by Dale Mayer
“I don’t think there has been for a long time.”
“I’m glad his sister brought him here,” Dennis said. “Robin has had a lot to do with any smiles we do see.”
“But someone shouldn’t have to try to smile,” she said sadly. “Do you think his world has beaten him up so much that smiles are something he has to force out? That’s just sad.”
“You may find that just being around him will lighten him up a little bit, and he’ll have more reasons to smile. The trip here couldn’t have been easy, and the adjustments here aren’t easy either. Just knowing you are taking a few minutes to visit with him in the morning helps too, I think.”
“Does everybody know about that?” she asked with a sense of humor. “I’m not even sure why I started it, but now it feels like I can’t stop it.”
“Do you want to stop those visits with Keith?”
As always, Dennis had a zinger of a question, and he went for the jugular with it. She crossed her arms over her chest while she thought about it because a question like that deserved the time for a real answer and not just a flippant comeback. “Stop? No, I don’t think I do,” she said. “The place is so quiet in the morning. It’s fresh and feels renewed or something. It’s hard to explain, but, when I come in each morning, it feels like all things are possible. And when I stop and see that his light is on and that he’s awake, it’s just the two of us in the foggy world all around us, and something’s special about that.” She gave a quick nod. “The fact that sometimes he’s awake, and sometimes he’s not, that sometimes I remember his coffee, and sometimes I forget, keeps it changing.” She laughed. “It’s not a routine really. It’s more like just a connection that we get to make and then move on.”
“Or not move on,” Dennis said, with an arched eyebrow.
She laughed again. “No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Too bad,” he said. “You haven’t had a relationship in years.”
“Keeping track of my love life now?” she teased. “Remember though, if you do that to me, I get to do it back.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “That’s the thing. Nobody can hide from anybody in this place.”
“Maybe that’s okay too,” she said, “because, if you know the shields won’t work, why put them up in the first place? And we all spend way too much time building those walls against the rest of the world. I hide in my kitchen, and it makes perfect sense to me, but other people think it’s terrible.”
“But most people don’t think about it that way,” he said. “They just batten down the hatches even tighter, hoping that nobody will notice that they’ve got a wall up.”
“And very often they don’t,” she said sadly, “because everybody else’s walls are even higher.”
“This place does something to you,” Dennis said. “It opens our eyes and our hearts.”
She nodded.
Just then one of the patients called out to him. He hopped over to him. “What can I get for you, sir?”
She watched as Dennis, with that big affable smile of his, served a patient. She relaxed here and watched as Dennis interacted with the next few who came by. Something was special about Dennis too. She wished he could find a partner in life, particularly after they’d seen so many relationships come through this place. But, much like her, he hadn’t had the time, the opportunity, or just that right connection yet.
As she was about to head back into the kitchen, she saw Shane pushing a wheelchair. From where she was, she could see that it was Keith. For whatever reason, realizing he was in a wheelchair made his condition all that much worse. He’d said he was ambulatory, but she had yet to see him walking—with crutches or without. To see him in a wheelchair seemed like a step back. But he also looked worn out, and she knew he hadn’t even started whatever physical therapy sessions they had in store for him here. She could only wish that he paced himself over the next few weeks because, no matter how bad today was, tomorrow would be a whole lot worse.
The visit to the cafeteria had been fine, and, after that, he’d gone on his own for dinner and then again for lunch and dinner the next day. But, on Friday, Shane walked into his room and asked, “You ready to get to work?”
“Well, I wish,” he said, “but it doesn’t seem like you guys have any work for me to do.”
Shane chuckled. “That’s all right. We’ll get started today.” He looked at him and said, “Shorts and a T-shirt.”
“My leg is pretty ugly. It might scare the nurses.” But he grabbed the crutches and went across to the drawers, where he had his clothes, and pulled out the shorts. “I only have this kind. Is that okay?”
“Swim shorts?”
“Yeah, I use them for both,” he said.
“That’s good,” Shane said. “I gather you swim then?”
“Yes,” he said. “So, if you want to work in the pool and build some water exercises into my program, that works for me too.”
“Will do,” Shane replied.
When Keith was dressed and the crutches were under his armpits again, Shane shook his head. “Better leave the crutches here and bring the wheelchair.”
Remembering his earlier words, Keith worried about it momentarily and then shrugged. “If you say so.” He laid the crutches along the end of his bed, and, using the edge of the bed, made his way to where the wheelchair sat waiting for him. Once inside he wheeled out to the hallway. “Where are we going?”
“Down to one of the gyms,” Shane said, walking beside him. “I want you doing some walking exercises first.”
“I don’t walk well,” he warned.
“I know that,” he said, “and you’re still in a lot of pain. But we need to know which muscles are pulling harder and which ones are bailing on their job.”
“They’re all bailing,” he said, “because the minute anybody even calls them out, somebody’s hacking on them and sticking them elsewhere.”
