuro has put you on some prenatal vitamins. Jim squeezes your hand through the aluminum bars on the side of the bed, and suddenly it’s okay that your mouth tastes like pennies and your head has a long raw scar and tiny metal ridges along the side of it and they keep telling you that you have something you
know
you don’t have but you have no idea why you know that.

It’s going to be okay. Everything really is eventually going to be okay.

Time wobbles again and your hand is through the aluminum bars, but Jim’s isn’t holding it anymore and no one is kneeling by your bed now, so it’s later.

ON ONE OF YOUR OUTINGS,
you meet a little boy about seven years old being escorted around the ward by two therapists. He wears a bicycle helmet that protects his head and a leg brace similar to yours. He looks sad.

You have your therapist wheel you over to him and then ask both the therapists if you can chat with him privately.

HE HAD FALLEN OUT
of a window and sustained a head injury that restricted his leg movement. He’s been a patient for several months. You feel for him.

“I understand how hard it is to be in the hospital when it isn’t what you had planned,” you say. “And I know what it’s like to miss your family and your home.” You point to your leg.

“Take a look at my brace.”

He does.

“It’s just like mine,” he says.

“Things happen out of the blue,” you say. “Only really smart people know this. People who aren’t so smart
think
things don’t happen out of the blue. They
think
nothing important can happen to you without you expecting it. But they’re wrong. You and I know. Right?”

He nods.

“You and I are going to have to work really hard not to have to wear a leg brace down the road,” you say. “But for now, it’s a good thing we’ve got them, because they’re helping us to move around, and we can’t learn if we don’t move around, right?”

“Right.”

You have this urge to reach over and hug him. But he hugs you first.

NOBODY EVER SEEMS
to give
you
a pep talk. People who are sent to work with you are always concentrating on you adapting to your new crippled body and telling you how you need to accept it.

As they’re walking out the door after a session, they say, within your earshot, “She’s in denial.”

You say, loud enough for them to hear, “I can’t wait to get back to my yard to play soccer with my son.”