"Not that easy, is it, Falco?" Craig laughs as I grunt, bringing my foot down to the floor from a sitting position.
"Holy shit," is my response.
"It'll get easier. Don't worry," he says with a wink.
I shake my head. "This is crazy, man."
After a half an hour of baby exercises that render me a weakling, Craig locks up my brace and tells me to take thirty minutes in the chair.
"I hate that chair, Craig. Can't I just sit in a regular chair?"
"You need your leg extended; the wheelchair has that option. You're not alone. Ninety percent of the people here are in one at one part of the day or the other. Grow a pair and sit in the chair."
I crutch my way over to the forsaken chair and sit my ass down. "Now what?"
"Well, since you like to do things for yourself, roll yourself over to the rec room. I'll bring you breakfast."
I nod and wheel myself out of the room, down the hall, and into the rec room, where Rose is sitting at a table alone, her breakfast tray in front of her.
"Mind if I sit?" I ask her, rolling up to her table, positioning myself directly across from her.
She lifts her eyes and looks me dead center in mine, but then casts them back on her lap.
"I'm Ben. I hear you’re Rose. Pretty name."
Rose looks at me again, but quickly casts her eyes back down.
"Whatchya reading?" I ask, noting the paperback book lying face down on the table next to her tray.
She doesn't look up this time. Okay. I'll leave her alone. Since I'm in here with nothing, waiting for Craig to come in with my breakfast, I wheel over to the bookshelf, grab a pack of cards, roll back to Rose's table, and play Solitaire the old-fashioned way. The way my father showed me.
Ten minutes later, a guy in scrubs comes walking over with a tray of food. "Are you Ben?"
I nod once. "Yup."
"This is for you. Craig said take an extra ten minutes."
"Sure. Thanks."
I continue to play Solitaire while I eat my runny scrambled eggs, fruit cup, and minuscule bagel. At least there are snacks in the fridge. This is not nearly enough food for me. I win my game of Solitaire and place the deck down on the table. "I'm getting something from the fridge," I tell Rose. "Can I get you anything?" Now I know she doesn't speak, but she doesn't know that I know, so it'd look unnatural if I just ignored her and didn't speak to her at all.
As expected, she doesn't respond with words, but I'm sure I saw the slight shake of her head telling me no, she didn't want anything. So she can and will communicate, no matter how slightly. I'll just have to be patient with her.
In the fridge, there are apples, oranges, pears, cups of pudding and Jell-O. Not quite the breakfast of champions, but the pudding will do. I grab three puddings - one chocolate, two vanilla. I take two spoons off the adjacent counter, put the stuff on my lap, and roll back to the table.
After I put the cups on the table, I push a vanilla and a chocolate cup toward Rose and place a spoon on her tray. "Your choice," I say with a wink.
Her eyebrows dip and she eyes me warily.
"Who doesn't like pudding, right?" I open up the extra vanilla and start eating. "Better hurry up, I'm almost done, and then you're not gonna have a choice. You're gonna have to go with the one I don't pick."
Her eyes roll, but the corner of her mouth lifts. She wants to smile. I know she does.
I stick the last spoonful in my mouth, and after I swallow, I say, "Uh oh. You ran out of time."
Teasingly, I move my hand across the table to grab one of the pudding cups, but before I do, I see her hand furtively move across the table toward the chocolate cup. Her hand stops before it reaches it, and she pulls her fingers back, balling them into a loose fist. Smiling to myself, but being sure to keep that smile hidden from my face, I push the chocolate pudding closer to her. "It's yours. I like vanilla better anyway."
Rose quickly drops her hands to her lap and her eyes follow.
She's looking down when I say, "I know it's only pudding, but what'd it ever do to you?"