“Right,” Shane said, flipping through the photos in his physical file. “Wow. You’ve really been put through the meat grinder, haven’t you?”
“Frankenstein 2.0,” he said cheerfully.
“Still, it’s only bone and muscle,” he said. “You have full function of all your organs, and, by the time we’re done, you should walk and live a normal healthy life.”
“If you say so,” he said. He kept his voice deliberately neutral. He had given up hope a long time ago and couldn’t let himself believe that progress could actually be made. After the roller coaster of so many surgeries, he had eventually gotten numb to it all. The last thing he wanted was any more surgery, and he told his doctor that.
At the time, the doctor had nodded and said, “Good thing we’re done then, isn’t it?”
He had tried to tell them earlier too, but the doctors hadn’t listened because they had their own agenda as to what they wanted done. He was just the guy who had to suffer through it. He knew they were doing it for his own good and all, but having those words shoved down his throat enough times made him choke on them.
When he wheeled into the room that Shane pointed him to, Keith was surprised to see a beautiful hardwood floor, mats, all sorts of equipment and apparatuses, medicine balls, the whole works. “You guys didn’t skimp on the equipment, did you?”
“You have no idea,” Shane said. “A ton of equipment is in this place, and, believe it or not, we’ll get to most of it eventually. But not for a while. A lot of work for you to do first.”
“If you say so,” he said. “Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how much I can even do.”
“Which is why we’ll work on it,” he said, “because the one thing we don’t want to do is have you short yourself on future abilities.”
“Not sure there are any but whatever,” he said.
“That attitude gets to be a little rough too,” Shane said with a laugh. “You’ve got to feel something. Otherwise you feel nothing, and that’s not good either.”
“If you say so,” he muttered under his breath, but he kept
his voice fairly calm. No point in pissing off Shane too. An amazing amount of goodwill was here, and Keith didn’t want to be the only jerk to them. It was just so hard when he was mentally so done with it all. He didn’t care, had already given up, and that was a problem because he could see that Shane wanted him to care; Shane wanted Keith invested in his future. But it was hard to see a future when it didn’t appear to be anything different than his present. And certainly he had nothing to celebrate here.
“Okay,” Shane said. “First, I want you out of the wheelchair and on the mat, lying down on your back.”
With a sideways look, Keith said, “I thought we were walking.”
“We’ll get there,” Shane said, “but let’s sort out your basic structure first.”
“Whatever you say.” Keith followed instructions. It was pretty interesting because Shane came at it from a way that was unexpected—nothing anybody had ever done before. It was certainly educational because, by the time Keith was listening and following through on the instructions, he could see what Shane was pointing out.
“When you are lying down, it’s a whole different thing than the way you would be standing,” Shane explained. “Straighten out your legs, and pull your legs together,” Shane said. Then he took several photos, muttering to himself as he wrote down notes.
“Are you telling me that, even laying down, it’s not even normal?” Keith joked.
“Nope, not really,” he said. “That’s why we’re starting this on the floor. And then we’ll get you standing upright. We’ll have you walk, and we’ll have you stand against a wall, while I take more measurements and more pictures.”
At that, Keith relaxed because Shane really wouldn’t put him to work today. But minutes later, Keith was eating his words because just doing what Shane was asking him to do was hard. But Shane didn’t appear to be too bothered.
“I know I asked you to stand on one leg, and you’re not used to it, but you can do it,” he said. “So do it for me. Lean against that wall upright, heels to the back, and lift your left leg. Just balance.”
But of course he couldn’t keep balancing.
Finally Shane gave him a crutch and said, “Use this to help hold yourself up.” And, with that, they went over it again and then again.
“What is it you’re hoping to sort out?” Keith asked, gasping when he finally brought his leg back down again, feeling his back being pulled.
“Muscles that are avoiding working,” he said. “You need your structural integrity solid. Otherwise, over time, you start to lean and to list to one side, and some muscles go weak, while others take on too much of the strain. As you age, these injuries become a bigger problem. We want to make sure that you start off healing correctly and get you solid with the best alignment you can have. Then we’ll build up from there, so that—in twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years—you’re not a basket case and back in a wheelchair.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun at all,” he muttered. But, when Shane asked him to bend over and touch his toes, Keith just looked at him in shock.
“Go down as low as you can get and stretch as far as you can,” Shane said.
But he could barely even get his hands to his knees.
Once again Shane was there, poking at the muscles in his back, taking photos and measurements. By the time they were done with the session, Keith was panting and wishing that he was already sitting down in his wheelchair.
Finally Shane let him sit down. “I don’t know what any of that tells you,” Keith said, “but we’ve done nothing except test yet again, and I’m exhausted.”
“That’s because I asked you to put some of the muscles under a spotlight,” Shane said quietly, as he finished marking notes down on his tablet. “This is a big help,” he said. “It gives me a really good idea where we need to start.” At that, he motioned at the door and said, “We’ve been at it for an hour and a half, so I’ll let you head back to your room. You’ve got some doctor appointments this afternoon, and I’ll go set up your PT program. We’ll start first thing in the morning at nine o’clock, so be ready.”
