“Look,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and narrowing his eyes. “Every day—every hour—that you lie in that bed, your muscles are atrophying. Nothing will make you sicker than lying motionless all day. You have to get out. Whether you feel like it or not. You have to come with me to the physical therapy gym every day, always—not because you want to, or because you feel inspired, but because not going will put your health in genuine peril.”
I had to work to mold all those syllables into meaning. His words seemed to sit on top of each other, stacked in columns instead of laid out properly in sentences. And for a grand finale, he clacked his r on “peril.” I wondered if an American could pull off a word like that in conversation. But I got his gist.
“Thank you for the inspiring pep talk,” I said. Then: “No.”
“You’re coming.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I won’t.”
I don’t really know where we would have gone from there. He didn’t much seem like the type to give in, and I was—suddenly—just spoiling for a fight.
But that’s when Nina walked in—a last check before she went off shift—and I don’t know if she’d been listening at the door or what, but without skipping a beat she said, “Oh, this one’s not starting till tomorrow. It was a typo in the chart.”
Ian looked back and forth between us.
“Ask Myles, if you want. She’s still got one more day.”
He eyed us—suspiciously, like we might be in cahoots. Finally, he said, “Tomorrow, then.”
He walked out.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Nina said then, typing into the computer at the same time. “They are not giving you that guy for PT. I already told them to switch you out.”
“What?” I asked. “Is he bad?”
“He’s not bad,” she said, “but he’s not for you.”
“Not for me?”
She kept her eyes on the monitor. “He’s just not kind. He’s relentless. Merciless. Thoughtless. That works for some people. Not you. We’ll get you someone else. You’ve got enough going on.”
On a different day, I might have asked more about him. But who cared about that heartless guy, really? Who cared about anything?
“Nina?” I asked then.
She kept typing. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“My drunk fiancé came in here this morning and told me I was never going to walk again.”
Nina looked up.
“Is that true?” I asked.
From her face, I could see that it was.
Still, I waited for more—some words of encouragement, or some little crumb of hope to pick up. But she just let out a long sigh, and paused longer than could possibly be good news. “That’s—”
And then I knew exactly how she was going to finish, and so I said it with her: “A question for the doctor.”
Six
SO BEGAN THE strangest day of my life—one of them, at least. Top five.
What I wanted most all day was exactly what I wanted least.
I desperately needed time alone to process the news that Chip had just given me, and I just as desperately did not ever want to process anything—or be alone—again. I needed to take an emotional breath, but I was petrified to do it. So I spent the day mentally panting, light-headed and oxygen deprived, with my soul crying for air but my brain refusing to breathe it—and also dreading the night, when I’d have no distractions from every impossible thought that would rush in without my permission.
My parents startled me by arriving with lunch—Tex-Mex takeout from my favorite spot—before I realized any time had gone by. They had big, anticipatory smiles, as if fajitas might make everything okay for me.
I didn’t touch the food—too nauseated from the meds—but I thanked them. Not even the idea of the food was comforting. My dad gave me the report on driving Chip home: He’d thrown up twice on the drive—“kind of a motif today”—once out the window, and once all over the dashboard. His parents were waiting in their driveway, and they steered him inside to sleep it off.
“Poor Chip,” my mother said. “I hope they offered to pay for a detail.”
Poor Chip? Was Chip the one we felt sorry for?
“He’s not handling this well,” my dad said.
My mother gave me a pointed look. “Sometimes I think people are more worried about him than about you,” she said, as if we were making chitchat.
“I don’t need people’s worry,” I said. I was worried about me. That was enough.
“He shouldn’t have said what he said to you today,” my father went on.
“He told me I look like a pizza,” I said. “Is that true?”
“No, sweetheart,” my dad said. But my mother looked away.
“I’d like to get a look,” I said then, catching my mother’s eye. “Can I borrow your compact mirror?”
But the headshake she gave, I knew from a lifetime of experience, meant no way in hell. “You’re not ready.”
Okay. Maybe she was right. Maybe I’d learned enough today. On to the next question—the one I didn’t want to ask. But I paused a long time. I took a low breath. “He also said I was paralyzed,” I said at last.
My mother sat up a little straighter.
“Is that true?”
My father gave me a sad little shrug. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re still on our insurance.”
My mother had insisted that I stay on the plan they kept for their employees until I was settled in my career, even though the premiums were higher. We had argued about it more than once.
I hated it when she was right.
“What does that mean?” I asked, turning to my mother, who was braver.
She let out a big sigh. “From what the doctors have told us, only time will tell. It takes about six weeks before the bone heals and all the swelling in your spinal column clears out and we can see what kind of damage is left. Right now, the swelling itself could be blocking nerve signals. It’s possible that once everything has healed there will be no blockage at all, and all normal function will come back.”
I read both of their stoic faces. “Possible,” I said, “but not likely.”
“Not very likely, no,” my dad said. “The doc is very encouraged by some parts of your nerve responses and less encouraged by others. But he also says there’s real mystery involved in these kinds of injuries. He said there are people you think will never take another step who wind up running marathons.”
“Or becoming underwear models,” I said, my voice like a robot.
“Exactly,” my mother nodded, like that would be a good thing.
“So we’re waiting,” my father explained. “Doing everything the docs tell us, and waiting.”
My mother still couldn’t look at me for more than two seconds at a time. “The point is,” she chimed in, eyes on her taco salad, “it’s all about attitude.”
I squinted, like, Really? “Sounds to me like it’s all about swelling and nerve damage.”
She pushed on. “You have to believe you can get better. You have to work hard and never give up. I saw Chip’s mother in the yard this morning, and I promised you’d be good as new by summer.”
My dad and I both stared at her.
“You didn’t,” he said.
My mother sat up straighter. “I saw a video just this morning about a young BXM racer—”
“BMX racer,” my dad and I both corrected.
“—who simply refused to let his spinal cord injury hold him back. He broke his neck, Margaret!” She reached up and tapped at the spot on her own neck, still averting her eyes from my face. “They told him he’d never feed himself again! Now, he’s riding his bike from coast to coast raising money for charity—and he’s about to record a country album.”
“That’s very inspiring,” my dad said. “But it’s not just mind over matter, Linda. If you break your leg, you can’t just tell yourself it’s not broken.”
“But the human body does heal,” my mom said, pointing at him.
“Yes, but the spinal cord is different,” my dad said patiently. “Remember what the doctor said? When those nerves get damaged, they don’t grow back.”
“Well, I don’t see why not.”
My dad looked at me. We both imperceptibly shook our heads. “But they might not be damaged,” he emphasized to me. “They might just be compressed. Your job is to get lots of rest, take your medicine, and do whatever these folks tell you. For five and a half more weeks.”
“Five and a half?” I asked.
“That’s what insurance covers,” he said. “One week in the ICU, and five and a half weeks in the hospital afterwards.”
“That’s awfully specific.”
“Yep.”
“What happens at the end of five and a half weeks?”