The Burn Journals (15 page)

She's back with what looks like a plastic lawn chair. She goes and puts it in the shower, which is connected to my room, and then comes back to get me. “Can you walk, or do you need some help?”

“Well, the circulation in my legs isn't so great when I don't have the bandages on, so maybe a little help.”

Lisa brings over a wheelchair to get me into the bathroom and then helps me into the shower chair.

Everything is going smoothly enough. Just as she's about to turn on the shower, she stops and asks, “Want to take off your boxers? You don't have to if you don't want to.”

“Oh no, I will.” I scoot up in the chair and push them off my butt and down to my ankles and then I kick them off and catch them in the air. She laughs.

“Ready?”

“Yup.” The hair down there is still growing back from when they shaved it for the graft sites. My penis looks small too, probably because it's so cold.

The shower is so nice and warm, but not too warm, and it feels so good falling down on my head, like warm rain. I close my eyes, suck some of the water into my mouth, and spit it against the wall, like I used to.

I wonder if they painted the bathroom at home. Did they get a new shower curtain? Did they cover everything up? God, I hope so.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, nothing, just enjoying the shower.”

“Is it too warm? Too cold?”

“No, it's just right, like the Three Bears.” She smiles. She sort of looks like Ellen Barkin, the actress in that sexy movie
Sea of Love
.

When I'm done, she takes me out of the shower and back into my room. I lie on my back while she wraps my legs in new Ace bandages and helps me into my Jobst garments.

Lisa says she'll come back a little later with some dinner and I say that sounds good, even though I sort of wish she'd stay.

“Do you need anything?”

“No thanks.” I hope she didn't hear my voice shake when I said that.

I watch
Entertainment Tonight
and part of
Current Affair,
and Lisa comes back with some dinner, chicken potpie, a carton of whole milk, and a container of vanilla pudding. It tastes almost exactly the same as the crappy food at Children's. At least some things stay the same.

Lisa says that I'm going to be on a schedule here and that I'm going to be responsible for going to the places I need to go and for making sure I get there on time. She's got a chart of all the day's activities on the door. I've got a lot to do. Every morning I get up and have a massage, that sounds good, then I have occupational therapy until ten, then physical therapy until noon, then lunch, and then school from one to four. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have a therapy session for one hour. That'll be fun. Lisa says someone will come to my room in the morning to get me up and take me to my first appointment and she says I should try and get some sleep because I have such a big day tomorrow. I just hope the night goes fast because I know that if I can get to tomorrow, I'll start to feel better.

There's a woman standing over me. She's got crazy red hair, like Medusa, and long Lee press-on fingernails that she keeps poking me with.

“Wake up. Wake up. It's time for your pills.”

“What?”

“It's time for your pills.”

“But it's not morning.”

“I know. It's time for your pills.”

“What?”

“Your pills. For itching. You're supposed to take them at midnight.”

“What?”

“Wake up and take your damn pills.” Oh God, she's mean. Her name tag says her name is Laurie. “I'm your night nurse. Now take your damn pills.”

She picks up two little gray pills between her fingernails. When the nails touch my hand, I get chills from my toes to my scalp. I take the pills quickly and roll back over and try to go to sleep. She's like Freddy Krueger with those things. Going to give me nightmares.

More knocking but now it's light, is it morning? I think it's morning. “Come in.”

“Hi, Brent.”

“Hi.” It's Rose.

“Get up and get moving. Time for your first day.”

“Okay.”

“Get up. Get up. Get up.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay.”

“Let's get you in the shower.”

“I took a shower yesterday.”

“Well, you stink and you need another one.”

I can't tell if she's kidding or not. I think she's not kidding. She's already unwrapping my bandages and taking off my clothes.

“So how'd you sleep?”

“Not very well.”

“Why not?”

“People kept coming in.”

“Oh, poor baby, you're in the hospital. That's what
people in the hospital do.” She's not a very sympathetic person.

The shower does feel pretty good. It's waking me up and I start singing a little tune I heard on the radio yesterday.

“‘Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky.'”

