“Push against my fingers, Mr. Harper,” Dr. Dunne instructs me.
He’s got his fingers positioned above the toes of my right foot. I’m supposed to lift my toes to resist him, but I can’t. I want my ankle to move, but it won’t obey me. My foot just dangles there.
“Push against my fingers,” he says again.
“I’m trying,” I say through my teeth.
Christ, what the hell is wrong with my ankle? Do I need to have surgery? I probably do. I can’t imagine this healing up on its own at this point.
Then Dr. Dunne starts checking my sensation. He touches me everywhere with the edge of a cue tip, and I have to tell him if it feels normal or not. Then he touches me with the sharp end of a safety pin. This is all a waste of time. I’m glad my insurance is paying for this instead of me.
The doctor is touching me at the bottom of my foot. “Does this feel sharp to you?”
“No.” I barely even feel it, actually.
It’s strange, actually. I can see him poking me with the safety pin on my right foot, but it doesn’t feel sharp at all. What the hell is going on with my stupid foot?
When he’s done with the longest ankle exam in the history of the universe, Dr. Dunne folds his arms across his chest and gives me that look again. The one that scares the shit out of me. “It’s not an Achilles injury, Mr. Harper,” he says.
I shake my head at him. “What else could it be?”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” the doctor says with a thin smile. He can’t even bring himself to give me a real smile. Christ, this is bad. “What’s concerning to me is that you really can’t move your right ankle at all. You can’t flex it in either direction. And your left ankle is somewhat weak as well. It’s amazing you haven’t been falling.”
Okay, I lied to him about that. I have been falling. I fell twice in the last week. Usually it’s in a place where there’s carpeting, because that snags my foot. I end up having to take these giant steps with my right foot where I lift my knee very high to keep my toes from tripping me up. Anyway, they weren’t bad falls and I didn’t hurt myself.
“Also,” he adds, “you’re missing some sensation in your feet. Both feet. This is all very indicative of a nerve injury.”
“A nerve injury?” That doesn’t sound good. Although it doesn’t sound bad either, necessarily. I’ve played a lot of sports over my life, and I’ve had plenty of injuries. Usually they heal eventually.
Dr. Dunne nods. “Considering that it’s affecting both sides, my worry is that the injury is at the level of the spinal cord or higher. I’d like to start with an MRI of your spine and brain.”
“An MRI of my brain?” Is he kidding me? I come here with a messed up ankle and all of a sudden they’re getting a scan of my brain? What kind of doctor is this guy? I knew I should have followed my instinct and gotten the hell out of here when I realized he wasn’t an orthopedic surgeon.
“Yes,” Dr. Dunne says. “As soon as possible. Depending on what that shows, we may need to do further testing. But in the meantime, I’m going to send you to a physical therapist.”
“Okay,” I agree.
That I’m on board with. I saw a PT after a bad hamstring injury in high school. It’s all about getting better. And I will get better.
Chapter 9: Anna
Doctors’ offices are my own personal version of hell.
I haven’t been to the doctor since I was forced to get a physical for my current job. So it’s been over six years. I don’t get sick though. Ever. It just goes to show that a bit of good hygiene really is the best offense against the common cold.
I wouldn’t be here at the doctor right now, except for the fact that when I woke up this morning, my right knee was very swollen. So severely swollen that I could barely walk until I spent twenty minutes icing it. I took 800 mg of Motrin and called to make an appointment with the person deemed by my health insurance to be my primary care physician. Dr. Lewis.
The thought of sharing a waiting room with a bunch of sick people is not appealing to me. I’ve heard of practices where the sick and the well have separate waiting rooms, but Dr. Lewis apparently does not believe in this. So I bring a facemask and gloves.
Everyone in the waiting room is staring at me with my facemask. Even though it’s fairly crowded, everyone takes pains not to sit near me, even though I’m probably the only person in this room who is not contaminated. I watch as one guy picks up a magazine, coughs all over it, then puts it right back on the table for the next unsuspecting person to pick up.
Why would they have magazines to share in a place where everyone is sick and contagious? This is why illnesses spread so rapidly on this planet.
