CHAPTER 10 A MARTYR FOR MY LOVE FOR YOU
A MARTYR FOR MY LOVE FOR YOU
Phoenix
Phoenix glanced down at his uncovered limbs and pulled the hospital blanket over his legs. It didn’t make the sight any better. Mom helped him straighten the bedspread and smoothed it with one hand.
“Are you cold?”
“No, I just don’t want to see—”
“You look fine,” she lied. “You’re still you,” she insisted. He was in too much pain to argue.
She looked like hell. Caleb looked even worse than when Dad died. Which meant Phoenix’s half-state between life and death was worse than death.
His mother and brother spent the day taking turns bringing him any small measure of comfort.
They helped Phoenix adjust his position, poured him cool drinks, and encouraged him to eat.
His mom punctuated the periods when he was awake by reading aloud his correspondences.
She skipped business emails to share personal notes from friends and colleagues.
Sincere if stuttered expressions of sympathy, especially the impossibility of “get well soon,” left Phoenix feeling worse.
It reminded him of a world that kept going, even if he might never rejoin it.
Mom skipped from emails and texts over to photos on his phone.
“Who’s this?” she asked, showing him a selfie that Orchid had taken of the two of them.
They looked happy. Ignorance is bliss. If only she knew, what would she think? A lump rose in his throat when he didn’t want to feel anything.
“Who is this?”
“Orchid,” he said.
“Is she a friend?” Mom’s eyes scanned the pic again.
“Someone I know from work.”
“She looks like more than a co-worker,” she said, squinting at Orchid’s dimpled cheek pressed against his.
“At one point, it looked like that might be the case.”
“Does she know about your accident?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Do you want to call her?”
“No.”
Mom leaned back at the sharpness in his tone. “Text?”
“No. She’s in China,” he said, as if that were an adequate excuse.
“You sure?”
“I’m positive. And I’m tired.” He turned, closing his eyes. Would there be more reminders of Orchid? Hope not. There’s no point.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.
A sturdy woman in dark blue scrubs entered, pushing a wheelchair.
He couldn’t help but stare at the hulking contraption.
She introduced herself with a firm handshake and explained she’d come to help him to the bathroom and would first remove his catheter.
“Is that something I could do . . . myself?” he mumbled.
She beamed. “Nope. My specialty.”
Caleb led their mom to the window, giving Phoenix a small measure of privacy.
The nurse pushed the bed’s plastic handrail down out of the way. She smelled like antiseptic soap and talked as she worked.
“This wheelchair is a one-handed model,” she explained. “It’s set up as an amputee chair, weighted so that it won’t tip back.” Amputee chair? Does she have any sense how much it sucks to need a wheelchair, much less a one-handed amputee one?
“There, all done,” she said, covering his lower half with the hospital gown. “Now, let’s get you up.”
Finally.
She pushed a button to adjust the bed upright. “You feeling dizzy at all?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
At the sound of the bed’s motor being activated, Caleb and his mom returned. An audience, great.
The nurse wheeled the chair right next to the bed. “No dizziness? That’s good. Your balance might feel different but you’re going to swing your legs over the side,” she instructed, wrapping an arm around him for support.
He placed one hand on the bed and levered towards the side of the mattress. His weight felt strangely distributed, his left side oddly light, his right side weighted and awkward. He bit his lip. She studied the beads of sweat he could feel forming on his forehead.
“Okay, take a break. What’s your pain level?”
“Really bad,” he said, as fire rocketed everywhere, the pain refusing to be ignored.
“Very intense?” The woman in blue asked. “You want to wait ‘til later?”
“No, it’s okay. It’s like a six out of ten now.” He waited for the waning sensation to catch up with his fib. I need to get out of bed. “Or five.”
The nurse nodded. She wrapped her arms around his back and braced herself on the bed. Between the stinging pain, Phoenix realized what she planned to do.
“You’re going to help me by yourself?”
