Chapter 12 Benji #2
When we finish eating, I clear the containers and stack them neatly on the tray table.
While I’m cleaning up, I notice his arms. His forearms are resting on top of the blanket, bare below the pushed-up sleeves of the hospital gown, and the skin is rough and dry, cracking at the knuckles.
A week of recycled air with nothing but hospital soap and whatever industrial lotion is sitting in a pump bottle at the nurses’ station.
“Oh, hell no,” I say, looking closer at his arms.
“What is it now, Benji? Did you think of another complaint to file?”
“Your skin. My God, Mickey. Your arms. Look at your knuckles. What are they doing to you in this place?”
He looks at his hands, lifts them, turns them over, looks at me and shrugs. He clearly does not see the problem.
“They look fine to me,” he says.
“No, they don’t. They look like you’ve been living in a desert.
Have the nurses not been moisturizing you?
Has nobody on staff in this entire building thought to put lotion on your skin?
You’ve been in this bed for days, Mickey.
And your knuckles are cracking and your forearms look like sandpaper.
I’m supposed to just sit here and let that happen? ”
“I’m in a hospital for a spinal cord injury. I don’t think moisturizing is high on their list.”
“Basic care of a person’s body should be at the top of the list. You’re a human being, not a piece of equipment. This is very upsetting. They’re not taking care of you as well as they should. Hang on. I’ll be right back. I need to talk to someone about this.” I jump up and head for the door.
“Benji! Don’t!”
I stop, my hand already on the doorknob and turn around. “Why not? I need to bring it to their attention. That’s what family does in hospitals. Otherwise, they’ll just let you lie here and turn into a reptile.”
“I don’t want to share your time with the nurses,” he says. “Come back and sit down. I’ll ask them for lotion tomorrow.”
I let out an exasperated huff and put my hands on my hips. I’m not happy about this, but I’ll humor him.
“Maybe I have something to use.” I grab my bag from the floor. Inside, among the phone chargers, protein bars and the wedding binder, is a bottle of La Mer that I’ve been using on my face. It’s one of the few luxury items I buy to splurge on myself.
I pull out the bottle and pump the cream into my palm. Before Mickey can protest, I take his right hand. His hand is big. That’s the first thing my brain registers as my fingers close around his wrist and turn his palm up. Much bigger than mine, rough where mine is soft.
I rub the cream into his palm with both thumbs, working it into the lines, into the rough patches at the base of his fingers, into the dry skin between his knuckles.
He’s watching me with his mouth slightly open, the protest dying on his lips.
His hand relaxes in mine, the stiffness leaving finger by finger until it’s just resting there, heavy and warm, letting me work.
And what’s on his face now is rawer than anything I’ve seen on him.
Not the cop and not the “I’m fine.” What’s underneath is a man having his hand held by someone who wanted to hold it and finally found an excuse.
I move to his forearm and mutter while I work. “This is criminal. A whole week and nobody thought to bring a bottle of lotion to this room. Whatever happened to those cute little candy stripers? Are those still a thing? We need to bring those back.”
I finish his right arm and take his left hand. Same thing, the cream and the thumbs and the long strokes up the forearm. He’s quiet through this one. His eyes are on my hands, watching them move over his skin, and his breathing has slowed. I finish his left arm.
I pump more cream into my palm. And then, without thinking, I move and lift the edge of the blanket at the foot of the bed. His feet are there. Pale, bare, resting on the mattress in the position the nurses arranged them. The skin on his heels is cracking worse than his hands.
Nobody has been taking care of his feet because his feet are the part of him that can’t feel. The part the doctors are focused on from a neurological perspective and nobody is focused on from a human one.
I wrap my hands around his right foot and start rubbing the cream in. The sound he makes is not a word. It’s a breath that catches in his throat, a small sound that comes from somewhere deep. I look up from his foot and his eyes are wet. He’s looking at my hands on his foot.
He can’t feel it.
I’m touching him, he can see me and he can’t feel it. My hands are wrapped around his foot, my thumbs are working the cream into his sole, and my fingers are pressing into the arch and he can’t feel any of it.
He continues watching my hands move on his foot. The tears roll silently down his face. He doesn’t make any effort to stop them. What’s happening is bigger than he can hold inside.
I don’t stop or ask if he’s okay.
Acknowledging the tears would make him close up and I won’t let that happen. Not right now. Not while I’m taking care of him.
I move to his calf. The muscle underneath is already going softer from disuse and I work the cream in long slow strokes from ankle to knee.
I can’t fix his spine and I can’t give him back his legs.
But I can touch the parts of him that nobody else is touching and I can do it like they matter.
Because they’re his. And they fucking matter even if they don’t work.
I move to the left foot. Same slow circles on the sole and the arch and the heel.
Same long strokes up the calf. He’s silent except for the breathing and the drip of tears that he’s letting fall without wiping away.
He’s gripping the sheet on either side of him.
His knuckles going white from the effort of lying still and letting this happen, letting someone touch the silent parts of him with tenderness.
When I’m done, I lower the blanket back over his feet and set the bottle on the nightstand. I sit in the chair and don’t say a word because there isn’t one word adequate or big enough for what just happened.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. One pass, both cheeks. Then he clears his throat and his voice, when it comes, is steady.
“That moisturizer smells like a fancy department store,” he says.
“It’s La Mer. It’s my favorite cream.”
“Is it expensive?” he asks.
“Not at all,” I lie.
I lie because he would die if he knew I was putting two-hundred-dollar-an-ounce cream on his feet. This is my secret and I will keep it to my dying day.
“Your feet deserve nice lotion. When the feeling comes back, and it will come back, your skin is going to be absolutely incredible and you’re going to thank me for it.”
I say when. Not if. I say it on purpose and he hears me.
“The moisturizer stays with you.” I point at the bottle. “I’m leaving it here. I’ll do this every time.”
The tears are drying on his cheeks. His eyes are red and his face is a mess. But he’s smiling at me.
The nurse knocks to run me out. “Sorry! Visiting time is over for the evening!”
“Text me when you get home,” he says. “You have my number now. Be careful and watch out for the cops.”
“Don’t worry, I always watch out for those little shits.” I wink at him to show him he’s not included in my cop rant.
“See you tomorrow,” I say. “Same time. Same place.”
I leave, go to my car and immediately pull out my phone. Then I send him a text.
Benji: I’m in the parking lot. Not home yet. You made a big mistake giving me your number. Just thought you should know.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Mickey: Drive safe. Text me when you get there. Watch out for alligators.
Benji: OMG! Is that what the swamp fences are for?
Mickey: I’ll never tell. Do you have a phone holder in your car?
Benji: Yes. Why?
Mickey: Want to keep talking on your way home?
Benji: God, yes.
I snap the phone into the cradle on my dashboard and hit his name.
It rings once before he picks up. The sound of his voice through the car speakers is different than it was in the room.
It is lower and more intimate, like he’s sitting in the passenger seat instead of lying on his back in a hospital bed.
“Okay,” I say, shifting the car into reverse and pulling out of the spot. “Now, where was I?”