A woman in scrubs, presumably a nurse, comes to collect me from the waiting room. She seems thrown off by my mask as well. I don’t, by the way, remove the mask when I get into the examining room, because God knows who the last person in this room was. They could have had Plague, for all I know.
The nurse gives me a kind smile as she holds up a sphygmomanometer. “I’m going to take your blood pressure. Okay, Anna?”
I never gave her permission to call me Anna. But fine. I’ll pick my battles.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want that.”
She freezes. “What?”
“I don’t want you to take my blood pressure,” I say. I add, “It’s normal.”
The nurse plants one fist on each hip. “Well, how do you know that if you don’t let me check it?”
“Because my sodium intake is well below the recommended levels,” I explain. “And I eat a well-balanced diet with very little fat.”
The nurse studies me for a moment before recognizing that she isn’t going to win this argument. She sighs and sits down at the computer that’s been strategically placed in the corner of the examining room. “So you have a cold?”
I shake my head. “No. It’s my knee.”
She frowns. “So why are you wearing a mask?”
“I don’t want to catch anything.”
I can tell the nurse is thrilled to be done with me when she hands over a gown and asks me to put it on. I don’t bother to tell her that she’s out of her mind if she thinks I’m putting on some dirty gown that thousands of patients have worn before me. I’m wearing a skirt. Dr. Lewis will have no trouble examining my knee.
Dr. Lewis reminds me a bit of Matt—or at least, how Matt will look in twenty years, since Matt is far younger than this man. He’s effortlessly attractive, slim, athletic. He has kind brown eyes that are the same color as Matt’s. When he smiles, I feel my guard lowering. Although I’m still not going to change into a filthy gown.
“So, Ms. Flint, I hear your knee is giving you problems.” He raises his light brown eyebrows at me.
I nod. “My company at work is on the eleventh floor, and I think walking up and down the stairs is irritating it.”
Dr. Lewis’s eyebrows raise another several millimeters. “There’s no elevator?”
“Oh no,” I breathe. “I mean, yes, there’s an elevator. But I couldn’t get into such a small space with other people. I haven’t taken an elevator in years.”
Dr. Lewis looks at me. He frowns, but doesn’t say anything more. I watch as he reaches for a pair of latex blue gloves that he yanks from a box mounted on the wall. They make a loud snapping noise as he adjusts them on his hands. I cringe as I realize what’s about to happen. He’s going to touch my knee.
“No, don’t!” I gasp as his hand comes within half a foot of my kneecap.
He startles. “Ms. Flint…”
“No,” I say more firmly this time. “You can look, but don’t touch.”
“I promise I’ll be gentle…”
“No.”
I don’t add that nobody has touched me in five years, and he will not be the first.
I have to hand it to Dr. Lewis. He studies my knee carefully, watches me as I flex and extend my leg, and has me point to where it hurts the most. He asks me one more time if I’m
certain that he isn’t allowed to touch it. I’m certain.
“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” he finally says. “It’s hard to tell what’s going on without actually, you know, touching it, but I wouldn’t worry. I’d just keep icing it and take Naprosyn twice a day.”
“And if it doesn’t improve?”
He smiles crookedly at me. “Would you consider an MRI?”
An MRI? Doesn’t that involve lying in a tiny tube for a prolonged period of time?
“I would not,” I inform him.
“Didn’t think so.” He gazes at me with those kind brown eyes. “Well, you’re young. I’m sure it will get better. Especially if you cut back on the stairs.”
Dr. Lewis is quiet for a minute then. I know what he’s thinking about saying. This is the inevitable part of every doctor’s visit. But I hope that he doesn’t say it.
“Ms. Flint, do you see a psychiatrist?”
Doctors. They are so predictable.
And now you know why I don’t go anymore.
Chapter 10: Matt
I’m doing physical therapy at a Sports Medicine center a short drive from my apartment. Dr. Dunne still hasn’t given me a good idea what he thinks is wrong with me, but considering it’s my ankles that are bothering me, a sports place seems appropriate. Although when I walk over to the reception desk at the entrance to the large gym, I can’t help but notice that most people doing therapy are at least a generation older than I am.
