Moving Forward in Reverse (3 page)

Lindy and Dr. Henrickson
cleared out to give my family and me a last moment of privacy, during which
they each took turns patting or kissing me.

Before anything else could be
said or done, a person wearing blue scrubs scurried into the room. He was a
small man, slight of build and meek of demeanor, and was, I realized with
presage, pushing a cart before him, atop of which sat yet another machine.

I grimaced.
Tell me you’re
not going to plug me into that thing, too.

He squared his cart beside
the cluster of machines arrayed to the right of my bed, earning mournful
glances from my family members who were still absorbed in memorizing my face.

As Jim, Nancy, and Don made
their reluctant way out of my room, Mom hung back. One hand rested on the rail
of my bed, a clear signal that she had no intention of leaving just yet.

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’
she assured the rest when they paused at the door.

Knowing better than to
dispute Betty Recoy, they continued into the hall, drifting out of sight and
earshot. When they had disappeared past the glass paneling on the wall, my mom
leaned into my line of view just as Dr. Henrickson had done earlier that
morning. I jolted at the ardency I found in her eyes as they met my own.

Riveted by the emotion pouring
forth from her face, I forgot the tubes and machines; forgot the little man in
blue scrubs and the hospital room; forgot everything except for the vehemence
of the woman – my ball-buster of a mother – facing me.

‘It doesn’t matter what
anyone else thinks is or is not possible, Scott,’ she said to me. ‘You’re going
to work hard and figure out ways to move forward.’

I stared, locked into the
crosshairs of her sight. The Commander in Chief was present and she had issued
a clear order. This was no time for messing around or indulging in ESPN and
round-the-clock care. I had my work cut out for me and she was going to see to
it that I didn’t slack off.

No argument here, Mom.
I lowered my eyelids once
with slow deliberation.

When she had decided that I
was smart enough to follow her meaning, she kissed me on the forehead and
strode from the room, her head held high and shoulders a tight line beneath her
bright floral dress.

I marveled as she disappeared
out of my view. After all these years, she could still take me down a few
notches.

‘Mr. Martin?’ a small voice
piped from my right. I craned my eyes in the direction of the petite man with
the new machine. ‘I’m going to start your dialysis treatment now.’

Right. Get strong enough to
transfer to rehab: Step Two. Produce urine: Step One.

Let the fun begin.

By my seventh day awake in
the ICU I was deemed stable enough to leave for the more exigent realm of
Rehab. I sat with the TV off, awaiting the arrival of the attendants who would
escort me on my journey to the Rehabilitation Unit. Before, I had thought not
knowing when this day would come was the worst. Now I knew that wasn’t true:
This
waiting was even more perturbing.