Her chest jumps and her mouth pulls in, the way it would if she was holding back a laugh. I refrain from commenting, because I don't want to embarrass her, but I think I made the sweet girl chuckle. I finish my second cup of pudding, and I notice her looking at the pudding every once in a while, but I don't force it. I want to be her friend, and a friend doesn't make another friend feel uncomfortable, so I keep quiet. When Craig comes in to tell me my time is up, I say goodbye to her. But as I'm wheeling away, I turn to her and say, "Now don't disappoint that poor pudding cup. All he wants to do is make us hungry folk happy." I roll myself toward the door, and before I exit, I turn and notice her dainty hand reaching for the chocolate pudding. Yes. I made progress and it's only day one.
5
ROSE
I am so embarrassed. The cute boy who was staring at me yesterday sat at my table today.
Why?
At first, I thought it was so he could get a better look at the freak with the missing leg and a huge scar on the left side of her face. But then, he didn't seem to look at me at all. I mean, he didn't stare at me at all, and he only looked at me if he was asking me a question. A normal question. He didn't seem to even notice the huge red scar that starts at my forehead and travels down the length of my body. Not that he'd see the scar past my neck, since my clothes cover the rest of it, but I didn't see his eyes roam toward the left side of my face at all.
The pudding cup in my hand is still cold. Why did he get me a pudding? I wanted to say thank you. I did. But...I couldn't. If I talk, I will break. And I will feel the pain all over again. And then I will want to die...like I should have the day that truck hit me. When it sliced me down the left side of my body with its jagged metal undercarriage and sealed my fate by severing my left leg right beneath my knee. So I would never dance again.
I don't remember the accident, and the only thing I've been told was that the undercarriage of the truck had been rusted and falling apart, leaving a sharp, jagged, metal weapon to sufficiently slice me up like a side of beef. My body-long wound, up to and including my severed leg, got infected because the antibiotic they'd fed me wasn't enough to kill the damage the rusted metal had caused. After waking from my two-month induced coma, sometime during that week, I'd figured out that my left leg was missing. I'd screamed. I'd screamed louder than I ever thought my voice could go. And then I cried out for my mother and asked her if I'd ever be able to dance again.
"I'm so sorry, honey." She shook her head. "You will never dance again. I am so, so sorry," my mother said again, crying into my shoulder as she attempted to comfort me.
That was the first time I'd wished I were dead.
And I've been praying every night since then that the infection would come back and claim me for good. But God hasn’t answered that prayer. For some reason, he wants me alive and suffering. For some reason, God hates me.
But today, when that boy – guy, rather – brought a pudding over to the table for me...little flutters came alive in my stomach. For the first time in over a month, I didn't want to die. For the first time in over a month, I didn’t hate God back. For a moment there...I actually wanted to thank Him. I actually wanted to smile.
When Nina walks in, I place the unopened pudding on my tray, alongside my other uneaten breakfast items. It's still hard for me to eat anything, because eating is prolonging living, so I eat as little as I can. However, the chocolate pudding looks really good. Too late though. Nina is here and ready to get my uncooperative butt moving. Which never happens, because I just stare at my hands the whole time she attempts to get me to cooperate. It always ends up that she moves my legs with her own hands. Nina usually pulls me out of the chair and holds me up, even though I know I can stand on my good leg.
I don't want to be disobedient. Again, it goes against my nature to hurt someone's feelings, and not obeying them, or even responding to them, is the same as hurting their feelings. I know
that. But as Dr. Rappaport says when he's rationalizing my behavior, "It's a normal reaction to such a life-changing event." Still...I should at least try to find the person I was before that delivery truck ended the life that I knew.
In the treatment room, Nina bends my good leg up to my chest and brings it back down. She does this about ten times before she reaches under my armpits and picks me up. I try not to give her too much trouble today, but the pain of knowing I can't do this myself is overwhelming, and I find myself slipping back in time again.
Four and a half months earlier, I'm on stage performing my solo at the Manhattan Dance Competition. Feeling inspired and at one with the stage, I begin dancing my solo, which includes my favorite, the fouetté, and end it with another favorite of mine, the fouetté jeté.
