How to Walk Away

by Katherine Center

  Somewhere in my soliloquy, I’d closed my eyes. By the time I ran out of words and fell quiet, I noticed Ian had set my legs down and was no longer touching me. Had he walked away? Gone for a coffee? Left for the day? I knew he wasn’t listening, but something about the idea that he wasn’t even there stung a little bit.

  I opened my eyes, and that’s when I saw that he’d stood up and was leaning in to take my hands. “Sit up,” he said, not looking at me, in a way that gave the distinct impression I was just another annoying obligation in his day.

  I took his hands, but he did not pull me up. He just held them while I worked my way to a sitting position.

  Once I was steady, he let go.

  Then he bent down in front of me and met my eyes for the first time all day. He looked straight into my pupils until he had my full attention. Then he said, “Whether you walk again or not, I’m going to tell you the one thing I know for certain.”

  I blinked. “What’s that?”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do. Just try.”

  And he did not say another word for the rest of the day.

  Fourteen

  LATER, I FELT embarrassed about it.

  I had assaulted him with my talking. He clearly didn’t like to talk, and he certainly hadn’t asked to be subjected to my whole pathetic story. He was utterly robotic that whole time, and afterward, he was even more determined to stay poker-faced.

  That said, “It’s the trying that heals you” really stuck in my head.

  The next morning, for whatever reason, I woke up ready to try.

  That day, after all the morning routines, I spent the “rest hour”—that I’d been using to stare into space—researching spinal cord injuries. My mother wasn’t the only person in the world who could read articles. I started at Christopher Reeve’s foundation and worked my way down, reading about expectations, therapies, strategies, equipment, clothing, and experimental theories. I learned terms like “axonal sprouting” and “neurogenesis,” and I memorized the names and numbers of all the vertebrae. I studied anatomic charts of the spine and the body. I did Google searches for the phrases “spinal cord injury” and “miraculous recovery,” and then I read every article my mother had found and then some. I made a choice to get inspired. I made lists of reasons to feel hopeful. I forced myself to look at the sky and see green.

  During those moments, whether they were in the late afternoon when my muscles were twitching from everything Ian had forced me to do, or in the wee hours of the night when I’d woken and couldn’t get back to sleep, I felt the tiniest bit like myself again. Because this was how I had conquered every challenge in my life—with impeccable organization and driven focus. I got Kit to buy me index cards and file folders and a new pack of ballpoint pens. I had my dad set up a printer, and I started printing out articles, organizing them into different folders, and color-coding them with highlighters.

  My mother had made a good point: There wasn’t time to grieve. Everything I read confirmed what she’d said. There was a window of opportunity for recovery, and after that, it would be foolish to hope for more. I’d wasted two of my weeks in a stupor, and insurance would sponsor exactly four and a half more. So I had a month. A month to try every single possible thing I could think of to get my life back.

  I read an article that said to talk to your body and tell it what you wanted, so I did. Another said to massage your limbs to wake up the nerve responses, so I did. One article said to make a list of tangible goals, and to check them off as you met them, so I did that, too.

  • wiggle toes

  • point toes

  • flex toes

  • rotate feet 360 degrees at ankles

  • strengthen calves and arches

  • strengthen core

  • extend legs from knee out

  • take a step

  • stand for 5 minutes alone

  • walk again—like a boss!

  Of all the things on that list, I could sort of do exactly one: I could stand with my knees locked for two minutes—but only if I had a bar, or a person, to hold on to. Still, being able to lock my knees was huge. Lots of people couldn’t do that.

  But of all the advice I found, and all the mental tricks I tried, my favorite was the article that told me to visualize my ultimate goal over and over. Want to know my ultimate goal? To wheel myself out of the hospital to go home for good on a breezy spring day and run into Chip.

  In the visualization, I’m wearing my favorite jeans and a gray-blue collared shirt that covers all my scars, and he’s headed in to pick me up—but he stops still when he sees me because I look so much better than he’d expected. Out of the sickening hospital lights and away from the mauve décor, with the sunlight on my skin for the first time in far too long, I have a new radiance. He sees me now, suddenly, not as an invalid that we all feel so sorry for, but as the real me. In that second, as he’s struck by the sight, I push myself up and stand—then I take one step toward him, and then another, and he’s so astonished, he can barely breathe.

  That’s it. That’s the grand finale. I’m the old me again, but so much better. Because now I’ve astonished us all. Now I’ve done the impossible. Now I’ve returned from hell—wiser and stronger and grateful as shit for all my ordinary blessings.

  Chip feels a surge of awe for me, followed quickly by desperate love—and here’s the best part: In the fantasy, identifying with Chip, I get to experience those things, too. Which is such a profound relief, because all I can feel for this mangled, malfunctioning body of mine these days is contempt. Wait—no: “Contempt” is too simple. It’s more than that. It’s disappointment. It’s disgust. It’s revulsion.