A strange twitching sensation
kept running through my body, as if my muscles were itching to move. I wanted
to leap up and do a victory dance, to throw punches in the air at my success,
to run laps around the ICU shouting my goodbyes to all the people within. The
day had finally come and I was as full of excitement and pride as a player
being exalted for having just made the winning goal.

~~~

The Rehabilitation Unit was
rectangular in shape; three doors leading to patient rooms on each end and five
on both sides. Some were open, others closed. I noticed there were no glass
walls here and the doors were made of solid wood.
So no more peeping eyes or
inquiring glances.

‘Good morning!’ I called out
to a woman in bright, Carolina Blue scrubs as I was wheeled past the nurses’
station. She smiled and waved to me, her fingers fluttering in the air as if
playing rapidly across the keys of a flute. The attendants steering my gurney,
veered us to the left and through one of the wooden doors that lined the walls:
my door
.

They situated me beside my
new bed and brought out the spine board to move me over. I was rolled to the
left, then settled back down, lifted slightly into the air, then deposited onto
the plush mattress of my new bed. They rolled me onto my side again and
retrieved their spine board before waving to Lindy and wheeling off to retrieve
their next patient.

Lindy walked over to a table
in the corner near the door and set my cassette tapes down. I scanned the room,
my eyes jumping from one light beige wall to the next. It felt strange to have
so much density around me. I was tempted to ask Lindy to close the door just so
I could see what it felt like to be hidden inside a room but quickly rejected
the idea.

Closing the door, as enticing
and benign as it seemed, was not to be mistaken for less than it was: a
slippery slope which could send me sliding backwards in my recovery process. If
I started trying to close the rest of the world out, I was only serving to
close myself in. No, the door would stay open. K
eep the door open and keep
the mind open,
I thought as Lindy drew the covers over my legs.

Before we could say anything,
a red-headed nurse in scrubs of the same blue which kindled thoughts of cold
water and clear skies sauntered into my room. Lindy smiled and greeted her
while I eyed this new addition to my life. To say that I had grown attached to
Lindy was a bit of an understatement. She had become a second mother to me in
my short span in the ICU. I would miss having her put me I my place and push me
when others thought to coddle.

As I looked the new nurse
over I measured her against Lindy, determining her qualifications based on how
she compared. She was younger than Lindy and her smile didn’t have the same
cunning edge that Lindy’s did. But she did have kind eyes, I’d give her that
much.

‘Scott,’ Lindy said, drawing
my gaze from the other nurse, ‘this is Amber, she’s the lead nurse in the Rehabilitation
Unit. Amber, meet Scott Martin. He’s a thirty-five-year-old smart-ass with
multiple amputations and severe deconditioning. Keep an eye on him and watch
out for that thing he calls his sense of humor.’ Amber laughed as I rolled my
eyes and tried to avoid cracking a smile.
Oh, Lindy, what would I do without
you to kill my reputation before I even have a chance to form it?

‘And make sure you keep after
him. He’s mighty lazy,’ she added facetiously.

‘That shouldn’t be a
problem,’ Amber replied. I wasn’t sure she had caught the tongue-in-cheek
aspect of Lindy’s quip. ‘We know how to coerce slackers into doing what we want
around here.’

Lindy snickered and patted
Amber on the shoulder as she passed on her way out. At the door, Lindy looked
back over her shoulder at me. Grinning, she winked and waved good-bye.

‘So, Scott,’ Amber said,
‘welcome to Rehab. Is there anything you need now that you’re here?’

‘Actually, yes.’ A smile
began to grow on my face at the thought of the things I could have now. ‘A cheeseburger,
please.’ Amber laughed, tossing her head back briefly so that the sound carried
to the ceiling.

‘All right, one cheeseburger
coming up. Anything else?’

‘Could you raise the head of
the bed up slightly?’ This would become a common request until I became strong
enough to do it myself. After a month of almost exclusively lying flat, I
longed for any change of position I could get.

She walked over to the right
side and used the controls to raise me until the head of the bed reached
forty-five degrees. When I was satisfied, she left to retrieve my cheeseburger
and I took the time to familiarize myself with my new surroundings.

The first thing I noticed was
the private bathroom in the corner.
Not going to get acquainted with that
for a while,
I thought glumly.

There was a vinyl, forest
green chair sitting at two o’clock from my bed and beside it a large,
south-facing window. Outside, the world was basking in the summer sun: windows
shining with its reflected light; trees casting dark shadows across the ground;
cars shimmering on the road below. Across the street, large, two-story family
homes stood in a line, the shadow of one falling across the front of its
adjacent neighbor.

I let my vision travel down
the road as if strolling along the sidewalk. I couldn’t remember a time when I
had been cooped up inside for this long. When was the last time I had felt the
warmth of the sun’s rays? The crispness of an evening breeze? When would I get
to feel such things again?

How I wanted to be outdoors!
The more I thought about it, the denser the weight of my longing and the air in
my room became. I may no longer have been at risk of dying in my sleep, but it
became terrifyingly clear that the rehabilitation of my morale was wavering far
behind that of my physique. I could hide behind sarcasm and humor, but in the
privacy of my own mind, I knew things were not as they should be.

I wondered which would be
harder to heal: my damaged body or my shattered spirit. Could you recover one
without the other?

~~~

As promised, Amber returned with a cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke
from the cafeteria. (
Mmm, real food.
)
I enjoyed the act of eating
so much I could almost forgive the fact that I still couldn’t feed myself.
Almost.

Amber patiently cut and transferred pieces of possibly the best
hospital-issue  cheeseburger ever made to my mouth, watched me chew and swallow
with the keenness of a toddler’s mother, then repeated the process. When my
meal was over and Amber had left me, I let out a loud, satisfying belch. I was
a little surprised by how well the sound carried, seeming to reverberate off of
the solid walls surrounding me.

‘Excuse me!’ I yelled out for the benefit of anyone who might have
heard. Audience or no, it was still worth getting that off my chest.

