I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine, I wanted to say even though there was something obviously wrong with my feet. I thought about Rumy saying she could tell that I couldn’t feel the ground. It was true—I still couldn’t, not really. I didn’t know how much I was faking, how much of what I was doing was based solely on memory, how much was real. I could feel very clearly the buzzing and static, so the problem wasn’t that I couldn’t feel something—the problem was that I felt too much. I learned that the profundity of touch was in how little one needed in order to feel with intensity. This constant jackhammering in the soles of my feet drove away all sense of lightness. What if the loss of touch was connected to my loss of self?
I zeroed in on oxfords because they seemed both fashionable and practical. I opted for color—the brightest I could find. Maybe it was because I was sick of wearing only funereal shades, or maybe it was because I suddenly remembered a neat trick from my days as a young music director at camp. I was a terrible piano player, but it was my job to play the national anthem every morning. I hit a stunning number of wrong notes. While I tried to get my nerves and my fingers under control, I would scream through the dining hall window to the bewildered campers below: Just keep singing! Finally, one of the lifers from camp—a man who had seen it all, fixed it all, and was also a brilliant self-taught pianist—told me that when I hit a wrong note, I should hit it hard. “The harder you hit it, the more people will think you meant to hit it.”
I thought about this as I considered my shoe options. My eyes naturally went to the black shoes—You can never go wrong with black, I could hear people saying. But it takes real confidence to buy royal blue and cherry-red suede shoes.
“Did you also want to look at the pink?” the salesman asked me.
I looked at him carefully to see if he was being sarcastic or not. Although the pink did look tempting.
“A bit too novelty, don’t you think?” I said.
“Maybe a little. I think what you’ve chosen is perfect.”
“I think you’re right.”
Henry and I went to the front of the store to pay for them.
“What?” Henry asked me.
“What what?”
“You’re thinking about something,” he said.
“Nothing.”
But as I handed the cashier my Visa card, I had already made another decision.
Once back at Lyndhurst, I took a good look around my room. There were no flowers on my windowsill anymore. People had stopped bringing them, stopped sending them, even the movie star. The temporariness of the room had given way to a kind of uneasy lived-in vibe. No one flinched when they came to visit anymore. Friends waltzed into my room without having to be reminded how to get there. My parents knew the names of my nurses. The nurses knew the names of my kids; I knew the names of their kids. Watching me, beside my bed, was my wheelchair. I got out of bed, grabbed hold of my sticks, and, unsteady with anger, shoved my wheelchair into the corner of my room. I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I wanted to call the wheelchair pound to come haul it away. I suppose I could have left it to fester with the other wheelchairs that lined the hallway outside my door, but there was a part of me, even in my pique, that didn’t want to break any rules or get anyone in trouble. I considered looking in the binder I had been given upon admittance—the one that warned against smoking weed on the premises— for guidance, but it was a point of pride that I had never read past the first page. It was tucked into a corner of my windowsill—the spot that Kellan’s CPA folder used to have before Jeff tried to rip it in half.
My new shoes had gone home with my family while I had to come back here. The oxfords were like the pretty underwear my grandmother bought for me when I was two. In order for me to wear them, I needed to be an upright citizen, but even then, they had no place at Lyndhurst. The hard work happened in my bare feet. Out in the world, I didn’t yet trust myself in anything but my sneakers. I got back into bed and plotted my next move. Everything I needed to get me through those last weeks at Lyndhurst was there with me in my room. Everything I needed, and almost nothing I wanted.
•
At five P.M. on Halloween, my adrenalin surging in a way I hadn’t felt in months, I decided to leave. It was getting dark and the wind was picking up, but it wasn’t raining. I stopped at the nurses’ station to let them know I was heading out for a while and to request my meds before I left. It was three-quarters of a kilometer to Starbucks and back, and I was determined to make the journey no matter how long it took me, which was a hell of a lot longer than I anticipated. This was the first time I had been out at night unaccompanied, the first time I had walked with a purposeful destination in mind and not just around and around the grounds of Lyndhurst.