"Rose. Snap out of it, sweetie, c'mon." Nina's voice punctures my daydream, and just like that, I'm back here in my chair. "C'mon, Rose. I thought for once you were working with me, and then all of a sudden, you went into that place again. Stay with me, girl. I know you're in there." Nina sticks her arms underneath my armpits again, and this time, I use what little strength is left in my right leg to push up and onto the floor. "Thatta girl."
I'm standing on one leg. Nina instructs me to put my hands on the parallel bars on either side of me. For a moment I contemplate whether I really want to do that, but then some warm fuzzy feeling overcomes me and I do as she says. I put my hands on the bars, and she lets go of me.
"That's good, Rose. Now use your upper body to move forward. You'll have a prosthetic leg soon to help you along, but there will be times you'll need crutches to move. We want to keep your whole body strong."
A prosthetic leg? Crutches? See, these are the things that bring me down. Bring me back into my hole. I can't get past them and accept that this is my reality. This is when I want to curse God all over again for allowing this to happen to me. Nina keeps nudging me to move forward, but I don't. Instead, I stare ahead and try to slip back into my past, because that's where I feel safe.
6
BEN
It's been two days since the pudding incident, and I haven't seen Rose since. When I ask Lou if she knows anything, she says that she does, but she's not at liberty to share that information with me. So I ask Craig, who's not so much about the rules.
"Falco, man," he says, "you gotta promise me you won't say anything to anyone."
"Of course not," I promise. "I just want to know if something happened to her?"
He nods. "She had some kind of breakthrough."
"Breakthrough?" I interrupt. "That's good, no?"
"I don't know. Yes, I guess, but it was more like a breakdown. They put her in a private room, because her crying was disrupting her roommate. She was screaming all night."
"Why? What happened that caused that?"
Craig shakes his head. "I don't know her whole deal, but since she's been here, she's been like this zombie. Just stares at the walls. I mean, not all the time. Sometimes she's here in this world, but mostly, she's not."
"Really?"
"Yup. I told you how she doesn't speak, right? Well, that's the other part - her zombie-like state. But Nina, her therapist, thought she was getting through to her two days ago. She actually stood up on her own, which she hasn't done ever. But then, she started to turn into that zombie girl again, and then boom. I heard she started screaming. Not sure what triggered it, but I hear that even though she's been non-stop crying, her psychiatrist said it's a breakthrough. Her accident is finally sinking in. But...I don't know. She's a strange one."
Strange? I don't think so at all. I think she's just depressed. "She lost her leg, dude. I don't think I'd handle that well either."
"Yeah. Guess you're right."
"Damn right I'm right. I don't think I could handle losing one of my legs. And never be able to play ball again? No way. Her whole life changed because of this. I mean, I don't know how active she was before, but I'd guess that even going to the mall with her friends is going to be different. No?"
"No, man, you're right. I get that. I didn't mean anything by it. God, you like her or something?" Craig says with a quirk of his mouth.
"Like her? I don't know her. I just feel bad for her." Like her. How could I like someone I don't even know?
"Got it, man. You feel bad for her. Me too. Really, I do. I'm sorry I made it sound like I didn't."
I nod, silently accepting an apology that really needn't have been made.
"Let's get on with your therapy." Craig bends down and unlocks my brace. "I think we'll keep this unlocked for a few hours today. Get your knee moving a little more. Sound good?"
"Sounds great." It may not sound like a big deal, but when you can't bend your leg, you realize how necessary the knee is in getting around normally.
While Craig is guiding me through different exercises, he asks me if I’ve finally met my roommate Johnny.
"I did. He's cool. Happy guy, no?"
"Yeah. Very. He's so positive he'll walk again, you can't help but believe it too."
"Right? I feel guilty just being here. I mean, my injury is nothing. I could've done this from home, but my coach convinced me it'd be best for my career. I'm not like everyone else here, though. It's just..."
"Don't feel bad. You need to be here if you want it done properly. And hey, your insurance pays, so you might as well. Daily therapy is better than a couple times a week. Not everyone has permanent or severe injuries here. There are plenty of patients just recovering from surgeries. Stop knocking yourself."
