The Miracle Girl

by Andrew Roe

  Later on today, there’s also a session with the little girl, one of her newer clients, the one who’s been on the news and causing such a fuss.

  “Good, Mr. Trujillo,” Linda encourages, “good. Keep it up. We’re almost done for the day. You’ll be trying out for the Olympics pretty soon, you keep going like this. You sure you’re eighty-­three?”

  Mr. Trujillo smiles. Or rather he smiles as best he can, more like his jaw shifting slightly, because of the stroke, his second, far more severe than the first, a common enough pattern. He lives in Anaheim too, near Disneyland, and on those rare clear days you can even glimpse the snowy Matterhorn from his driveway. He’s one of her favorite clients, most of whom are geris—all these poor folks getting older and older and their bodies letting them down. The agency she works for has a stat they like to throw around, about how many people are old and in need of care and therapy and how that number is likely to continue to grow in the new century. It’s what makes their business viable, her manager, Kyle, says. But Linda doesn’t think of her job that way. It’s just helping people. It’s helping the body, which helps the mind and so on.

  “Done with the leg stretches, Mr. Trujillo. You are on fire this morning. Let’s move on over to your chair and do your leg lifts and then we’ll be finished and you’ll have to miss me till next time.”

  Mr. Trujillo uses a walker and can no longer feed himself or go to the bathroom by himself without messy consequences; his wife, Esther, a woman as large and powerful as her husband is small and weak, cares for him and his every need; they have been married for far longer than Linda has been alive, longer than her own mother has been alive in fact, such permanence as rare as sincerity these days. Linda now helps him stand, guiding his frame gently and respectfully, and situates him in the chair, his favorite recliner, she’s learned, where he sits and reads and thinks and naps. Then she kneels and attaches the ankle weights on Mr. Trujillo’s legs and holds out her hand, indicating how high he should lift, three reps of ten for each leg (if all goes well). The body, Linda thinks as her client prepares for the regimen with a deep breath (just like she’s instructed him), tells stories. The body speaks. And she listens. She always listens to what the body has to say. And these things, these thoughts: she keeps them to herself. Not even Victor knows about them; he’d probably laugh; those kind of deeper textures are beyond him, and he’s the first to admit it.

  “Ready when you are, my friend,” Linda says, and Mr. Trujillo takes the cue and obediently lifts his left leg toward her outstretched hand, concentrating like he’s working on a math problem, sending thoughts and signals and requests to a body that’s no longer listening very well.

  Victor: Who hadn’t stayed the night last night (sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t, you could never predict) when she’d really wanted him to, badly, like a whiny second grader; she’d wanted the sheets to have the heat of two, not one, one was not enough to induce the kind of sleep—the contented sleep of contented couples living contented lives—that she longed for. It was a simple matter of saying it: Please stay. But she knew how he was, who he was, you didn’t need to be Miss Cleo to divine that faraway mood further insulating him the longer he remained, and there you had it once again: the distance of the male species, his desire to be gone, away, somewhere, anywhere but here. And even if he had agreed to stay, it would have been reluctantly, it would have been because he was doing his duty, serving his time so he could say no and be free another time, Victor half living/half not living there—something like that—one of those relationships you fall into because you are lonesome and rent too many movies and can only complain so much about the lack of prospective dating material without putting yourself out there every now and then, but one that surprises you, too, and becomes more than you initially thought. So she didn’t say anything. Although she pouted, which didn’t work, and massaged his shoulders as luxuriously as shoulders can be massaged, which also didn’t work, and which was then followed by a last ditch two-­fingered circling of the tender terrain between pubis and belly button. Nothing. His body was not listening. Which she internalized as a failure of her own. It had been a year now and she, the expert of touch and contact and believer in the holiness of the flesh, had not been able to make his body listen.

