Walk It Off

by Ruth Marshall

  “Why is it so tiny?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess you’re not exactly a giant.”

  She helped me into it. It felt like a pretty good fit even if my body couldn’t be trusted to get anything right. The chair was also easily collapsible, which paved the way to an unanticipated perk: Rich and I could leave the hospital to celebrate our sixteenth anniversary. It would be my first time off Lyndhurst grounds.

  In preparation for our big night out, we met Heidi in the parking lot one afternoon to practice transferring me from my chair into the car and from the car back into the chair. Rich learned how to dismantle the chair, fit it into the trunk, reassemble it, and transfer me back into it. The whole process was oddly exhilarating and after two or three perfect transitions, we declared ourselves date-ready.

  Saturday night was quiet at Lyndhurst. I didn’t spot any of the regulars while I waited in the lobby for Rich. A burly security guard I didn’t recognize sat at the receptionist post. We nodded at each other like we were both there on official business. I nervously slid my hands along the arms of my new chair. While I waited, I had time to contemplate the key to happiness. Could it be as simple as always having something to look forward to? The Holy Grail for me, at that time, was threefold: to walk; to get my bodily functions back; and to get my sexual function zipping along. But while I tried to figure out how to achieve all those things, there were literally dozens of precious small moments that helped my spirits remain buoyant. Daily showers; visitors for lunch; lunch; Rich; my boys; The Globe and Mail crossword; turning over in bed by myself; tying my shoes; eating apples after physio; sitting in the sun; Dr. Zimcik; jujubes.

  But actually leaving the hospital to celebrate our anniversary presented the kind of wish fulfillment I hadn’t dared entertain. I don’t remember who voiced the idea or how it gained traction. But no one tried to stop me—not the security guard who couldn’t have been blind to the amount of makeup I was wearing—and certainly not my nurses, who seemed as invested in my date as they were in what might happen after.

  My French rock ’n’ roll nurse, Juliette, was adamant I wear my green silk shirt instead of the see-through one I had chosen. “It’s your arms,” she said, rubbing her own arms. “You must show your arms. Plus the green—c’est très très bon.”

  “But with my see-through number you can see everything—including my arms,” I argued. “I’m sticking with the see-through.”

  She popped in and out of my room several times during the day of my date with more and more hints as to how I should end the evening. There was no doubt in my mind that Juliette had the best sex life of any nurse I had ever met. She told me to enlist my friends to buy me electric candles.

  “Place them on the windowsill to avoid having to turn on the fluorescent lights.” She wrinkled her little French nose to register her distaste at the lack of romantic lighting in my room. “As long as your curtain and door are shut, no one will come in.” She went so far as to remind me that I should pee after to make sure I didn’t get a bladder infection, completely forgetting that I couldn’t actually pee on my own.

  Rumy took a more practical approach to my date, reminding me that I had to get my nerve medication before I left and to make sure I had enough painkillers to get me through the evening. Sonja, my Russian nurse/handmaid, could do little more than hold her hands together under her chin and beam at me like I was her only daughter going to the prom.

  I refused to wear leggings for our night out. I somehow managed, without any assistance, to wriggle into my skinny jeans while ignoring the noisy protest that broke out the second my calves caught wind of my plan. I suppose I could have just worn a dress since the weather was still fine, but the last thing I wanted was to put my legs in an even more vulnerable state by leaving them exposed. Plus, as evil as my jeans were, the feeling in my legs was only magnified when my bare thighs touched each other. Since there was ultimately nothing I could wear that would be comfortable, I picked my outfit purely for its sex appeal. As I pulled my top on, it occurred to me that the only parts of my body that registered normal sensation anymore were my arms and my head.

  I wore my black ballet flats even though there was no possible way they would stay on my feet—my toes had no grip and virtually no feeling. I found some red lipstick—a color I rarely wore—in my makeup bag and applied that carefully but mightily, along with a liberal amount of eyeliner, which I painstakingly drew right along my water line like a slutty teen. I used whatever cosmetic weapons I had in my arsenal to direct Rich’s gaze away from my chair and back to my erstwhile desirability.