When the air had cleared, a man in a white lab coat appeared in my
doorway. He had dark brown hair without a hint of gray neatly combed to the
left and a two-day old beard masking the lower half of his dark complexion. I
gave him a quick once-over, mentally commending his Dockers. I fondly
remembered my usual high school social studies teaching and match day coaching
attire: a crisp button down shirt and tie with Dockers and polished shoes.

‘Hey there, Scott,’ he called as he walked the rest of the way
into my room. ‘I’m Dr. Molin, the head honcho here in the Rehabilitation Unit.
Mind if I chat with you for a bit?’

‘By all means,’ I said inclining my head towards him. He looked
about my room with his hands clasped behind his back as if he were eyeing an
elaborate sitting room. His eyes lighted on my collection of cassette tapes in
the corner. He sauntered over and idly began flipping through them, taking each
one out in turn to scan the cover.

‘So, rehab,’ he said, still looking down at the tapes. Seemingly
as an afterthought, he glanced up and smiled at me. ‘Welcome.’

‘Thanks.’ I was trying to get a read on this new doctor, but the
handful of words he'd shared and the fact that I approved of his taste in
clothes were too little to go on. As far as I was concerned, Dr. Henrickson had
left big shoes to fill.

He went back to the tapes as he continued speaking. ‘The goal of
rehab is to prepare you for prosthesis to be fitted, to learn how to use them
competently, and, ultimately, to get the hell out. Is this a Jackson Browne tape
I see?’ He laughed to himself, holding the tape up so I could see its cover.

‘Sure is. You a fan?’

‘Yeah I am.’ Affectionately, he lowered the tape back to the box,
then resumed his perusal.

‘So you were an athlete before coming here, right?’

I nodded, recoiling from his use of the past tense.

‘Good, then you should have no problem accepting a training
regimen. But you may be bored. Oh, look at that! You’ve got Steve Miller and
Boz Scaggs in here, too. Very nice. So what injuries have you had and rehabilitated
from in the past?’

‘As a teen I had two knee surgeries.’ He nodded along as he kept
rifling through my tapes.

‘Well, that’s good. You’ve been around the block so you know the
drill pretty well. This’ll be like recovering from your knee surgery except
longer and harder. Think you can handle it?’

‘Yup.’

‘Now wait a minute.’ His right hand withdrew another cassette from
my box. ‘What is a white guy from Wis-con-sin doing with a funk tape?’ he
asked, mocking the Midwest accent as he drawled, Wis-con-sin. ‘Are you lost,
white boy? Look at this! You’ve got Wild Cherry... and War, too. Yup, your
compass is definitely off.’

‘I love funk! There aren’t many of us, but some Wis-con-sin-ers do
have taste,’ I quipped back, exaggerating the slow drawl and enunciated ‘ah’ in
Wisc
ah
nsin to mimic him.

‘Could’ve fooled me,’ he retorted. ‘You may be the hippest
Wisconsiner I’ve ever met.’ Abandoning my tapes, he walked over to the foot of
my bed, crossed his arms, and asked, ‘Now, Scott, how are you handling the
amputations?’

The quick change in the tone of the conversation brought me up
short and left me grinning dopily like Lenny in Of Mice and Men’ I was still
busy playing mental cat-and-mouse before his words registered and I realized
the game was dead. I blinked and swallowed, straightening my lips into a firm
line.

‘Scott, you’re handicapped. And pretty bad, too.’ I swallowed
again and looked self-consciously down at my body; saw the points where my arms
ended much too soon and the sag in the blankets where my toes should have been,
all laughter forgotten.

‘It’s okay if there are days you don’t want to work or speak with
anyone.’ He paused, allowing the words to sink in. When the silence had lasted
long enough for it to not only sink in but to dissolve completely, I looked up
at him to see if he was expecting me to add to this part of the conversation.

When our eyes met, he continued, ‘You’ll need to come to terms
with that and the sooner you accept the prosthetics, the sooner you’ll move
forward.’

We stared at each other for a few breaths until I finally nodded
and glanced away again.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Molin nod to himself and turn
as if to leave.

‘Ah, do you like bagels?’

I frowned at him, still standing half-turned towards the door.
What was this guy getting at?
First he chats it up and jokes with me, then
he reminds me just how bad my new life can be, and now he wants to talk about
my taste in food?

‘Uh, sure?’ I replied.

‘Good.’ He faced front and marched through the door. No
explanation, no follow-up nor uplifting pep-talk after all that.

Welcome to Rehab.