This morning I don’t just try once and move on. I stay with it. I stare at my right foot and concentrate the way the physical therapist told me to, picturing the signal traveling from my brain down my spinal cord and into the muscles.
I picture it like a dispatch call. Central command to unit one. Do you copy? Requesting movement. Any movement. A twitch, a flex, anything to tell me the wires aren’t permanently cut.
Nothing comes back. The blanket doesn’t move.
I try the left foot. Same routine, same desperate focus on a body part I never thought about once in thirty-two years of having it.
I used to run three miles on that foot every morning. I used to kick down doors with it and stand on it for twelve-hour shifts and never once considered the miracle of standing.
Turns out you don’t appreciate being able to walk until you can’t. I used to take the stairs two at a time at the station. I did it without thinking. I’d give everything I own to take one step. Just one. To feel the weight go from heel to toe. To stand up and walk to the bathroom without calling someone first. That’s all I want.
My room faces east, which means I get the sunrise, which sounds nice until you realize that a sunrise through a hospital window lights up the things you don’t want to see. The IV stand, the monitor cables and the wheelchair folded against the wall that the physical therapist left there yesterday.
The sun comes through at an angle that lights up a crack in the glass. The crack runs diagonal from the bottom corner, about four inches long, and it splits the sunlight into two strips on the floor. One strip reaches the foot of my bed around seven-thirty. By eight it’s moved past me and onto the wall behind my head. I know this because I’ve watched it happen every morning. I’ve learned the schedule of the light. Seven-thirty means the sun is on my feet. It’s the only time of day anything touches my feet and I can see it happening, even if I can’t feel it.
The phone rings at seven. Same as always.
“Morning, baby,” Mama says. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock, Mama.” I slept in forty-minute intervals between a nurse checking vitals and the pain waking me up. She doesn’t need to know that.
“What did you have for breakfast?”
“Scrambled eggs and toast.” The eggs were poured from a carton and the toast was the texture of cardboard.
“Keep eating. You need to keep your strength up. Have they said anything new?”
“Nothing new yet. The swelling is going down. They’re happy with the progress.”
“When will they know, Mickey? When will they know for sure?”
She asks this every morning while trying not to sound like a panicked mother wondering if her son will walk again.
“Soon, Mama. They said it could be a few more weeks before they can do the full assessment. But the signs are good.”
I don’t know if the signs are good. I’m making shit up to keep her from worrying more than she already is. I know the swelling is reducing slower than they hoped. I know the sensation tests come back the same every day. I know that Dr. Raleigh pauses a half second too long before she answers my questions. I don’t tell Mama any of this because she has enough to deal with.
“How’s Dad today?”
Her pause tells me everything. “He had a rough night. He got up around three and was looking for his keys. He wanted to drive to work. He thought he was late for his shift. He was standing in the kitchen in his underwear looking for keys to a truck he doesn’t drive anymore and I had to talk him into coming back to bed. It took an hour.”
My dad was the strongest man I knew until he wasn’t. Until his brain started stealing pieces of him one at a time. The keys first. Then the names. Then the route home from the grocery store he’d been shopping at for thirty years. Now hestands in the kitchen at three AM in his underwear looking for a shift that ended over a decade ago.
“Mama, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault and it’s not his fault. It just is.”
She says that about everything now. That’s how she survives. She doesn’t fight the diagnosis or look for someone to blame. She just gets up, walks her husband back to bed, and calls her son in the hospital and asks if he ate breakfast.
“I wish you could come,” I say. “I miss you.”
I don’t usually say it. I know why she can’t and I don’t want to make it harder. But this morning it comes out before I can stop it.
“Oh, baby.” Her voice breaks on the word and cracks right open. “I want to. You know I want to. If I could split myself in two, I’d be there right now sitting in that chair. I’d be feeding you real food and giving those nurses hell.”
“I know, Mama.”
“Linda can do Tuesdays and Thursdays for a few hours but he gets upset when I’m gone too long. He knows I’m gone. He might not know what day it is but your daddy knows when I’m not in the house. He goes to the window and watches for my car.”