  As I waited in the lobby, the oxycodone began to wear off. I could feel the first fiery spikes of pain beginning their ascent, two steel rods shoved up my back. I leaned forward, but there was no relief. I crossed my legs and with that one movement, I was able to distract myself from the tug-of-war in my back. This latest addition to my sitting style was courtesy of a particularly enigmatic patient at Lyndhurst. She was very attractive in a stripper kind of way, probably the fittest patient there. Mostly, she hung around the lobby wearing tight velour sweat suits and hanging with her good-looking, tough-guy boyfriend. She looked like she owned the joint but hated everyone who worked for her. I liked to imagine that the second she got her walking papers she would trash her room like a rock star and then leave with her middle finger held high in the air—fuck you, wheelies! When I first saw her, I quickly figured out why I found her so captivating: She crossed her legs.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that this was possible, but once I tried it, I never looked back; no more sad-looking splayed legs for me. The only time that kind of lax posture was acceptable was when I was deep into my pregnancies and I needed my legs to hold up my belly, which was holding up my bowl of chips. It took me a few tries to get the up, over, and around thing, but before long I was crossing my legs like a champ.

  I wondered if I had remembered to tell Rich about the latest development with my back. Just a couple of days earlier, Rumy had taken out half the staples from the incision where the tumor had been removed.

  “Do you want to lie down while I do it?” she had asked, holding the staple remover in the palm of her hand. It was exactly the same kind of staple remover one uses to remove staples from paper. There was nothing medical looking about it, because it was a staple remover.

  I was naked at the time, sitting on my commode after having taken my shower, a small towel draped across my legs.

  “Just do it here.” I gripped the arms of the commode.

  “A distraction, maybe?” she asked.

  “Phone, please.”

  I sent texts while she pulled out thirteen of the twenty-seven staples that ran in a track down my back. I made her count them out loud as she plucked them, and then count them again after I heard their metallic plink on the plastic tray.

  “I feel really stressed out,” I said once she was done, and then started my porno pant. “Why can’t we just do the rest of them now? I don’t want to have to do this again.” I was crying and whining and I hated myself for both.

  “It’s just the way it’s done,” Rumy said, placing a calming hand on my shoulder. “Some now, the rest later.”

  “Does everyone cry here?” I asked.

  Rumy thought about this. She always made me feel as if I were her only patient, which meant that sometimes I acted as if I was.

  “Yes,” she said. “Everyone here cries.”

  •

  Rich pulled up in front of the glass doors. I tried to sit up a little straighter in spite of the pain I felt when I moved too quickly. There would be no crying tonight. I watched as he got out of the car and did a little jog around the back of it. The doors parted automatically and we beamed at each other as he walked toward me. He was wearing my favorite jeans—not his favorites—the ones he thought were too tight but I loved them. He had on his indigo shirt—also my favorite—and a dark blue blazer. His head was freshly shaved, bald and shiny as new. I could picture him looking in
the mirror, wanting to be perfect. He bent down to kiss me and then kept his face close to mine.

  “I’m nervous,” he whispered.

  “Me, too.”

  As he wheeled me out, the security guard gave us the thumbs up and we gave him the thumbs up back.

  We managed the transfer into the car, but it wasn’t easy. My back was in full-on revolt. The steel rods were stealing their way up my rib cage. They would not stop their ascent until they hit my scapula. An oxy would have taken care of the pain, but I had to wait until after dinner when I was safely back at Lyndhurst. In the meantime, I decided, a vodka martini would do just fine. Once in the passenger seat, I smoothed down the front of my jeans and touched the silvery bling around my V-neck. Rich got in the car.

  “All good?” he asked.

  “So good.”

  We found a parking spot right outside the restaurant, Mogette, on an otherwise packed street but felt our luck dry up as we stared at the sidewalk.

  “We forgot about the curb,” I said, when he came to open the car door for me.