She paused and looked at him, surprised. “Why not?”
“Aren’t I too heavy for you?”
“I doubt it. I weigh more than you.”
“No you don’t. I weigh—” He stopped, a new realization hitting him.
“Besides, it’s just for long enough to sit in that chair,” she continued, ignoring or oblivious to the horror washing over him. He was no longer a six-foot, 165-pound athlete. He weighed no more than this stocky woman. He had less agility than a two-by-four.
Caleb stepped over. “You want to show me what to do, in case I ever need to help out?”
Phoenix groaned over the thought of his twin aiding him out of bed. The humiliations kept coming.
The nurse demonstrated the spots where she steadied him for his brother to observe. “Ready?” she asked, and then encouraged Phoenix until he was briefly up on a single leg, and just as quickly, down in the seat. He grabbed the armrest, instinctively seeking to balance himself.
“This is a stump board,” she explained, helping him position the swollen mass of his severed leg onto a padded surface jutting out from the seat of the chair. “It’ll keep your leg at the proper angle to prevent swelling.”
Oh, god. Amputee. Stump board.
He didn’t have long to contemplate the unfamiliar phrases that seemed to have nothing to do with him. Being seated instead of prone, he felt like he’d been set adrift in a vast space. Unmoored from the bed, he grew dizzy.
The nurse set them into motion, wheeling the IV pole while guiding his chair.
Mom hurried ahead to open the bathroom door.
The nurse pushed him over the threshold, not just into another room, but into another life. “Okay, we’re going to practice transferring onto the commode.”
A toilet sat framed by industrial grade handrails.
How the hell am I going to get onto that?
Before he could tackle the seemingly impossible, he caught sight of himself in the mirror, which was angled towards the ground for someone seated.
The first sight of his new form struck him with a wave of repulsion, almost a physical force.
Framed in the chrome edges of the looking glass sat a disheveled figure in a wheelchair—half man, half bandages, oddly truncated and unsettling in the asymmetry of its body.
The nurse must’ve thought he was looking at the sink. She pointed out the brush suction cupped to the inside of the porcelain.
“That’s so you can wash one-handed. Just pump some soap and scrub your hand against the brush. The occupational therapist will show you.”
He stared at her, the magnitude of his adaptations dawning on him one icy trickle at a time. Does this mean I’m going to become a suction-cup brush-carrying freak? If he had to think about how to wash a hand, what other thousand things would he have to do differently?
The nurse, moving to the next task, wheeled his chair adjacent to the toilet.
“First, we’ll practice. Just put one hand here,” she said, indicating the right-hand grab bar, “and an elbow here.” She pointed to the wheelchair’s armrest. Her stern expression left him no choice.
He did as instructed. She steadied an arm around him, helping him push up from the upholstered seat to sit on the porcelain one.
His brother, watching from the doorway, scowled, hands on hips.
Phoenix was clothed and this was just practice, but still, he felt the loss of privacy.
“Sitting to pee for the rest of my life is going to suck,” Phoenix said, trying to keep the sharp edge in his voice more ironic than self-pitying.
“Who cares,” Caleb declared. “I’m goddamned grateful to see you mobile again.”
“This isn’t fuckin’ mobile.”
“Language,” Mom scolded.
Caleb’s glower deepened. “That’s mobile enough. You could’ve died. I freakin’ said goodbye.”
The nurse reversed their steps and situated Phoenix back in his chair.
“Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Phoenix said, chastised. Nothing felt right. Not only the burning through his limbs and unclear thinking, but also his moods which swung as wildly as a carnival ride.
The nurse pushed from behind and dragged the IV pole. “Let’s get you back to bed. I want to give you medication so I can change your bandages, check the swelling, and let you rest. Then the psychotherapist will be in later.”
Psychotherapist? Great. What lies will I have to tell to keep this therapist off my back? That I’m adjusting? Glad to be alive?
Good thing ad guys excelled at spinning stories.