He's right, but it doesn't help me feel less guilty about not being severely injured.
Craig continues running me through exercises, and when my hour is up, he lets me use crutches to walk to the rec room or the cafeteria. I choose the rec room, because I'm really hoping Rose will be in there today, and I highly doubt that she'll be in the cafeteria. I kind of doubt she'll even be out of her room, but I hope anyway. I scan the room as soon as I enter, but immediately learn she's not there. Not a redhead in sight. But I do see Johnny, so I hobble over to his table and pull out a chair. As I do, a burning pain shoots from my knee up my leg and I flinch.
"Hey, Ben," Johnny says, "you okay?"
My eyes are closed when I answer him. "Yeah." I pinch my eyes closed tighter before opening them. "Wow. Just a bad pain. I'm good." I sit down, set my crutches to the side and ask Johnny how he's doing.
"Good. Making progress in therapy, so that's always good."
"Yeah? Progress?"
"Yup." But he doesn't elaborate, and I get the feeling there was no real progress at all.
Again, my guilt kicks in, but I smile anyway. "That's awesome, Johnny. Great news."
"Yeah. So when you get that brace off?" he asks me.
"I don't know. Soon, I think." I lift my leg to show him my knee. "Got it unlocked today." But I feel like I'm bragging, so I ask about him. "So, you go to college?" I ask, not thinking if it was appropriate to ask or not. I mean, he is a quadriplegic; can he go to school?
But without missing a beat, Johnny says, "That's the plan. I'm a senior in high school right now. My accident happened this past spring, during my junior year. I get a lot of tutoring, so I completed my junior year. Hopefully I won't have to redo this year, since I'll be out the entire year most likely. So, in answer to your question, I don't go to college, but the plan is to go for engineering."
I raise an eyebrow. "So you're smart, I assume?"
He laughs. "Genius." Johnny takes a deep breath, as he does frequently between sentences. "Good thing my brain wasn't affected in the accident, huh?"
Nodding, I smile, not too sure what to say, so I ask, "What happened?" Hopefully it's okay to ask.
"Fell off a ladder, cleaning my mom's gutters." He shakes his head. "See what happens when you don't have a dad around. The loser left my mom and me, so I take care of everything for her." For the first time since talking to him, I see a frown on his face. But it's quickly hidden when he says, "That's why I'm going
to recover. She needs me. And she needs those gutters cleaned...I fell before I even made a dent in them."
Again, I nod, but this time he leaves me speechless. Literally, I don't know what to say, and he sees me fumbling.
"Dude. It's okay. I'm gonna be fine."
He's gonna be fine. It hits me the differences between his outlook and Rose's. What is it that causes such extremes in the mind? Why do some people face trauma with such optimism and some with such pessimism? How would I react in a similar situation? Fortunately for me, it's a hypothetical situation, but for Johnny and Rose, it's their reality.
"So, what about you?" Johnny interrupts my thoughts. "You go to college, right? I asked Lou. She said you're a big-time ball player?"
I laugh. "I play ball, yeah. Hunter Hill. Ever heard of it?"
He nods. "I have. Good school. Great engineering department."
"I've heard. I'm going for sports psychology. Love the mind. There's never a concrete answer to how it functions," I say, reminding myself that I may never know the answer to why Johnny and Rose react so differently to their respective circumstances.
"So you're pretty smart, too, I suppose."
Again, I laugh. "Not even close. But I do try hard."
He laughs with me, and then one of the aides comes in with a tray of food for each of us. "Anything you guys need besides lunch?"
"No, but thank you," I tell him.
"Yeah, thanks," Johnny says.
"No problem. It's why I'm here. Marti'll be in to help you in a second," the aide tells Johnny.
When he walks away, I ask Johnny, "Is everyone here super nice?"
"Everyone I've come across in the past month."
"You've been here for one month?"
"A month and a half." His frown reappears when he looks down at his food.
Reaching Rose (Hunter Hill University Book 3) Page 3