There was something familiar about this feeling. It didn’t take long for me to remember. When I was thirteen, my friend Judy and I routinely skipped Hebrew school after our mothers dropped us off. Never wanting to miss an opportunity to be dramatic, we climbed through the bathroom window, jumped onto the gravel below, and then simply wandered around for the next two hours. We were amazed that we never got caught, but also fantasized about the kind of trouble we would get in if we were. It was an exquisite kind of tension. I didn’t confess to my mother until long after I had graduated university and moved out. Those escapes were my first real act of rebellion. After almost thirty-four years, this was my second.
By the time I reached the first stop sign, my legs felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wasn’t even halfway to Starbucks and it was now fully dark outside and the wind was cold and relentless. I pressed on. Tiny goblins made some brief showings—a few princesses, a bear, a pumpkin-size child in a lion costume. I had enough energy to move around them but none left over to smile at their cuteness. I made it to Starbucks just as it started to rain, hard little pellets that felt like crushed ice. I was freezing.
With the excitement over, I wondered how I was going to get back to Lyndhurst. The truth was, I was exhausted. Dr. Zimcik had warned me against overdoing it now that I felt galvanized by the use of both my walker and my walking sticks, but I had dismissed her concerns. Now, with no one around to offer the kind of help that I would surely have refused if it were offered me, I realized I had overdone it. But I had no choice: I had to get back.
By the time I took up my journey again, the streets were packed with trick-or-treaters. Even without a costume, I felt that no one looked scarier than me. Hovering parents made careful-sure to cede the right of way to me and smile kind, sympathetic smiles as I passed. I was slower than the slowest toddler out there, the tortoise among a bunch of hares. We would all make it to the finish line and, unlike the fable, I would definitely get there last, but my triumph would be so much sweeter than theirs, those smooth-walking toddler fuckers.
The hood on my rain jacket was preposterously oversized. When I pulled it over my head, it fell right down past my eyebrows, meaning I had to tip my head almost all the way back in order to see. With my arms stretched taut as I held on to the walker and my head pitched as far back as it would go, I could have won the prize for best costume: I was Lurch from The Addams Family.
When I finally made it back to Lyndhurst, I was soaked through. My legs were buzzing madly, my running shoes were drenched, and the seat of my walker was dripping, but I was as happy as I had been in weeks. Forget best costume. I would gladly accept the prize for best performance by an actor pretending to be her old self.
PART THREE
the road home
16
Walking Papers
The next day, Hurricane Sandy knocked out the power all over Lyndhurst. Going to my windowless bathroom meant sliding the heavy wooden door shut and then sitting on the commode with my tiny black flashlight as my only source of light. Treadmill practice was canceled. I couldn’t take a shower because there was no hot water. I thought Lyndhurst would have been immune to a storm that originated so far away, but I was wrong. What could be stranger, I thought, than waking up in a dark ho
spital with a numb bum, alone, and yet still wondering what Dr. Zimcik will be wearing today?
The morning was shaping up to be useless anyway, so I decided to watch an already downloaded episode of Friday Night Lights. And then Dr. Zimcik walked in, the usual spring in her step strangely missing, wearing a corduroy teal blazer with a white T-shirt underneath and a pair of plaid pants, her only adornment a pimple right beside her mouth. Her hair didn’t look right, either; she kept touching it like she knew it didn’t.
“How are you today?” I asked. It was the first time I had asked her before she asked me.
“Wanna see my baby in her pumpkin costume?”
She pulled out her phone and showed me a video of her littlest one bobbing around their living room with a pumpkin hat and a big pumpkin body.
“Isn’t she so cute?! I mean, she’s SO cute!”
I laughed with her and nodded my head in agreement. Her enthusiasm made me love her even more.
