Chapter 7 RONAN
Ronan
For six weeks I’ve told everyone I’m fine, and from a bed it’s been an easy thing to sell. Nobody’s pushed it.
That ends this morning.
“Fine” is what kept Sadie from booking me into a facility, and what’s kept Frank from driving up from Boston more than he has to. It’s the word you hand people so they write it down and leave you to it. Hold it long enough and you half believe it yourself.
It isn’t that I don’t want up. God, I want up. I’ve spent every one of these long days measuring the distance to the door, the car, the office, the rest of my life. I’d crawl there tonight if the leg would hold me.
What I can’t stand is having an audience. Somebody standing over me to watch how far the wanting actually gets me.
My sister arranged the audience. She’s an ER doctor with my medical power of attorney in her back pocket, and she isn’t above reminding me of it down a phone line.
She sent a physical therapist out a few days ago, some cheerful sadist who spent an hour bending my joints further than they wanted to go and made me swear at him for it, left three pages of instructions, and went home.
Tessa’s had the pages ever since. Today she runs them.
She comes in at seven with the tray. Pills, water, the cuff, the chart. She wraps the cuff around my good arm, takes the readings, writes them down, and sets the tray aside without once telling me to eat.
She always tells me to eat.
She’s quieter than usual. Twice she glances at her phone and doesn’t pick it up, and she thinks I don’t see it. When I tell her I slept fine, she doesn’t call me a liar. Yesterday she would have.
“Pain?”
“Four.”
She writes it down and doesn’t make me give her the real number. That’s how I know something’s wrong. She always makes me give her the real number.
Then she rolls the wheelchair in from the hall.
“No,” I say.
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“You’re holding a wheelchair. You don’t have to.”
She sets the brake with her foot and holds out a thick belt. “Doctor’s orders, and the doctor’s your sister, so take it up with her if you’d like. I’ll wait.”
“You’re a nurse,” I say. “Not a physical therapist.”
“I spent years on an ortho-trauma floor before the ICU. I’ve had bigger men than you on their feet the morning after surgery.” She doesn’t lower the belt. “The therapist left the plan. I run the plan. Gait belt first. We’re getting you standing.”
“I stand fine.”
She holds the belt steady and waits me out.
I look at the chair and my jaw goes tight.
A wheelchair means somebody else decides where I go and how fast, and everyone who looks at me sees exactly how much of me is broken.
“I’m not getting in it.”
“Then stand up, and you won’t have to.” She loops the belt around my waist before I can argue, buckles it, and steps back with one hand still hooked through it. “Edge of the bed. Good leg first. I’ve got you.”
Fine. I’ll stand.
I get my good leg over the edge. She steps in to brace me, then stops, her eyes going to my bad shoulder, and for half a second she isn’t sure. I see it. She doesn’t think I’m ready.
Good. I’ll stand just to wipe the doubt off her face.
She sets her grip in the belt, her shoulder ready under my arm though I don’t take it. I plant my good foot and push.
For one second it works. I’m up. On my feet in my own room for the first time since the accident, and the relief of it goes straight to my throat, stupid and enormous.
Then the room tips.
The bad leg won’t take its share. I reach for the bedrail and the arm doesn’t come up.
Nothing to catch myself on, nothing to lean on that leans back, and the pain comes up my whole right side in a wave, the room goes white at the edges, and her shoulder is under my good arm before I know I’m going, her other hand fisted in the belt, all of her small frame braced against the weight I can’t take.
She takes the weight, turns it, and sets me back on the edge of the bed.
I’m breathing like I ran a mile. Sweat at my hairline. Six weeks of “I’m fine,” and I couldn’t keep my own feet under me for ten seconds.
Neither of us says anything.
I look at her. I don’t decide to. I just need to know what’s on her face.
Whatever she’s thinking, she doesn’t let me have it. She reaches for the water glass.
“The leg’s ahead of the shoulder,” she says. “That’s normal. The shoulder’s slower. It always is.” She holds out the water. “Small sips.”
I drink the water.
She wraps the cuff around my arm again, and I watch her read the gauge, and I see it in her face before she says a word.
“What?” I ask.
“Your pressure’s in the basement. Which is what happens when a man who’s been flat for a month gets up on a bad leg.” She’s already moving, stacking the spare pillows, lifting my good leg onto them, easing me back until my head sits lower than the rest of me. “Stay down. Don’t argue with me.”
I don’t argue with her. There’s nothing left in me to do it with. The leg’s throbbing and the shoulder’s worse, but it’s the lightheadedness underneath that keeps me pinned.
She peels the top page off the clipboard and turns it face down. “We’re done with the plan. I told them you weren’t ready to bear weight.”
It takes me a second.
She’d been arguing for me before she ever argued with me. I’d have something to say about that if the room would sit still.
She lays a cool cloth at the back of my neck. Checks the pressure again. Frowns at it. Checks it again a few minutes later, and again after that, and she doesn’t go anywhere in between. She pulls the chair around to the side of the bed and sits where she can watch the gauge and me at once.
Her phone lights on the table beside her.
DR. MERCER.
She turns it face down without looking and keeps her eyes on me. She’s been jumpy about that phone since she walked in this morning. Now I’ve seen what’s on it.
I don’t ask who Dr. Mercer is. I don’t ask what put that look on her face. I haven’t got the strength today to carry my own weight, let alone hers.
So I let it go.
She checks the gauge again, and for the first time since she caught me, she lets out a breath.
“It’s coming back up,” she says. “You gave me a scare for a second there. Rest. I’ll keep an eye on the numbers.”
“I don’t need watching.”
“Maybe not.” She settles into the chair anyway. “But I’m staying.”
I mean to outlast her, just to prove the watching’s a waste of her time. I lose.
The last thing I see is her in the chair, chart in her lap, eyes on the monitor.
Her hair’s down today.
* * *
When I wake the next morning, the light’s wrong. Too high, too bright.
There’s someone in Miss Quinn’s chair.
It isn’t her. A woman I’ve never seen, young, pretty, a soft cardigan and a paperback open on her knee. She looks up and smiles at me.
“Morning, Mr. Sinclair. I’m Dawn. I’ll be looking after you now.”
She’s lovely. It does nothing. The only thing I feel, looking at her, is that she’s in the wrong chair.
I don’t ask where Miss Quinn is. I already know the answer.
I knew better than to get used to her.
I did it anyway.