  Best, though, to focus on the here and now, today. There’s work to be done, other bodies that require her more immediate attention. After Mr. Trujillo (and she now has him switch to the other leg, telling him that they’re on the home stretch), there’s Alejandro, a paraplegic in Whittier, shot in the back, completely arbitrary, he’d been walking down the street on his way to pick up a prescription for an aunt (high blood pressure) and a car just pulled up, and then it would be the girl. The Miracle Girl, they were calling her. The one in the coma. Except it wasn’t a coma exactly, as she found out on her first visit to the house, which was out in some nowhere area she’d never been to or heard of, and when she arrived half an hour late the mother said not to worry about it, everyone got lost the first time and even after that, too.

  “No, it’s not a coma,” explained the mother, whose name was Karen and who had the permanently tired and half-­stunned, half-­sainted look of most caregivers. “Although that’s what every­one says, coma, because it’s easier that way. We all know coma. But it’s actually something rare that’s called akinetic mutism. Which basically means she can’t speak or move.”

  “Akinetic mutism, huh? Sounds like my ex-­husband.”

  Karen liked that one; they laughed, exchanged girly-­girl smiles, setting both women a little more at ease; as much as Linda was sizing up the girl and the situation, so, too, was the mother sizing up her. The incense, the army of miniature Jesuses and Marys, reminding Linda of her long-­lost Catholic schoolgirl days. She approached the bed and breezed her fingers across the girl’s arm, neck, forehead. So pale, so white. Like you could press a finger to her skin and leave a mark forever.

  “Just getting to know each other,” she told Karen, who liked that one, too.

  “Sometimes I squeeze her hand and I think maybe she’s squeezing back,” said Karen. “Sometimes it’s there, the feeling, just the slightest sense, and sometimes it’s not. Or I can’t be sure. It’s hard to tell.”

  The girl’s eyes were open, seemingly seeing everything, which was pretty freaky. It would take a while to get used to that. Other­wise it was like she was asleep. Unaware. Or so it appeared. The mother said that according to the doctors there was no way to be sure if she knew what was going on around her. But the girl looked so remote, so sadly still and lifeless, that Linda seriously doubted whether she was capable of understanding much of anything, let alone the situation, the growing whirlwind around her. They went over more of the details and arranged a schedule: twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Linda’s last available slots now filled.

  She checks back in with Mr. Trujillo: beads of sweat have gathered on his forehead, she notices, his mouth grown even more crooked, his lips visibly dry. So little requiring so much exertion. He’s a trooper, though, determined as hell. One of her geris: he won’t cut his fingernails, won’t brush his teeth. It happens.

  “That’s six,” she tells Mr. Trujillo. “More than halfway done. It’s all downhill from here, tigre. Four more to go.”

  The little girl, then, was definitely a change of pace. Her previous P.T. had lasted only a month. “It’s turning into a freak show over there,” warned Linda’s predecessor when she called to have the girl’s file faxed over to the office. “It wasn’t so bad when I started, you know, a few people stopping by from time to time and asking real polite if they could come in and see her and maybe leave some flowers or say a prayer if that wasn’t too much impositioning. But now since the TV, why you’ve got folks parading through the house all day long like it was the mall the day after Christmas. Quoting John this, Luke Skywalker that. Passing out right there in the poor girl’s room, some of them. Every time I was there there was something new: the girl appeared in s
omeone’s dream and then that person was no longer sick. There was this little blotchy thing on her neck, poor thing, probably just a regular old rash or some such, and they say, ‘Oh, the girl, she’s taking on the what, the side effects of the chemo this man was getting who visited and had cancer.’ One day they’re all standing around saying how the Virgin Mary appeared in the clouds over the house. So I go outside in the backyard and it’s just clouds, regular old clouds like always, and I said, ‘That’s clouds. You never seen clouds before?’ People see what they want to see, is what it is I guess.” And even the mother cautioned her: “It’s not for everyone, Mrs. Santiago, that’s for sure. It can be too much for some people. Why don’t you come out to the house and see for yourself and then we’ll take it from there.”