“What are you watching?” she asked.
“Just a TV show.”
I was embarrassed, watching TV at ten thirty in the morning. I might as well have had rollers in my hair, wearing a threadbare robe, watching Let’s Make A Deal.
“I only have a few things on my agenda, and I’ll let you get back to your show.”
“Please don’t rush!”
“I want to increase your gabapentin.”
“Good idea,” I said. I couldn’t get the buzzing in my legs and bum under control, and it was driving me crazy.
“Also, I need to check the results of your UTI test.”
My bladder infection refused to go away.
“I cannot take one more blasted cranberry pill, Dr. Zimcik. I just can’t!”
“I get that, I really do. Also,” she said, lowering her voice, “I found you the name of a good acupuncturist. At least, I’ve heard she’s good.”
Dr. Zimcik was dubious that this was the right route to take, but I had been thinking about it ever since that funny little night nurse had suggested it.
“It’s worth a shot,” I said. “Honestly, outside of drugs, I’ll try anything to get my body to shut up.”
I was due to be discharged in a week and I wanted everything in place before I left. I was grateful that Dr. Zimcik understood this.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Rumy walked into my room with a staff member I hadn’t met before. I looked at both of them, wondering what was up, but only the new woman looked back at me. Rumy was staring at the floor. The new woman broke the news: I was being moved the next day, to a different unit on a different floor with different nurses, to make room for a new patient.
“I’m not at all happy about this,” I said, in a surprisingly calm voice.
“I know,” the new woman said. “But there’s nothing we can do.”
“With all due respect, I’d like to speak to the person above you.”
“This has gone all the way to the top,” she said, waving a hand above her head.
“Is there someone above you?” I asked.
“The executive director, but—”
“Who is the executive director?”
This new woman and Rumy said her name at the same time.
“Is she in her office now?” I asked.
“I think she’s in a meeting.”
“Where is her office?”
Rumy told me.
“I’d like her phone number, please.”
Rumy wrote it out for me, using the wall as her desk. I don’t remember the new woman saying good-bye, but quite suddenly she was gone.
“I’m not happy about this,” I repeated to Rumy.
“I know,” Rumy said. “Neither am I.”
How could this have happened? I wondered. Did I do something wrong? Was my music too loud? Had someone complained about me?
“Apparently, it’s someone very sick and they need this room,” Rumy said, as if she had read my thoughts.
But why my room? I wanted to ask. Why can’t someone else be transferred out of their room? Even as I thought this, I was shocked at how territorial I had become about this very temporary space, but over the past two months I had worked hard at making peace with my surroundings. I guess I had been more successful than I thought.
I was trying to figure out what to do when Dr. Zimcik and Dr. Emm arrived.
“We’ve been talking about this,” Dr. Zimcik said, word having traveled to her office quickly, “and we think it’s absolutely ridiculous to move you. We all do.”
Oh thank God, I thought. They’ll make things right for me.
“But there’s nothing we can do.”
There wasn’t much more to say after that. I called my friend Sheryl to tell her that Lyndhurst was kicking me to another floor and how upset I was about it.
“Can’t you just be discharged earlier?”
This sounded reasonable enough, but I lashed out anyway. “I’m not ready to be discharged earlier! I have more physio to do! I’m not leaving until November eighth and I’m not ready to go before then, thank you very much!”
“But that’s only seven days away, Ruth,” Sheryl said.
I didn’t want to hear it.
Sitting in my bed, after having watched four episodes of Friday Night Lights in a row, I wondered why I was fighting to stay. I thought of Jean-Paul, the sixty-something man I had had aquatherapy with on a couple of occasions. He would float in the water and only exercise when he thought the physiotherapist was looking. When he found out he was being discharged, he told me, “It’s too soon. I should be here at least another two weeks!”
I didn’t know what to say. For him, the pain of leaving seemed so much greater than the pain of staying, and yet here I was, acting the exact same way.