  But in the visualization? All that’s gone. All viciousness is replaced with admiration. I can see it on his face so clearly that I can feel it, too, and it’s bliss. It hooks me and makes it irresistibly fun to return to the moment again and again. Chip is amazed at my strength and determination and power. And then I arrive at his arms, and he kisses me, and I’ve aced another challenge. Even my hair is restored to just the way it was before—only better—because why not.

  This wasn’t self-indulgence, the article assured me. This was therapy.

  I had to see what I wanted. I had to want what I wanted. I had to create a vision to move toward. The more time I could spend making that vision real in my head, the stronger its pull would be. So I let myself long for my old life to the point of aching, on the theory that the more I longed for it, the more strength I would conjure to go after it.

  Was centering my image around Chip a little bit antifeminist?

  Maybe.

  You could argue it either way. You could read it as a rescued-by-the-prince fantasy, I suppose—though, in truth, Chip didn’t rescue me. He didn’t do anything but behold my awesomeness. I did it all myself. Would my women’s studies professor from college point out, though, that my accomplishment wasn’t significant or meaningful or emotionally resonant until it was appreciated by a man? Sure. Okay. That’s fair. Maybe that was something to work on someday in therapy. But I had four and a half weeks left, and that visualization was addictively powerful. I’d take any power I could get.

  Getting focused made me feel in control. It cleared my head. It’s possible the worst thing about those first two weeks in the hospital was being so directionless, so passive, so lost.

  * * *

  THEN, ONE NIGHT, Kit came in with a stack of articles on the health benefits of singing and slapped them down on the rolling tray.

  “I spent the day online,” she said, “researching why you should sing.”

  I eyed her stack. “I’m not going to sing, Kit.”

  She lifted up the top third of them. “These detail the emotional benefits of singing.”

  “Not interested.”

  She lifted up the second third of them. “These are the social benefits.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t care.”
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  “And these”—she held the final third up like the Statue of Liberty—“are the physical benefits.”

  I sighed.

  Kit started counting off on her fingers. “Singing helps release oxytocin and dopamine and endorphins. It decreases anxiety and depression. It reduces stress and helps regulate the endocrine system. It creates better oxygenation in the blood and leads to better sleep. It increases antibodies and strengthens the immune system. And—” She stepped closer for her grand finale.

  “Do not say it makes you happy—”

  “It makes you happy.”

  I dropped my head back against the pillow. “I don’t want to be happy.”

  “Fine. Don’t be happy. But sing anyway. Because it’s good for your health in just about every possible way.”

  “Does it reduce inflammation in the spinal cord?”

  “There’s no study showing it doesn’t.”

  I had to hand it to her. She was ready for me. That girl was going to get me singing or die trying. She described study after study. She told inspirational stories. She barraged me with statistics and inspiration. A study in Denmark—or was it Holland?—had tracked three hundred cancer patients, half of whom joined choirs and sang at least three times a week, and half of whom, the control group, did not. The singers were more likely to go into remission, and stay there—and the singers increased their life expectancy by six months over the nonsingers.

  When I started to protest, she said, “I know, I know. You don’t feel like singing. Well guess what? You seem to believe that you can only sing if you’re already happy. But I believe that singing makes you happy, and science appears to be backing me up. Plus, an endorphin or two wouldn’t kill you.”

  “Look, I just don’t think I can be happy anymore.”

  “Well, I think you can.”

  “Why do you keep pushing this?”

  “Because you love to sing.”

  I used to love to sing. “I love to sing exactly as much as everybody else.”

  “False. That’s Mom talking.”

  I squinted at her like she was nuts. “Mom doesn’t talk about singing.”

  “That’s right. Or encourage it or value it. Or recognize your talent.”

  “I am not a talented singer. I’m just a normal person.”

  Kit nodded, and added, “With perfect pitch.”

  “I don’t have perfect pitch.”

  “You can harmonize to anything. Anything at all! Do you think everybody can do that?”

  I shrugged.

  “No. Nobody can do that.”

  “Big deal.”

  “It is a big deal. You never should have left it behind. Now, are you going to start singing, or should I?”

  But she didn’t even wait for an answer. She just moved fast, so I couldn’t shut her down, and then when she finally ran out of ammunition, without even pausing, she tapped her phone, where she had “Let It Be” already cued up, and hit PLAY.

  She knew I couldn’t resist that song.

  She started singing along while I watched her, with my mouth clamped closed and my arms crossed over my chest. Then she started deliberately getting the words wrong, singing things like “And when the broke and hardened people…”

  “Broken-hearted people!” I couldn’t help but correct.

  She went on, “For though they may be partying—”

  “Parted!” I shouted. “They’re not partying. This is not a song about partying.”

  But she was having fun now. She mutilated the whole rest of the song, changing “whisper” to “whistle,” “cloudy” to “crowded,” and “light” to “blight,” while I shouted out protest after protest. Finally, we neared the end.

  “You know I’ve got it on repeat, right?”

  And so, when it started up again, those deep and soulful piano chords we remembered from my dad’s old records, I leaned my head back against the pillow, fixed my gaze on the ceiling, and let myself give in. I did love that song. It was the comfort food of Beatles tunes. Would it really kill me, I decided, to take a little bite?