“Don't say that.”

“What?”

“Don't say, ‘Imagine there's no heaven.' That's sacrilege.”

“No, it's not, it's just a song.”

“No, it's not. It's sacrilege. Keep it to yourself. How'd you like it if there was no heaven?”

“Fine with me.”

“Oh, fine with you, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“How'd you like it if you'd died and found out there was no heaven?”

I don't know what to say to that. I never thought about it.

She says, “Oh, never mind. Get out of there.”

I get into some shorts and a shirt, but I leave off my Jobst garments and bandages because I'm going to get a massage. Maybe it'll be a bunch of hot chicks rubbing me down.

Rose puts me in a wheelchair and takes me out to the elevator and down to the basement. She brings me into a little room with a massage table and leaves me there.

“Don't get into any trouble.”

“Okay, bye, Rose.” She's a strange person.

There's nothing in here to look at, just blank walls, some drawers, and a few chairs. I guess I'll just sit here and wait. The door opens behind me. “Hey, are you Brent? I'm Gina. I'm going to be your massage therapist.” She's young, like twenty, and she's cute and short with a little blond crew cut.

“Hi.”

“So, we've got to get you out of those clothes and onto this table. How do you want to do that?”

“Um. I can get undressed. But then can you help me onto the table?”

“Sure.” After I'm up on the table, she gives me a little towel to cover up with and she gets out a tongue depressor and uses it to dab the Eucerin cream, like cold cream cheese, all over my disgusting purple legs.

“Hey, Gina?”

“Yeah, Brent.”

“Do you have to wear those rubber gloves the whole time?”

“Um, I guess not. Why?”

“I just hate the feeling of them on my skin. Is there any way you can do it with just your hands? That's how they did it at my old hospital.”

“Well, I don't see any open spots on your legs, so I guess it'll be okay.” I like her already. She takes off the gloves and starts rubbing the cream into my feet and ankles. “Tell me if I push too hard. I'm just trying to get the cream into your scars to soften them up a little.”

It doesn't hurt, this rubdown thing, but it doesn't exactly feel very good either. I was hoping it would be a little more, I don't know, sexy.

“Brent.”

“Gina.”

“You like music?”

“Sure.”

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?”

“No. Go ahead.” She's got a little boom box that she switches on and it's Extreme right in the middle of “More Than Words.”

“Hey, this is nice, I just lie here and listen to music while you give me a massage?”

“Yup. You're living the good life now, buddy.”

“I like your haircut.”

“Thanks, I just got it cut for a part in this play I'm doing.”

“Cool. What play?”

“Peter Pan.”

“Wow. Are you Peter?”

“Yup.”

“That's awesome.”

“Yeah, I get to fly around the stage and everything.”

“That sounds so cool. I'd love to try that.”

She's worked her way up to my thighs now, and when she works this one heavy scar on my left leg, her fingers move up and down the inside of my thigh. I hope I don't get an erection. Well, I'm definitely getting an erection, but I hope she doesn't see it. I wonder if she's thinking about that, about my dick, I mean. I wonder if she's thinking about how she'd like to reach up and play with my balls under the towel. Oh God, that would feel good.

Oh shit. I just glanced down and the towel is standing straight up between my legs. I hope she doesn't notice. How embarrassing. What did my friends used to say? Think about baseball and boners are gone? Okay, Wade Boggs is up to bat, and there are two out in the ninth inning, and the Red Sox are behind by a run. Oh and there's a guy on first base. Ellis Burks. That was cool when we met him at the baseball card convention. Was he Rookie of the Year? I can't remember. Okay, that's better, I think it's starting to go down now.

Gina asks me to roll over and does the back of my legs. When she rubs the really heavy bands on my shoulders and legs, they hurt. She has to rub the cream in to keep the scars from getting too rigid.

There's the one that stretches all the way from the inside of my ankle, up my whole leg, through my crotch, and all the way down the other leg. That makes it hard to spread my legs too far apart. Then there's the one that's over my shoulders, especially my right shoulder, that keeps me from raising my hand much farther than the top of my head. It feels like if Gina plucked the bands with her fingers, she could play a song. Hopefully, if we keep doing this, the bands will loosen up and I'll be able to move around better.