Two days after I was told I’d be moved, the executive director of Lyndhurst walked into my room alongside Rumy.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Ruth,” she said, “but it’s official. You’re being transferred to a new unit.”
But I’d had time to think and to make other plans.
“I want to be discharged today,” I said. “I’m ready to go home.”
•
“No. This is crazy. You’re not coming home today. Just . . . just no.”
I could picture Rich vigorously shaking his head through the phone. I understood his reaction. Up until that very morning, I had felt the same way. Over the past seven months, Rich and I had been incapable of processing anything quickly—not the tingling, the numbness, the deadness in my legs, the drunkenness of my feet, the diagnosis, the surgical outcome, the not-walking, the not-coming-home after surgery, the not-understanding how this tumor had been growing on my back for years and years. We had become used to being pelted with bad news. And now this hard left turn into an open field of freedom was just as shocking. Our brain chemistry had changed. We registered every opportunity, every surprise and change as bad.
“Rich, honey, this time the news is actually good. It’s going to be okay.”
The last time I said those words was right before I went into surgery, right before I said what I feared was a final good-bye to him. “I’m really ready to come home,” I lied. “I am.”
“When?”
“I just need to pack up my stuff. That’s it.”
I looked around my room at the container of Metamucil, three apples, a bottle of cranberry pills, bulk food snacks, writing utensils, my computer, notebook, books. I could literally sweep my arm across my countertop and push everything into an open bag and, along with the few clothes in my closet, I would be good to go.
“What about the rest of your physio?” Rich wanted to know.
“Dr. Zimcik said I could be an outpatient here until my official discharge date.”
“Will Amanda be your PT?” He loved her as much as I did.
“Sadly, no. She’s just for inpatients. She already dropped by and told me that I’d be working with Mitch. An Aussie guy, apparently very nice.”
“I don’
t like him,” Rich said.
I laughed. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
“How are you going to say good-bye to everyone?”
I had thought about this, too. “I’m not saying any good-byes until I’m finished here for good.”
“The kids are going to freak out.”
“That’s the best part! They’re going to come home from school and find me there!”
“They’re going to be so happy.”
“I hope so.”
“Ru?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“You’re really coming home.”
It is either a testament to our kids’ resilience, or a comment on the teenage brain’s facility to respond to stunning news in the most laid-back fashion possible, but either way, the reunion did not go as I had imagined.
“Oh. Hi,” Joey said, when he saw me sitting in the sunroom.
“Well, hi to you, too!” I said.
“Mom!” Henry said, not sure whether this was a crying moment or an I’m-in-trouble moment. “What are you doing here?”
“I got my walking papers, that’s what I’m doing here!”
“Good job,” Joey said.
“Would anyone like to hug me?”
They both did and then we let Ellen make snacks for all of us. We ate, we chatted, and then Joey went upstairs, Henry went downstairs, and the reentry process was over. I was back. That was all they needed to know.
For the next five days, I was infused with the same sense of adrenalin and euphoria I had felt after my surgery. No one’s life was better than mine. Bit by bit, all my prosaic little joys fell back into place. Dr. Emm had cleared me to drive, so I did that, every day, often for no other reason than that I could. I had to buy a shower chair from a specialty store, but even that didn’t bother me; I could still feel autonomy etched into the plastic molding. Henry laughed when I tried to leave his room at bedtime, calling good night over and over since it took me so long just to pull myself up from his bed, straighten out my feet, and maneuver my walker out the door, but I was home and I was happy and there was no need to rush. Ellen stayed on with us to help with the grocery shopping and cleaning and ferrying the kids home from school. But I was there every day when the boys came home, even though their joy at finding me exactly where they had left me that morning may not have been quite as joyful as mine at seeing them. My gratitude for even the tiniest of pleasures was infinite, my spirit indomitable; I’d come through this like a champ. I could do anything. I was an Amazon!
Walk It Off Page 17