  “Fine,” I said, “but sing it right this time.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  So we did.

  And, yes, I harmonized a little bit.

  Did it make me happy? It didn’t make me miserable, I’ll give it that.

  When the song ended, we sang it again.

  Fifteen

  AFTER THAT, WE fell into a schedule.

  My official first order of business every morning was to try to wiggle my toes—which I never could. After that, it was: sponge bath, bandage changing, Silvadene application, and OT with Priya, who was very pleased with my progress in the areas of chair transfer, tooth-brushing, toileting, putting on sneakers and tying them, putting on and taking off socks, and wriggling into yoga pants. I was progressing well in the wheelchair obstacle course next door to the therapy gym. I could navigate both tight turns and cobblestones without tipping, and Priya was starting to eyeball the final frontier—curbs and steps. Next, she wanted to take me to the OT kitchen so we could bake a batch of cookies for practice.

  Also, she insisted that I take up knitting.

  “Knitting?” I asked.

  “It’s good to have a hobby,” she said.

  “Can I pick my own hobby?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  Midday was always lunch with my parents, who nodded with bright, optimistic faces as I recounted inspirational stories I’d found online about people like me.

  And then followed PT with Ian, who continued to bring his not-talking-at-all A-game. We worked our way through the therapy gym, using the bike and mat almost every day, and rotating through other things like the parallel bars and the monkey rings. He even put me on the standing frame a couple of times, which meant getting buckled into a body harness and hanging from a metal frame above a treadmill. I would bring my thighs forward, and Ian would help position my feet and move them through the motions of walking.

  The idea was that the spinal cord, and even the muscles themselves, had their own sense of memory. Walking, in theory, was such a fundamental human activity that it might not need the brain to direct it. So, like a reflex, the neurological signals for walking could reroute themselves and leave out the brain altogether, if they just had enough inspiration.

  There was improvement, for sure. My knee joint was significantly stronger, and I could lock it now. My whole upper body was stronger now, in fact, and muscle mass I’d lost was coming back.

  But the truth is, though everything above the knee was making progress, everything below was not.

  Even with all my reading, and charts, and highlighting, and goals. Even with dreams almost every night of walking through the woods, or along the beach, or even just across an empty parking lot—dreams so convincing that I sometimes wondered if my dreaming life was actually my real one and vice versa—improvements were slim.

  Below the knee, at least.

  One day I thought I wiggled a toe, but nobody else could see it. Another day, on the bike, I felt like I’d pushed off with the ball of my foot, but when I tried to repeat it, it just dragged.

  My mother brought in some literature that said plateaus were normal as the body adjusted to previous improvements—and so “plateaus are normal” became my internal mantra.

  Ian became quite the subject of discussion during my evenings with Kitty. She always wanted the Grouch Report, and I was under strict instructions to chronicle all hidden smiles, uttered words, and human moments. We spent so many hours trying to psychoanalyze Ian that we finally came up with a broader theory that we must somehow be doing deep psychological work. Maybe, we decided, women talked about men as a coping mechanism. A distraction from the real troubles in their lives.

  No doubt, it was more fun to fret over Ian than to fret over myself.

  Maybe we should have wanted to talk about Chip instead. But there wasn’t much about him that appealed to me right then.

&nbs
p; Despite promises to the contrary, since his re-proposal, he’d managed only three short visits in three long days, standing the entire time for them, as if waiting to be dismissed. His timing was uncanny for the worst possible moments: just as an orderly was arriving for my sponge bath, or as Priya was forcing me to practice taking my sweatpants on and off, or as I was wheeling toward the bathroom. He’d stay for an obligatory thirty minutes or so, checking his texts over and over, and then give me a stiff kiss and head out. I half-waited to see him all day, kept my peripheral vision on the door in hopes he’d show up, but then, when he did come, I found myself wishing almost as fast that he’d leave.

  I was muddled, to say the least.

  Ian was a much juicier topic. He was almost a mysterious fictional character. Chip and his shortcomings were all too real.

  After much discussion, Kitty developed a detailed theory about Ian, that there was a fun person trapped inside him, clawing against his ribs to get out. She labeled it her Beauty and the Beast theory and insisted that something terrible had happened to him in the past. But I disagreed. My theory was that he’d been left unattended too long as a baby in some remote Scottish orphanage and had missed a critical window for developing social skills and human empathy.

  “Is he an orphan?” Kitty asked.

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  Whatever Ian’s deal was, as strange as it sounds, he turned out to be good for me.

  I really didn’t talk much during the rest of the day or with many of the other hospital personnel, but when Ian showed up, I unleashed every thought, theory, observation, dream, or opinion I’d held in since the day before. Partly this was my fear of conversational silence, but partly, I came to notice more and more, it was just fun to mess with him. It was like trying to provoke a guard at Buckingham Palace. The fact that Ian didn’t respond made me want to make him. I tried shock. I tried surprise. I tried every joke I knew. His blank face became more and more irresistible. He didn’t react, but he listened, and as the days went on, I found myself Googling crazy things in anticipation of seeing him, just so I’d have good material.