He came and hugged me tight, and I started to cry. I had sudden flashes of doing this before.
“You’ll be fine, baby, I promise.”
I hiccupped. “Is your mom really here?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, she flew over the first day.”
“How many days have I been here?”
“This is the fourth one.”
“Oh.” My hip hurt, but then I did remember something about a.. a…. “They… cut me?”
Daddy looked at where I was gesturing. “Yeah, your hip. You had surgery.”
“Right, that.”
I kept forgetting words. A lot. Everything was fine, then a word just wasn’t there. Sirpa didn’t mind, she just waited or asked if I wanted her to fill in if it took some time.
I had a physiotherapist come over twice a day to get me moving, then Luke and a nurse did it a third time. It was all to keep the hip from seizing up, or something. I couldn’t remember.
They said that my brain had been jostled and to think of it like a bruise inside my skull. There were some fancy words and medical terms I didn’t want to try even to remember. A lot of the time I zoned out and time jumped forward and I couldn’t figure out how long I’d been like that.
I slept a lot, but apparently that was the best thing to do anyway. My doctor told me a healing body needed all the rest it could get.
Then one of Daddy’s celebrity clients came to town, I forced him to keep the appointment. I think it was a younger actress, or maybe a singer. The name had been vaguely familiar. I forgot to ask when he came back that night.
Eventually, the hospital needed the bed, so I had to move into a rehab place. I hated it, because… I just did. I couldn’t find the words to actually describe it correctly, so I sulked.
The people there were nice, but I kept having headaches and forgetting words and sometimes I wobbled when I walked and it wasn’t because of the hip, either. It was as if my body forgot what I was doing for a second.
Just like when my brain forgot a word.
Then I discovered it wasn’t only about talking, it was also reading and writing. I could do both fine, but random words were missing there, too. It was odd to be reading a news site and not understand a random word in a headline.
My physioterrorist, Margo, kept telling me it would fix itself over time and to be patient. The balance thing I understood and could accept; it was the scariness of my brain that terrified me.
By the time I got to go home after five days, and Margot was to come over once a week to make sure I kept doing my exercises and getting better, I was exhausted. Time lost some of its meaning, because it didn’t move like it had before. I had trouble telling if something happened an hour ago or two days ago, but apparently that, too, would get better over time. Everything should.
The headaches came and went and made me crabby. I didn’t even miss Luke as much as I thought I should’ve, because I was so tired of everything being so hard. I craved the comfort he presented and freely offered, but I also had some trouble with dealing withhisfeelings.
When I got home, Luke hovered around me like an anxious parent.
“Stop it. I just want to go to bed for a while. I need a… a…”
“Nap, got it.”
I snapped. “Don’t—you know, never mind.” I hated it when he told me what word I was thinking but couldn’t quite find.
“I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to do that,” he said in a contrite voice as he grabbed my bag and took it to the washing machine.
“It’s fine. I’m…,” I trailed off, gesturing at my head.
I got angry now, faster and easier than I ever had. I was fine, everyone kept telling me, but I felt constantly unsettled in a way I hadn’t experienced before.
I put Tonya on the bed and reached to pull the covers when I stumbled. Luckily, I managed to aim myself on the bed. I was on strict orders to not fall again, both for my hip and my head.
“Baby, are you okay?” Luke asked from the doorway.