Gina's done and it's time to get dressed again. “So, Gina, do we get to do this every day?”

“Yup.”

“Good.” Looking at her again as she's wrapping up my legs, she really is a cutie.

Gina gets me all dressed and back in the wheelchair. I've got OT next, so we've got to go up to the fourth floor. She rolls me down the hall and into a big open room. There's all sorts of workout equipment, massage tables, a little girl lying on top of a huge red ball, a boy in a wheelchair who's tipped over onto his back, a big tall black guy with a metal ring around his head and posts connected down to his shoulders.

“Brent, this is Jodi. Jodi, this is Brent. Have a good time, Brent. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Gina.”

“Hi, Brent, how ya doin'?” She's got a big toothy smile.

“Fine, how are you?”

“I'm great. Are you ready to do some work?” There's something about her that reminds me of a children's television host.

“Sure.”

“Great! Let's get you into one of the back rooms and see where you're at.”

She rolls me by a bunch of other people in wheelchairs. I wonder if they can tell that I'm not one of them, that I don't belong in this wheelchair, that I'm just lazy.

Jodi takes me into a room and closes the door behind us. It's much, much quieter in here, and one whole wall is just mirrors, like an interrogation room on one of those cop shows. I wonder if there's anybody behind those mirrors watching me. Probably. There's probably a whole team of psychologists and psychiatrists behind those mirrors with big notebooks and cameras trying to figure out what's going on inside my head. I'm not going to say anything while I'm in here.

“Brent, I'm going to check your range of motion and then we're going to go outside and test your strength.”

I don't say anything. I bet they're getting frustrated back there. I bet they're wondering if I know that they're there. Yes, I know you're there. You shouldn't put me in a room with mirrors on the walls and expect me not to know you're back there watching me. I'm not stupid.

Jodi's stretching me, checking my passive motion, and I'm staring right at the mirror. You're all trying to figure out what went wrong inside my head. Fucking idiots. You'll never crack the code that's inside my head. You'll never get into my castle. You'll never even get past the gate.

“Brent, what are you thinking about?”

“What?”

“What are you thinking about? You were making some strange faces there for a second.”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Really? Okay, we're all done in here. Let's go out into the main room. So, what are some of your goals while you're here?”

“Um, what do you mean?”

“Well, what can't you do now that you want to be able to do when you leave?”

I can think of one thing, but I'm not sure I should tell her. Should I tell her? Okay, shit. “Well, one thing is, I've got this chance to meet Magic Johnson in a couple of months, and it might turn out that he wants to play some basketball. So, I'd like to be able to play basketball. You know, like jump and stuff.”

“Oh yeah? That's a great goal. We can definitely work toward that. I'd also like to work on getting some better range of motion in your arms, especially your right side.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. And we'll also work on strengthening. How's that sound?”

“Good.”

“Great.”

God, I can't wait to get back to my room and watch TV.

Lunch is okay. Turkey sandwich and a carton of milk. I'm watching
The Price Is Right
. Isn't it funny how nobody can spin the wheel just hard enough to get exactly a dollar? It must be hard to judge how hard to pull on that thing. Jesus, somebody else is knocking at my door. Who is this guy? He must be a psychologist. He's got a beard and corduroys and one of those sports jackets with the patches on his elbows, the only thing he's missing is a pipe. He looks like Donald Sutherland. As if Donald Sutherland were playing Freud in a TV movie of the week.

“Brent, hi, I'm Doug Foust. How's it going?”

“Fine.” Was he watching me through the mirror?

“Good. I just came by to introduce myself. I'm a psychologist.”

“No kidding.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.”

He laughs. “Well, yes, I'm a psychologist and I'll be working with you here.”

“Okay.” What am I supposed to call him? Doug? Dr. Foust?

He pulls up a chair to the edge of my bed and sits backward in it, like the Fonz would. “So, how's it going so far?”