“Where do I meet you?” Keith asked.
“Right here,” he said. “We’ll start on the floor again, but it will be a very different scenario tomorrow.” And, with that dire warning, Shane was gone.
Back in his wheelchair, after crawling all the way across the floor and pulling himself into the chair, he was miffed that Shane had left him in that shape. But Keith had been on his feet for a lot of that time, so it’s not like he was completely crippled.
He slowly moved back to his room and to his tablet to check on his next meeting. He wasn’t even sure who it was, but it was some doctor something or other. Weren’t they all doctors here?
As he wheeled into his room, he found a tall, angular midfifties woman, working on her tablet in a chair beside his bed. She looked up when he entered. “Keith?”
He nodded.
“Good,” she said, reaching out a hand. “Don’t get comfortable. We’ll head back to my office.” And, with that, she came around behind him, grabbed the wheelchair, and headed out into the hallway.
“Where is your office?” he asked, figuring out what doctor this was.
“This one here,” she said, and she pushed him down a short hallway on the right. She wheeled him inside an open door on the left, parked him in front of her desk. Then she walked around to her side and, dropping the tablet, sat down in her chair. “So tell me,” she said, “where are you at mentally with all this?”
Now he knew what kind of doctor she was. His heart sank. “I think I’m fine mentally,” he said slowly, his mind immediately searching for the answers that would get her off his back.
She smiled. “You don’t even know what I’m looking for, so no sense in digging around, trying to say the right thing to get rid of me.”
He stared at her with a frown. “How did you know I was doing that?”
“Because you’re in a chair across from me,” she said with a quiet snicker. “Everybody tries to do exactly the same thing.”
“That’s not a very good way to make friends, you know?” he said.
“If I was on that side of the desk with you,” she said, “I would be trying to make friends with you. But I’m on this side of the desk, and my job is to assess your mental health.”
He frowned at that.
She nodded. “You have a very morose frame of mind. Your file says that you refused antidepressants and that you experience general downward-spiraling moods. We have a lot of clinical terms for this,” she said, “but basically it means you’re always on the edge of being depressed.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “But, if I’m on the edge of being depressed, then I’m also on the edge of being happy,” he said. “If it’s a knife’s edge, it can cut both ways.”
She laughed at that. “Good,” she said. “I like to see your brain snappy like that. It shows that someone is still in there and that somebody hasn’t given up.”
He stared at her in surprise. “Does being depressed mean I’ve given up?”
“No, not necessarily,” she said. “But it often goes hand in hand. Sometimes people can’t see their way out of a situation, so they get depressed, and it’s a downward spiral after that.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve wondered how much of my moods could be part of the constant medical cocktail I’ve been served.”
“Interesting take,” she said, taking notes. “And one I certainly won’t argue with because, with the number of surgeries you’ve had, undoubtedly a variety of chemicals still circulate through your blood. When did you finish your last antibiotics?”
“Before I got here,” he said absentmindedly. “But I’m still taking a couple pills.”
She read them off from the information in front of her.
“If you say so. I don’t know what the names are, but, if they’re almost done too, it won’t matter unless they are antidepressants.” He shrugged. “Like you said, I don’t t
ake them,” he said, his tone hardening. “I think my body has been through enough. I don’t need more chemical inducements to interfere with what should be a natural process.”
“And what is that natural process?”
“Adjustment,” he said instantly.
“Adjustment of what?”
“My life. My physical body. The fact that maybe, if I’m lucky, there will be no more surgeries. The fact that I’m here. The fact that I’m spending time with my sister for the first time in ten years. The fact that—” He shook his head.
“Go on,” she said gently.
He glared at her.
She smiled. “Whenever you’re ready.”
He stared down at his fingers. Even his pinky finger had needed surgery to straighten up the bones.
“Just adjustments,” he said quietly. “From what was before, to what was, to what I’ve just completed, to whatever it is that’s now.”
“And then there is whatever comes after this,” she said.
He raised his head and looked at her thoughtfully. “It’s hard for me to see that far out. For the longest time all I saw was surgery upon surgery upon surgery. Now I’m here, and I understand that this is recovery.” He stared out the window. “But I don’t know what I’m recovering to.”
“Does it matter?”
“It should matter,” he said, his voice dropping even further. “Going through all these surgeries and physical adjustments, so much pain, where I’m heading to really should matter.”
“So why doesn’t it?”
He stared down at his hands again, wondering at her line of questioning.
“If it should matter and it doesn’t, why not?” she persisted.
“I think because I can’t see it,” he said, slowly raising his gaze to study her.
She had a dark blue gaze that saw way too much. But then she saw everybody who was already here, and, as such, she had seen way too much of other people’s ailments, and he was just one more. “I’m surrounded by other people struggling to deal with their health,” he said. “It just seems like so much more of the same.”
