“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.”