  “Should we go back?” he asked.

  “Are you crazy?”

  “What can I do?”

  “Have you got the brakes on?”

  Rich pushed the chair as close as he could to the edge of the curb and locked the brakes. “Should I lift you?” he asked.

  I shook my head, then I put my hand up and grabbed the left arm of the chair with my right hand and without any further thought, pulled myself up out of the passenger seat and pretty much tossed myself into the chair like I was both discus and thrower.

  Relief and excitement flooded through me. “Yes!” I said. “Did it!”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Rich.

  He rolled me to the front door. I stared at it for a couple of seconds. Was the doorway wide enough to accommodate the chair? But my husband had done his research. He had spoken to the owner in advance to make sure every part of the restaurant was wheelchair accessible. Two men in long flapping half aprons rushed to meet us. One stood at attention while the other pulled the door wide-open and welcomed us in like we were the sole reason the restaurant was open so early.

  “Hello, hello!” they both said. I felt like a celebrity, or a dowager, as they saw us to our table. A quick-thinking waiter removed the chair from my side—it wouldn’t be needed. The restaurant was almost full even though it was barely six. Some diners were looking at me; I was certain I wasn’t just imagining it. I smiled brightly, not just because I was genuinely happy to be there, but because I was hoping to project onto these strangers the impermanence of my situation. I hoped they could see that, although bound to a wheelchair, I carried myself like a woman who had been around the block a few times; like a woman who had walked around the block a few times. I badly wanted to telegraph every great moment of my past onto these diners so that they could feel free to stop looking at me with pity. It’s a lovely Saturday night—my smile said—and we’re all here to have a nice meal and hey, since you’re looking anyway, please note my crossed legs—it’s entirely possible a stripper taught me this trick. Which was when I looked down and saw that not only had my legs become uncrossed but one foot was missing a shoe.

  “Oh, crap,” I said. “Honey, can you please find my shoe and while you’re down there, have a quick look around for my left foot? I think it might be under the footrest.” It was the first of many times that night when Rich would disappear under the table and reappear with my shoe.

  We ordered too much, laughed loudly, shook our heads in wonderment at the way things had turned out. I also drank too much and I cried after all. The waitstaff was as attentive as if it had been my birthday or my last supper, which made me wonder if they thought I might be dying. The owner brought us cake without us having ordered it. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY was written on the plate in something tart and delicious. As I licked the last bit of icing off my fork, I thought: This is the best anniversary we have ever had.

  After dinner we left the restaurant and turned left. We passed the secondhand clothing store I used to walk by every day with Joey in his stroller; then the dry cleaner’s where the owner and I mostly chatted about our kids before he returned my jeans to me, always shortened too short; then the corner store where Joey and I would get Popsicles when I was pregnant with Henry. If we had turned left again, we would have found ourselves right in front of our old house. I asked Rich to stop. A longing for my old life scrabbled to the surface, knocking aside everything in its path, including my happiness.

  “I’m ready to go back now,” I said.

  Perhaps to Nurse Juliette’s disappointment, I hadn’t asked anyone to buy me electric candles. Rich wheeled me back to my room and kissed me good-bye before heading home. As sad as I was to see him leave, I needed desperately to tend to my back, which had erupted into flames. I was so late with my pain medication, I would be playing catchup all night. Every part of my body was crying out for some kind of relief; I didn’t know where to start first. I pushed the button on my bed to lower it so it was level with my chair, then, wincing so hard I pushed tears out of my eyes without actually crying, I transferred onto my bed. I didn’t even bother changing out of my clothes first. I lay on my side until a nurse came with my oxycodone.

  Our “after” would have to come later.

  •

  In many ways, it was just another lazy Saturday: coffee and paper in the morning, late shower, talking on the phone with my girlfriend. Only, I woke up alone and crying, counting down the hours until Rich arrived with the kids. I had been tipped off the day before that there would be a good lunch in the dining room.