  Linda agreed to the preliminary visit, more to pacify the mother than anything else. She didn’t care about all the hubbub going on, the chismosas who claimed the girl conversed with God. She specializes in domestics and you had to expect the unexpected, though granted this was no ordinary client, and plus the commute wouldn’t be any picnic either. Still, when you got down to it, it was just another patient that required healing, another challenge for the curative magic in her fingertips. Already she’s started to think about what it will be like to get the girl’s body to listen. It might take time, sure, but eventually they will reach the point where they’ll be able to converse without words. Together they will master the silent language of the body. Of this she has no doubt.

  Mr. Trujillo has stopped his leg lifts, waiting for her to notice, Linda still thinking about the little girl, when Mrs. Trujillo walks into the living room. It’s nine forty-­five, the time when they finish. Their house is warm, cozy, filled with knickknacks and photos of children and grandchildren and a fierce, full love that nothing—not strokes, not death—could ever destroy. What would it be like to have that kind of love? Would it simply make her heart explode? Would it render her as speechless and motionless as the little girl?

  “How’d he do?” Mrs. Trujillo asks, wiping her hands on her apron. Always cleaning, washing, something.

  “He did great,” says Linda, standing and packing the ankle weights into her backpack, gathering up her jacket and Mr. Trujillo’s file. The day is moving, one body down and two to go.

  * * *

  One morning, in the forty-­sixth year of the Westerfeld’s marriage, not long after Donald Westerfeld had retired from a successful career as a civil engineer, and right before the annual descent of the hectic and draining but also somehow rejuvenating holidays (four grandkids now, and counting), Patricia Westerfeld woke up briefly and then went back to sleep. This was unusual—unusual because Patricia awoke each morning at the same time with alarm-­clock efficiency, always bubbly and ready for the day right from the get-­go, Donald being the groggy, slow-­moving spouse in the morning. He got out of bed and let his wife sleep. Turns out, though, that this was a sign, a beginning.

  Patricia soldiered through Christmas, relegated to a supporting role for the first time in family history, the kids and Donald picking up the slack and letting her rest and camp out on the sofa. I’m just really really tired, she kept saying, but I’ll be fine, I’ll be all right, I just need to rest. And so she slumbered like a hibernating momma bear and profusely and repeatedly apologized and no one complained about the food or the poorly wrapped presents. After the kids and grandkids left and New Year’s came and went (no Dick Clark, no champagne) and it was 1999, Patricia continued to rest. Donald played solitaire on the computer, watched TV alone. Later he’d tell her about the shows she’d missed, doing his best to summarize and reconstruct and tell a compelling story, which he’d never been particularly good at. She said she was feeling a little better and he shouldn’t worry so much. And she did seem better: slept less, had enough energy to go on a hike and visit some friends in Santa Monica. But then she reverted back, had even less energy, required even more sleep. We should go in, he finally said, fearing that too much time was passing. I don’t know, she said, it might be nothing, I just need to sleep more, that’s what happens when you get old, Donald, we can wait until my annual checkup in May. He said, I think we should go in just to be sure.

  They went in. Questions, tests. Waiting. Blood work and scans and specialists. Referrals were made, appointments scheduled and rescheduled to accommodate the many doctors involved. More waiting. It could be this, it could be that. Donald surprised at the uncertainty and the time wasted as they waited. They cancelled bridge dates and a trip to Scottsdale, reconsidered the Mediterranean cruise planned for later in the year. They hit the Internet. Did countless searches, absorbed the results, tried not to get too frightened. Diseases you’d never heard of, obscure conditions that ravaged the body and mind. Then more tests. They went in again.

  And now, today, they huddle together in yet another doctor’s office, waiting for the new oncologist, supposedly a genius, highly sought after and known as the “Miracle Man” for the high ratio of his patients who made it into remission. Donald holds Patricia’s hands, which are cold and dry. Multiple magazines offer potential distraction, but they don’t bite. They are beyond the solace of celebrities and sports and recipes for butternut squash soup. They stare at framed pictures of the ocean and charts of the human body, all the organs and bones and so on that will fail you if you live long enough.