My physical therapist is a woman named Kelly, who meets me at the reception area. She’s nearly as tall as I am, and probably twice as strong. Really, I’d be scared to arm wrestle this woman, because she might actually beat me. And I’m no ninety-eight-pound weakling.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Harper,” she says as she encloses my hand in an impressive grip. “May I call you Matthew? Or Matt?”
“Matt’s fine,” I say.
I follow Kelly across the gym, doing my damnedest not to trip and fall. That wouldn’t look good on my first physical therapy appointment. Luckily, we don’t have far to go. She leads me to a bench and has me take a seat in front of her.
“So I got the paperwork from Dr. Dunne,” Kelly says. “Sounds like your ankles have been weak, but they don’t know exactly why yet.”
“Right,” I say. “I really thought it was my Achilles tendon though. Honestly, I still do. One of my friends ruptured his, and he said his ankle was weak from that. But Dr. Dunne says I’m wrong.”
Kelly grins at me. “Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time a doctor’s ever been wrong. Let’s take a look, huh?”
She starts out with an exam. She does a lot of the same strength testing as Dr. Dunne, and even starts measuring how well my ankle moves with one of those angle-measuring devices that gives me flashbacks to high school geometry class. Just like with Dr. Dunne, my right ankle doesn’t move much.
As a finale, Kelly has me walk across the entire gym. And it’s a really freaking big gym. Lately, I’d gotten into the habit of grabbing onto things when I walk, and generally walking less, so it’s surprising how unstable I feel when I’m walking out in open space. It’s embarrassing, considering there’s a guy who’s about seventy walking on the other side of the gym and doing a hell of a lot better at it than I am. About halfway through my walk, Kelly starts following me. Which turns out to be a good thing, because a minute later, I trip over my toes and almost go flying.
“Jesus,” Kelly comments. “You almost fell.”
Yeah. No kidding.
I scratch at my head. “Um. I don’t usually… well, it’s gotten maybe… a little worse.”
Kelly raises her eyebrows. “Do you fall a lot?”
I drop my eyes. “Well, sometimes.”
“What do you do usually?” she asks me. “Hold onto things when you walk?”
Christ, how did she know? I nod.
“Look, I’m going to be straight with you, Matt,” she says. “You’ve got zero strength in that right ankle. Nada. My recommendation would be to get a brace for that ankle.”
“A brace?” I frown. “I already ACE wrap it…”
“I’m talking about a plastic brace,” she says. “Something that will give you real support and keep you from tripping over your toes. It’s called an Ankle Foot Orthosis, or AFO for short. You could probably use one on your left ankle too, but we can hold off on that. For now.”
I shake my head. “I don’t get it. I’m supposed to be getting better. All you’re talking about is putting some stupid braces on my ankles to keep me from tripping. How is that supposed to get me better?”
“It isn’t going to get you better,” Kelly says, flicking her eyes down at my legs. “It’s going to keep you from falling down a flight of stairs and breaking your neck. Then if you start regaining strength, we can wean you off the braces.”
“When I start regaining strength,” I correct her. “I mean, listen, I’m only twenty-six. I’m going to get better. What the hell do you people think is wrong with me?”
The way Kelly is looking at me gives me that same terrified feeling that I had back in Dr. Dunne’s examining room. I want to shake her and beg her to tell me the truth—tell me what she thinks is wrong with me. But then again, maybe I don’t want to know.
“I’m sure you’ll get better,” Kelly says with a very phony-looking smile. “But in the meantime, let’s get you measured for that AFO.”
Chapter 11: Anna
You’ll be happy to know that I’ve figured out the solution to my knee problem. No thanks to Dr. Lewis.
My whole issue is that I don’t want to be in the elevator with other people. I can handle it if I’m alone in there. Not that I enjoy being in an elevator under any circumstances—it does somewhat resemble being in a coffin while standing up. That said, as long as I’m not breathing the same air as other coworkers, I can endure the ride.