  “Make sure the boys arrive hungry, okay, Rich?”

  Neville, my daily apple supplier, furtively gave Joey and Henry mac and cheese.

  “I didn’t give you nuthin’ and you don’t owe me nuthin’,” he said, before tossing an extra dollop on each of the boys’ plates. I loved Neville.

  After lunch, we went outside. Rich wheeled me as far as the smoker’s gazebo before Henry insisted on taking over, pushing me fast enough to blow my hair back. Rich yelled at him to slow down. Joey hung back, staring into his cell phone. The closer the time came for them to go home, the more anxious I became, until I just wanted them all to leave. What had been a genuine, happy smile plastered on my face all afternoon had morphed into a mask I couldn’t wait to tear off. I needed to be alone with my buzzing legs that also felt like bulging sausages squeezed by too-tight elastic bands. I was desperate for my breakthrough medication even though I knew I would pay for it with a particularly difficult “touches” session the next day. My back throbbed. I insisted we say our good-byes from my room instead of the lobby. I couldn’t bear the thought of watching my family as they walked to the car and drove home without me. Also, I had learned something crucial about myself since landing in the hospital: I needed to fall apart a little bit every day. Morning cries took care of that quite nicely, but on the days when the boys visited, crying just the one time didn’t cut it. Sensing the change in my mood, Rich hastily got my pajamas ready and laid out my clothes for the following day. He hugged and kissed me, then made way for the boys. Henry collapsed in a heap on my lap, whispering good-bye a thousand times and then waving to me all the way to the elevator. Joey let himself be hugged but refused to move his arms from his sides.

  I was alone again, the day gone as if it had never happened.

  I thought about Joey more than I thought about Henry, even though Henry is younger. I saw how he wanted to be around me but didn’t want to get too close. I saw how he never looked at my legs or at my eyes, which meant he was always in search of a safe spot to rest his gaze: the wall behind my head, his phone, my shoulders. But when I texted him, he would respond in seconds and sometimes he wrote, “How is your walking today?” Whenever I said, “I love you,” which was every day, he would say, “K, bye,” which I decoded to mean, “I love you, too.”

  But he was more observant than I realized. Rich called me after one of our week
end visits.

  “Joey suggested I bring you your coffeemaker.”

  “Joey did?”

  “He knows you miss coffee.”

  “Do you think he misses me?”

  “I know he does.”

  Rich brought me the coffeemaker, but to use it, I needed Rumy’s help. Her skills, while multifold, didn’t extend to coffee-making. She swore a lot and I could see for the first time that she was starting to lose her cool.

  “Rumy, it’s okay,” I said. “Just pass it over here.”

  She put the Cuisinart clunker on top of my tray-on-wheels. I scooped my ground coffee into the paper filter and poured in the water. Rumy pressed a few buttons and then we both watched as the machine magically transformed the grounds into my favorite drink in the world. All the sounds—the gurgling, the dripping, the low rumble—were the sounds of home. Rumy brought me a Styrofoam cup and some milk from the kitchenette, then left. I made my coffee exactly the color I liked, exactly the way I liked, but I put my cup down after just a couple of sips. It went cold on my tray.

  A few minutes later, Rumy popped her head around the curtain, smiling and expectant. “How was it?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Right on!”

  Then I dutifully spread my legs for her to do my IC.

  “Rumy,” I said. “Will I ever have sex again?”

  “Of course you will. We have quadriplegics who have sex again. There’s no reason why you can’t have sex. None.”

  This happened all the time. I would swerve off topic and Rumy would swerve with me.

  “But will I feel anything?”

  I closed my eyes. I couldn’t tell when the catheter went in or when it came out. “I’ll be honest with you,” I said, knowing that being a patient at Lyndhurst was like living inside a truth factory. “I used to be a pretty orgasmic girl. I’m not prepared to say good-bye to all that.”

  “I don’t think you have to,” she said. “It’ll just be more . . .” She looked up at the ceiling as if the word she was looking for were written there. “Psychological.”