Bill snorted. "He's got you. I'm no good at this."
"Me neither," I said, wishing again someone else could step in. I'd been so hopeful about Bill showing up. Now I could see, though, that he wasn't going to be any better at this than me.
***
Only Brian Nelson put it a lot differently when we talked that afternoon. We had a really long conversation about Win and Bill, and though I tried not to badmouth either one of them, Brian still got the gist of what was going on.
"You sound really disappointed in Bill," he said, using his family therapist voice.
"Yeah, well, now I feel like I've got two brothers to take care of." And no one to take care of me, though I didn't say that out loud. It sounded bad enough already.
"That's really rough." There was this little pause. "Isn't Bill younger than Win?"
"Yeah! But so am I. And Bill's older than me."
"But ... isn't it different?"
"No!" Although it was. I could see what Brian was getting at. Because Win has always been such a big brother to Bill, bossing him around when they were kids, and then I guess again today when he blew off Bill's pizza and kicked him out. Bill's always been happy-go-lucky, but that attitude doesn't work so well in a situation like this. Kind of like Dad and needles. It's just not in him.
Not that I thought that all out on the phone. But Brian planted the seed.
"You know," Brian said, "my mom—I was talking to her about this, I hope that's okay, and she said some people are just amazing, people who are hurt like this. They decide from the get-go to get better. And some people take a while."
"The stages of grief," I said, glad I had something to add. Brian's mom is a family therapist herself, that's why he's so good at talking—all the time us Schwenk kids were milking cows, he was learning how to talk.
"Yeah. And it sounds like you're doing the right thing by just waiting."
That was nice. Even though I felt like I couldn't be any more useless if I had my thumb stuck up my nose. We talked a bit more about stuff that wasn't quite so heavy, a movie he said I really needed to see, which was fun to hear, normal life talk, and we hung up.
Then I checked my messages. I had one from Kyle Jorgensen, who I didn't even know had my number, and Amber asking what she and Dale could do, and other people as well asking to help. But I didn't call any of them back because I didn't know what to say. Even if Amber and those other folks were here in Seattle, even if they were standing right next to me, I wouldn't know how they could help. Because if Win wasn't going to talk, no one could help him, not one little bit.
When I got back to Win's room, Bill and Charlie were chatting with a nurse who was holding Bill's pizza box like she was a waitress or something. "I'll see if I can find a haz mat fridge," she said, grinning at Bill, who grinned back because grinning at girls just comes naturally to him, and then she walked past me with a big thumbs-up sign.
"What was that all about?" I asked, though the flirting part was pretty clear to me already.
"Win just ate half a pizza," Charlie said proudly, "though I don't see how. That kind of seasoning would just go right through me."
"Well, you know Win," Bill added, shaking his head. He looked pretty proud too, which I guess he had a right to be considering it was his idea to pick up the pizza in the first place. Win's special pizza was made of broccoli and pineapple and anchovies and those little hot peppers from Mexico that burn my tongue right off. You see, Win figured out pretty early in college that when you order a pizza, everyone comes around asking for a slice, so he started getting pizzas with the most disgusting ingredients he could think of so that other people wouldn't snag it all. And guess what, people didn't because they're not insane, and then he actually developed a taste for that combination and now that's all he'll eat.
Anyway, while I had been on my cell phone talking to Brian, that nurse asked Win if he was hungry, and it turns out that one of the feelings you have left after a spinal cord injury is hunger, and Win couldn't help but admit that he was. So the nurse offered him some of Bill's pizza and he said yes, and then she cut it into little bits and fed it to him with a fork. Apparently Win wouldn't even look at her as she fed him. He just kept his eyes closed, and the only words he said were "I don't want any more." And when she offered to save the rest for later, he didn't answer. But at least he ate, which I guess merits a thumbs-up sign even if the way he ate was incredibly rude.