  The genius doctor enters and starts talking, no polite preamble. Donald hears the first few words and then everything else falls away; he’s seeing the doctor’s lips and mouth move but nothing more registers. The doctor’s young—too young, Donald thinks, to be delivering this kind of news. Over the years he’d imagined this scene many times before (sometimes it was him, sometimes it was Patricia), but always the doctor was old, wise, salt-­and-­pepper-­bearded, prominently balding, vaguely reminiscent of the actor Pernell Roberts, not from his Bonanza days but from Trapper John, M.D., where he played, surprise, a doctor. Donald wonders: Does anyone know who Pernell Roberts is anymore? Patricia’s hands seem to turn even colder, blood rushing away while it can, anticipating what is to come.

  Lung cancer. Lung cancer. Fucking lung cancer. She’s never smoked. Not once. How does this happen? This was not right. This was not how it was supposed to be.

  The doctor’s voice returns and now Donald hears about stages and surgeries and statistics. It was possible to try A, or B, or maybe even C, and new treatments can always emerge, but that was about it, due to the late stage, how advanced and pronounced things were, it’s farther along than we’d ideally like, meaning our options are unfortunately limited, if it had been earlier, if there’d been earlier detection, well, we’d be having a different conversation, and as the doctor—who’s clean-­shaven, has a full head of boyish Adonis hair—recites all this he also flips through Patricia’s chart and keeps scribbling notes and tapping his foot, seemingly in two places at once in his head despite the gravity of the subject matter, his eyes careful to avoid theirs, as if eye contact would force him to admit modern medicine has its limitations like anything else. They needed to schedule a follow-­up visit once they’d made some decisions. There would be no miracles here.

  Five minutes. Five minutes and it’s all over, they’re done, they’re taking the elevator down and then walking through the parking lot, searching for the Lexus that was Donald’s retirement present to himself. Now it looks like a stupid car, like a stupid thing that doesn’t mean anything. This, Donald burns, thinking of the grim prognosis, this means something. He opens the door for Patricia, guides her in, buckles her seatbelt as if she’s a child. She remains silent for the entire drive back, the day appropriately overcast and gloom-­skied along the coast, clogged stop-­and-­go on Pacific Coast Highway, the traffic breaking after they escape downtown Laguna Beach and head into the canyon, where they’ve lived for decades, raised a family, made a life, a very good life, Patricia always saying how they’ve been so blessed, so lucky, so lucky, all these years.

  At home they don’t know what t
o do. Everything had changed, and yet here they are, in their house, the same house they left only a few hours ago.

  “It’s lunchtime,” he says. “Would you like something to eat?”

  Before leaving for the doctor’s appointment in the morning they’d forgotten to turn off the coffee maker, the house now smelling burnt and vulnerable.

  “No,” she says. “No thanks. I’m fine. I’m not sure what I want to do.”

  “You sure? I could make you a sandwich.”

  “No. I think I just want to sit. Let’s sit.”

  They retreat to the sofa in the living room. The curtains still drawn. Light leaks in from outside. He feels the weight of the moment and doesn’t know what to say or do. He feels it, the moment, in the temples of his forehead and deep in his chest, a sensation he remembers from when he asked Patricia to marry him, from when each of their children was born. He looks down at the coffee table and sees the newspaper he read yesterday. It’s a different object now. Transformed. The same pictures and words, yes, but they had been altered between the time they left and when they got back. He glances around the walls, the room, the hallway leading to the downstairs den where he sometimes napped and read U.S. News and World Report and biographies of dead presidents. He thinks of the backyard outside and the white gate and beyond that their peek-­a-­boo view (quoting the real estate agent who sold them the house) of the Pacific Ocean. This is where they live. This is their home. And yet it’s all different now. The carpet—it’s a color he no longer knew the name of.