Rodney pauses. “If it was real … ?even just to you,” he says, “you’re going to have to tell him.”
I rub the heel of my hand between my eyebrows, where a dull ache has started up. “I can’t even see him. He’s working around the clock, and I’m not allowed to have visitors here. I feel like a leper. I can barely stand on my own feet, I haven’t had a shower in so long I can’t remember the date, and based on my experience trying to dress myself, bras may be a thing of my past. When I’m too tired to do therapy, my mind starts going in circles and I can’t remember what’s real and what’s not and then I start panicking even more.” I let out a shuddering breath. “I need a distraction.”
“Girl, I have two words for you,” Rodney says. “Tiger King.”
Other things that happen on my second day in rehab:
1. I put on my own shoes and socks.
2. CNN reports that eighty percent of people on ventilators have died.
I am actively fighting against my own body. My mind is laser-focused, screaming things like lift, hoist, balance. My muscles do not speak the language. Like any other kind of dissonance, it’s exhausting. The only good thing about working so hard during the day is that at night, I am so exhausted, I don’t resist sleep. It fells me with blunt force, and I am too tired to dream.
I wonder, too, if the reason that I can fall asleep here the way I did not in the step-down ward is that I know every morning, Maggie will appear with a new torture device. I may not trust her with my physical progress yet, but I do trust her to bring me back to the real world.
On my third day, my occupational therapist, Vee, comes into the room and watches me struggle to squeeze toothpaste onto a toothbrush. It’s something that I used to do without thought but now requires Zen focus. I finish brushing my teeth just as Maggie enters. She is pushing a weird, squat box, which she sets at the side of the room. “Time to stand,” she says.
She glances around, her gaze landing on the walker she brought in for yesterday’s dose of therapy. She sets it on the side of the bed. “Let’s get up close and personal with Paul,” she says.
“Alice.” (We’ve been arguing about the best name for a walker, which is already a misnomer because I’m using it to stand, not move.) But I swing my legs over the side of the bed, and this time, I barely have to think to make it happen. Maggie wraps a belt around me, waits till she is sure I’m not dizzy, and helps me scoot to the edge of the bed. When I stand for thirty seconds, my legs don’t quiver beneath me.
I look up at her, a smile spreading over my face. “Bring it on,” I challenge.
“What did you tell me you wanted to do when you got here?”
“Leave,” I say.
“And what did I tell you you needed to be able to do first?”
Vee, I realize, has not left the room but has instead shoved the weird little box that Maggie dragged in so that it is kitty-corner to Alice the Walker.
She flips the top up, and I realize it’s a commode. “Ta-da,” Maggie says.
Day four of rehab:
1. I transfer to a wheelchair by myself.
2. I wheel it into the bathroom and brush my teeth.
3. I get so tired, halfway through, that I put my head on the counter and fall asleep.
4. That is how a nurse finds me to tell me that, finally, I’ve tested negative for Covid.
Now that I’m no longer Covid-positive, Maggie tells me that for physical therapy I will go to the gym. She wheels me into the large space, where multiple patients are working with multiple physical therapists. It is almost shocking to see so many people in one place, after so much time in isolation. I wonder how many of these people had Covid.
She gets me settled on a mat and begins moving my arms and legs, assessing joint tightness and strength in my deltoids and biceps. The whole time, she is grilling me about my apartment. Do you live with someone who’s there full-time? Is there an elevator? How many steps from the elevator to your apartment? Are there carpets or throw rugs? Stairs?
By the time she leads me to the parallel bars, I am grateful to concentrate on something other than rapid-fire questions. My mind still is foggy; I will start a sentence only to forget where it was going.
Maggie stands in front of me, belly to belly, with a wheelchair behind me. “Lift your left leg,” she says.
I feel sweat bead on my forehead. “If I go down,” I tell her, “you’re going with me.”
“Try me,” Maggie challenges.
I am dizzy and terrified of losing my balance, but I lift my leg an inch off the floor.
“Now your right one,” Maggie says.
I grit my teeth and try and my knee buckles. I collapse into the wheelchair, scooting back a few inches.
“That’s okay,” Maggie tells me. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
I look up at her. “Again,” I demand.
She narrows her eyes and then nods. “Okay,” she says, and she hauls me back up to my feet. “Let’s start with a knee bend.”
I do it, the world’s ugliest plié.