So that was extremely good news, that Win still had a taste for hot peppers and broccoli, only that evening when Bill asked if he'd like the rest of the pizza, Win wouldn't answer. He wouldn't answer any of us. We talked to the nurse about it—the same one, thank goodness, so she knew what was going on—and she just sighed, and microwaved the pizza and brought it in all cut up, not saying a word, and sat down next to Win and fed him without even asking if it was okay. And Win ate, again not looking at her or acknowledging her in any way, and when it was all finished and she asked if he'd like anything else, and then asked if he had any special requests for breakfast, he acted like she didn't exist. So in the end Win's eating wasn't really such good news at all.
Charlie and Bill and I stayed outside Win's room until it got really late, discussing this and going through the hospital menu trying to figure out what Win might want for breakfast, then Charlie drove us back to his house. The next day we sat outside Win's room again. Bill went in first thing to say hello, but Win ignored him no matter what he said, and Bill came back out wiping his eyes and went into that little conference room all by himself so he could cry without anyone seeing. I tried to speak to Win as well, and he ignored me just as completely. It's amazing how much someone can ignore you when they can't even move. But it didn't seem to bother me as much as it did Bill. Maybe I was used to it. Or maybe, I don't know, my feelings weren't as hurt.
So the nurses got stuck feeding Win his silent-treatment breakfast, and then when they came back for his silent-treatment lunch, Charlie took Bill and me down to the hospital cafeteria to get us away for a bit. The three of us didn't talk much. Charlie wasn't saying that Win would snap out of it anymore. Then as we were settling into this pie that had seen better days, Charlie asked Bill his opinion of Minnesota's chances.
Bill pushed his pie around and shrugged. "It doesn't matter." Meaning it wasn't right for us to talk football with Win so hurt.
But you know, Bill loves football. He doesn't have Win's intensity—if you met Bill you'd think he was just a big guy squeaking by. But you don't get his kind of muscles just squeaking by, you get them sweating your guts out for years. And you don't start Big Ten football as a sophomore unless you're out there every day giving three hundred percent. Which Bill does, but he makes it look easy. Maybe he bends a little better—bends emotionally, if you know what I mean, because he doesn't have to fight everything, including Dad, the way Win does. And it wasn't fair that Win was taking away Bill's love of football—taking it away so much that Bill wished he was hurt instead. That wasn't right.
"Yeah, it does matter," I said. "Because I think Minnesota's got a real shot at the title next year." Which at least got Bill talking a little, and somehow led to a discussion of 3–4 versus 4–3 defense, with examples of how 3–4 was actually better than most people recognized, and Charlie even used some grapes to lay out a couple plays. Which might not be a good idea—not the grapes, but them talking—seeing as Minnesota might end up playing Washington someday if both of them happen to make it to the Rose Bowl, although to be realistic this will happen just a couple days before hell freezes over.
Then we went back upstairs, and Bill and I called home. Only Mom was so upset that she couldn't really talk. We ended up just reassuring her about how Win was sleeping so much that she'd be wasting her time out here, and Dad too.
"Jeez," Bill said when we got off the phone. "She needs more help than Win does."
I nodded, and we went back to our chairs. Bill and Charlie got to talking about next week's Minnesota game, and Charlie mentioned th
at a coach had called him, a coach who'd had a player with SCI, and that coach said it was really important to get the other players back out on the field. And he didn't mean just physically.
Which also gave me something to think about.
Finally, when it was clear Win was done for the night except for the nurses rolling him every two hours so he wouldn't get bedsores, and adjusting his machinery and stuff, we left.
We sat around the Wrights' kitchen for a long while, Marla making cocoa and asking questions about Win until it was clear that our answers were just bumming everyone out.
"You know," I said, breaking the silence finally, "I think Bill needs to go home."
"Hey!" Bill said at once.
I'd already blown it, on the very first line. "Just—just listen, okay? Win's not talking, and you know him. He could keep this up forever. And it just seems like a waste having us both here when Mom's at home needing all the help she can get. Win doesn't need you right now. But he's going to need you"—my voice broke a little—"he's going to need you for the rest of his life."
