Ten
KITTY WAS GONE in the morning when I woke up, and she’d folded the chair-bed back so neatly that it was almost like she was never there. For a second, I wondered if she’d left for good—until I noticed her stuff in a neat pile in the corner. Maybe she’d left early to make herself scarce to avoid running into my mom.
And so I launched into another day, all on my own—everything pretty much exactly the same until the very end, when Ian walked me back from another awkward, silent, antisocial session of physical therapy, and we found a nurse I’d never seen before waiting for me in my room.
She met my eyes with a bright smile. “How do you feel about good news?”
I glanced at Ian, who gave me a tiny shrug.
I hesitated. “I’m … for it?”
The nurse’s smile got bigger. “Because I have good news for you.”
I waited. “Okay.” I wasn’t sure I could muster the excitement she was clearly expecting. “I guess you’d better tell me, then.”
Then she pointed right at my crotch. “We’re about to take out that catheter.”
*
THERE WAS NO guarantee the catheter wasn’t going back in. The spinal surgeon had noted “sacral sparing” down in the nether regions, and he was optimistic that I had both enough sensation down there to feel when I needed to pee, and enough muscle control to make it happen—but there was no guarantee.
Only trying would tell.
The nurse put an absorbent pad on the bed before helping me get up into it, and then she slid the tube out with no ceremony at all. Then she helped me into an open-back gown for the night, “for easy access.”
“When you feel the feeling and need to pee,” she said, “move fast. Press the call button. Don’t try to transfer on your own.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t wait until you’re about to burst!”
“I won’t.”
She’d be back soon to check on me. The question now was, would I feel that feeling? And if I did feel it, and manage to get to the bathroom without wetting myself first, would my urethra know what to do when I got there?
Safe to say, I had never adequately appreciated the sheer, elegant genius of the urinary system. Now it became a significant character in the story of my life. It was common for patients with injuries like mine to spend the rest of their lives catheterized, facing all the humiliations and discomfort that implied—not to mention chronic infections from the tubes. I found myself rooting for my bladder to impress us all.
After the nurse left, I lay in the silence of my room, eavesdropping on the conversations outside, waiting alertly to feel that delightful old sensation of needing to pee—what did it even feel like? I could barely remember—and rooting for my brave little-urethra-that-could to face this challenge and triumph.
Until I fell asleep.
I slept until Kitty arrived with Chinese takeout.
She poked me, saying, “Hey, are you sleeping?”
I put my hand over my eyes. “Don’t wake me when I’m sleeping, Kit!”
“I brought dinner,” she said, as if takeout justified anything, and she started unloading containers.
As I came awake, I noticed something. “Oh, my God. I need to pee! I can feel it!”
Kit looked at me like I was a little nuts. “Hooray?”
I pointed at the transfer board. “We have to get me to the bathroom.”
Long story short: I did it. We did it—my urethra and I—without a hitch.
Except for the moment when I looked up to find Kit trying to take a picture of me on the toilet.
“Kit! What the hell? Don’t take a picture of me peeing!”
“For Instagram!” she said, like that made it better. “It’s photojournalism!”
Had she always been this crazy? We were barely back on speaking terms. “Shut it down.”
“I’m kidding,” Kit said. “But my followers are all rooting for you.”
“That’s rule number two,” I went on. “No photos—ever.”
“Not even selfies?”
“My hospital room, my rules: No comfort. No photos. And no goddamned selfies.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Now help me back into the chair.”
We worked me back into the bed, and once I was all tucked in, Kit laid out the Chinese food like a feast—fried dumplings and egg rolls and sesame chicken. All my favorites from childhood.
I knew what she was up to. “This isn’t comfort food, is it?”
Kit narrowed her eyes. “This is just what I happen to like. You can’t blame me if you find it comforting.”
“I’ll blame you if I want to,” I said, but I gave her a little smile. Which felt shaky, like those muscles had atrophied, too.
Kit speared a chicken hunk with her chopstick. “Aren’t you kind of glad I’m here?”
I was, actually. Far more than I would admit. “When you’re not taking pictures of me on the frigging toilet.”
*
I COULDN’T EAT much, but Kit could. She finished off all the egg rolls and every steamed dumpling, slurping dipping sauce and licking her fingers. Then, after she’d cleaned up, she said, “Now: the haircut!”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’m too tired.”
“You just had a nap!”
“Yeah. My pre-bedtime nap.”
“No!” Kit protested. “I planned us a whole girls’ night.” She started pulling items out of her purse and stacking them up on the tray table: a box of chocolates, a nail-painting kit with emoji decals, a bag of popcorn, Boggle, and a couple of naughty-looking romance novels. Plus a set of long computer cords.
“You’ve got quite the party planned.”
She nodded. “Total debauchery.”
“Glad you woke me now.”
She nodded, missing the sarcasm. “I can hook my computer up to the TV. I’ve got Grease cued up.”
I smiled for a second despite myself. We loved Grease as kids. We’d put on the soundtrack and dance around the house, climbing the furniture and singing the duets.
She always made me be Danny, though.
Kit stood up and pointed her finger in the air, striking a Travolta-on-the-bleachers pose.
Nothing from me.
“Come on. I’ll let you be Sandy.”
Too little, too late. “I don’t want to be Sandy.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t feel like singing.”
“You always feel like singing.”
“Not anymore.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “When was the last time you sang?”
“I don’t know.”
“I read an article that if you have a talent and you don’t find a way to use it, your life can collapse in on itself like a black hole.”
I gave her a look. “Too late.”
“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Only because it’s true.” She was pushing, and all I could do was push back.
“No, it’s not.”
I felt my hackles lift just a little bit. If I said my life was a black hole, then it was an effing black hole. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
I could read her face so clearly. She thought I was being stubborn.
The longer she stared, the more I felt my body tightening in defensiveness. Really? She was going to stand there with her working legs and resent my less-than-sunny attitude?
“Looks like we’ve got kind of a role reversal going here,” Kit said at last.
I waited, and lifted my eyebrow a bit, like, Oh, really?
“This may be,” she went on, in a conversational tone, like we were just chatting about the weather, “the first time ever that I am the one trying to make things better—and you are the one trying to make things worse.”
And just like that, I was mad. “I don’t have to try to make things worse,” I said, my throat tight and strangely sandpapery. “Things are already worse.”
“Things can always get worse,” Kit declared.
My reply was like a reflex—a shouting reflex. “Not for me!”
I’m always amazed at how fast siblings can warp-speed into a state of rage. It’s like they keep everything they were ever angry about growing up shoved into an overstuffed emotional closet, and at moments like these, it takes about two seconds to swing open the door and start an avalanche.
“You have to try!” Kit insisted, in a tone like she’d said it a hundred times.
“I am trying!”