The solution therefore involves staying at work until everyone else has already headed home. By six, the office is generally quite empty. By seven, I’m nearly guaranteed to have the elevator to myself. Occasionally, I’ll need to let a car pass me by, but usually if I stick it out, I’ll get one to myself. The only alternative would be to wear a facemask in the elevator, but I suspect that won’t go over well.
The double bonus to this is that I can use the extra time and solitude to clean my cubicle. Not that it wasn’t clean already. But I used to do a bit of a rush job, because I recognized that wiping down my entire workstation with Lysol every day wasn’t helping the Crazy Anna situation.
Fortunately, now that I’m staying late, I can completely sterilize my cubicle without fear of my coworkers whispering about it behind my back. And I’ve cleaned a few of the others while I’m at it. For example, Jim in the next aisle always leaves empty cans of Diet Coke on his desk and it drives me crazy—I have to dispose of them. Or Melissa at the end of our row always has at least half a dozen balled up tissues on her desk, which baffles me considering that there’s a perfectly acceptable trash bin under the desk.
Matt took forever to leave today. In general, I don’t mind so much if Matt sees me do my Lysol routine. He caught me at it a couple of times and he just smiled at me—not in a teasing way like he’s making fun of me, but in a friendly way. Once he even asked if he could help. He’s the only person I don’t mind cleaning in front of.
Ever since Matt brought me my groceries that day in the parking garage, I’ve been longing to speak to him again. I wish I could be friends with Matt. I wish I could sit in the break room with him and have a conversation. I keep trying to think of things that I might say to spark a conversation, but whenever I’m near him, all those phrases sound inane and I start to panic at the thought of talking to him. I’m not skilled at small talk. Or really, any kind of talk. So all I can do is smile back at Matt when he smiles at me.
Today is different though. Today I heard Matt sneeze at 3:57 in the afternoon, so I am definitely going to have to wipe down his cubicle too. And while he might allow
me to do it if I asked, the thought of actually asking him is nearly unthinkable to me.
Once the coast is clear, I enter Matt’s cubicle cautiously. It looks a lot like mine, except that it doesn’t have cans stacked on the side. He keeps it tidy, especially compared with some of his coworkers—there are no empty cans or balled up tissues. There’s no trash at all. There is a coffee cup ring next to his mouse pad and a small stack of papers pushed against the cubicle wall, but that’s the only sign that someone has been working here today.
I notice for the first time that Matt has two photos tacked to the wall of his cubicle, and I spend a minute studying them. One of the photos is of an older couple that I assume must be his parents. He favors his mother more than his father—I see his smile on her face and they have the same kind brown eyes. There’s also a photo of Matt with some friends of his wearing heavy coats and holding skis on what appears to be a mountain of snow. Matt is grinning at the camera and looks like he’s having a great time. I don’t think I’ve ever looked as happy in a photo as he does in that picture.
I notice that the photo of him with his friends is hung slightly crookedly. It is clearly rotated at least fifteen degrees counterclockwise. How could he not notice such a thing? I reach out my finger to straighten out the photo when I hear a voice say:
“What are you doing?”
Chapter 12: Matt
I’ve got an MRI scheduled and I’m running late.
I’ve never had an MRI before and I’m nervous. Apparently, it’s not fun. Calvin had one of his shoulder, and I remember he told me that you go in this donut hole, and there are loud clanging noises all around your head. He said he had needed earplugs. And a sedative.
The part that bugs me is that I’m not getting an MRI of my ankle, even though that’s the part of me that’s not working right. I’m getting an MRI of my back and my brain. Dr. Dunne is convinced that’s where the problem is, no matter what I tell him.
It freaks me out enough that there might be something wrong with my back, but the thought of something being wrong with my brain really scares the shit out of me. Does he think I have a brain tumor? It’s the only thing that comes to mind. And if that’s the case, then what? I mean, a brain tumor is fucking cancer, right? Do I have cancer? I had a classmate in high school who had cancer and she ended up going through chemotherapy and lost all her hair and was really sick for a long time.
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