Marla came over and squeezed my shoulders. Actually, she started giving me a back rub, which felt so darn good—she's got strong hands for a skinny lady. Maybe Pilates does that too.
"I can't leave him," Bill said.
"You're not leaving him," I said. "You're going to Mom. And Dad, too. He's a basket case. And I really think you should try to play on Saturday."
"It would mean so much to your teammates," Marla chipped in. Which was pretty clever of her, dropping that ace in like that.
And you know what? In the end, Bill agreed.
***
That night I lay awake in Marla's guest bed for a long while. Secretly—even though I'd never, ever, say this out loud—I thought I was handling things a lot better than Bill was. He and Win were so close that I wasn't sure he could step out of being a little brother and become a pretend mom instead. Not that I could, but I felt I had a little bit better shot at it, at least until Mom was well enough to do it herself.
And there was another thing I hadn't said either, mainly because if I did I would have started crying. But you know how I told Brian that I felt like I was taking care of two brothers? Well, I'd come to Seattle to help Win, and now it turned out that I might not be able to, not until he turned it around. But at least I could help Bill. I was asking Bill to go home because I loved him too much to keep him here.
18. My Own Personal Time Zone
THE NEXT MORNING, OF COURSE, I was kicking myself. Sure, it's great to be self-sacrificing at midnight, but when I saw Charlie drive Bill away—after Bill came up to say goodbye to Win, who ignored him—I was having some extremely serious second thoughts. But by then it was too late.>
And it wasn't like Win said to himself that maybe now that D.J. was alone she might be worth talking to, or worth helping with the whole feeding business. But I couldn't leave, because I'd volunteered for this. Volunteered twice, actually—in the airport with Dad, and then over hot cocoa with Bill when I must have lost my brain for a minute. Plus three or four times a day I had to call Mom and Dad, and Bill, fill them in on everything that was going on. I could tell from Mom and Dad's questions that Bill had skipped a bunch of details about Win that would have upset them too much, instead he took what I'd said to him and turned it around a bit, telling Mom it was a lot more important for her to be with Win in rehab, and for the rest of his life, than at this minute. Which I know helped her a lot.
Besides, the hospital folks were talking about sending Win to rehab in the next few days, which I thought they were doing because they couldn't figure out what else to do with him, but it turns out that a bunch of patients get moved just a week or two after they're injured because it's so important to start rehab right away. So Mom flying all the way out to Washington State wouldn't be all that productive.
Still, she and Dad asked everything they could, including questions I couldn't really answer, like whether he could feel anything, because Win still wouldn't even tell the doctors when he could feel pinpricks. One time Dr. Rosenberger got on his case and Win started jerking his head around, he was so angry, and they had to sedate him.
I didn't tell Mom and Dad about that. I didn't tell them everything I was learning about spinal cord injuries, like how they turn you into a baby again—even the folks with really incomplete injuries get turned into babies for a while, and I'm not talking about the feeding. The nurses did their best to hide it from me—not hide, but just make it clear that I wasn't supposed to be on diaper duty. Although they explained that it was a huge part of rehab, figuring all that out, which really made rehab something to look forward to. Instead when I called home I told them that Win was eating a lot, which he was—Charlie was bringing in one of those special pizzas every day for Win to chow down on silently—and that really seemed to cheer them up.
When I wasn't talking to Mom and Dad, I spent most of my time sitting in the hall by Win's door feeling pretty blue. Whenever something beeped in his room, I'd check on it—I was getting pretty good at resetting IV pumps and stuff—and I could help the nurses roll Win every two hours like we were supposed to, not even irritating my shoulder that much. Otherwise I just sat.
After a few days in that hall, though, I got pretty tired of the stares from other families, and the nurses too, and without even really thinking about it, I stood up and dragged my chair into Win's room, off to the side where I wouldn't be in anyone's way.
Win didn't say a word. Didn't even act like he noticed. Finally after about an hour, I guess he couldn't stand it anymore. "Get out."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
I gave him the only answer that made sense to me. "Because I'm your sister."
I guess he couldn't think of anything to say back to this—it's not like he could deny it or anything. So he didn't say anything more, and there I sat, hour after hour, staring at all the machinery. Then I'd go do one of my phone calls, or listen in on the doctors' conferences, or talk to Win's shrink.
Which was something else I hadn't planned on, spending time with this lady with clothes like I'd never seen that looked really boring but expensive. Dr. Rosenberger brought her in once it was clear that Win, you know, had issues, but of course he wasn't talking, and all those machines they ran him through to look at his spine and brain and skeleton weren't so good at looking at his mind. So I got stuck being the Win-mind interpreter.
She'd take me into a little room—the room where I'd first talked to Dr. Rosenberger, or to other floors, which was like going to another country, those floors were so different from ours—and ask questions with these huge silences, so huge that I had to talk, and it turns out that sometimes you can say things to a stranger you could never say to your family or your neighbors, especially in Red Bend. Plus she acted like everything I said was just amazingly interesting. Especially the fight between Dad and Win.
I'd brought it up just to explain how good Win is at not talking but the psychia-lady kept asking how it started, which was Dad questioning whether Win was good enough to go pro and whether he'd inherit the farm. She went over this for a full hour until I felt really empty, and I had to ask her not to tell anyone. She said she couldn't because it was against the law, which gave me something to chew over, imagining her getting her hair cut and mentioning the Schwenk family and the police busting through the door to handcuff her.
There wasn't a whole lot to think about, most of the time.
She liked the baseball card story too, and the fact that Win is all about football. And she had me talk up another storm about Bill and why he'd left Seattle, which she seemed to feel was a bad thing until she heard my side of the story, and then she agreed that helping Mom and Dad was probably just as important as helping Win, and that my wanting to protect Bill said a lot. Only, I realized later, she never told me what it said, and we ran out of time before I ever got a chance to ask.
There were some things I never mentioned to the psychia-lady because they
were way too personal. Like how I'd stay late at night—Charlie Wright found me a car somewhere, one of the amazing things he and Marla did—and I'd sit next to Win's bed, the lights all dim. I'd be really quiet and after a while maybe he forgot I was there, and he'd start crying. It was so awful, especially because I couldn't imagine crying like that—I'd want to curl up and be able to wipe my tears at least, and my nose.
The first time I sat there frozen, and then I couldn't stand it anymore and I came over with a tissue and dried his tears. And then I did something I remember from being a kid. I held the tissue to his nose and said, "Blow," and maybe he was desperate or maybe he didn't care or maybe even he was grateful, but he did, and he cried some more as I stayed with him, and then I went back to my chair and after a while he fell asleep and I left.
The next night the same thing happened, and the night after that. We never talked about it—he'd have died if I brought it up, and vice versa—but it changed things, just a hair, between us.
***
So it turned out I was okay at some things but really awful at others, like the tons of cards Win got from all over the country. It wasn't like he wanted to read them, stories about SCI patients who sounded just like the ticket lady's cousin, or "we're praying for you" stuff that was nice for them but I sure wasn't seeing God's Work here in the hospital, and don't tell me God was there with Win's boogers because that was me alone.
Luckily Marla Wright—that's where God was, with her and Charlie—took over, and got her Pilates ladies to open the letters and save the money that was in them sometimes, and write thank-you notes to the really personal ones like the guy who typed using a stick strapped to his forehead and a manual typewriter because he'd been hurt before computers and he liked his way better, and he wanted to tell Win he was going to be okay. That one they showed me, and I saved it. A real typed letter—I'd never seen one of those. And they helped with the flowers that kept on coming, even found a nursing home where the folks were just so pleased to get them.
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