"Now remember, up with the good, down with the bad," she chanted as Ralph supported me from behind.
Like a baby learning to walk.
I planted my crutches on the first stair and lifted my good leg, then swung my bad one alongside. With Ralph hovering from behind, I tottered there, trying to get my balance and summon the courage to take on the next stair. When I finally reached the top, I stared back down like I'd climbed a mountain. My new life. Get used to it.
Back at the bottom, I wobbled on my crutches and looked longingly at the wheelchair.
"Again," Becky said.
"Wheelchair," I muttered.
"Just two more times."
"No," I said, "I'm done." I lunged for the wheelchair, almost falling, needing Ralph to catch me and get me settled back in. Becky frowned.
Just before lunch, Ralph came into my room, the next advocate in line. I didn't need to hear his booming voice to know what he'd say.
"What's wrong, Freddie?"
Some textbook told them I wasn't making progress fast enough. But none of them knew what was happening inside. Yes, my knee was getting stronger. But I was more than just a knee.
***
"Did you sic them on me?" I asked as soon as I was alone with Becky in PT.
She whirled on me, her eyes snapping to attention. "You're in my world now, buddy. I'm the queen here. And you're not progressing as fast as you should be. I told you when we started, I can be your guide, but you have to do the work. And you're not getting it done. Your leg's strong enough. You should be on crutches by now, not confined to a wheelchair."
I flushed, hating to have her angry with me. "Is this how you talk to all your patients?"
She came over and pulled a chair up next to me. Her eyes shifted to parade rest and then to a look so tender, it tempered my rage.
"You're not all my patients, Freddie. I want you to get better more than any patient I've ever had. But I'm at a loss for how to get you there. The problem is your leg's healing faster than your brain."
She went silent, staring at me with a look that said it was my turn and hell would freeze over before she spoke next.
I swallowed hard. My throat felt thick like when I took my first drink after waking from the coma.
"What do you want me to tell you? That every time I drift off to sleep, I see pictures of war, of a charred pile of flesh slumped over a steering wheel or a boy with his legs blown off? Yeah, I saw those things, like every other guy here. But that's not-"
I stopped myself, though the memories played on: a dead child with his head split open, a pair of boots with feet still in them, the bloody stumps sticking out. The acidic smell of burning flesh, ordnance, tires. And always the faces. It was the faces that stayed with me.
But Becky wouldn't let it be.
"That's not why you won't try to get better? Then what is?" When I clammed up, she slid over and rested a hand on my forearm. "Please, Freddie, let me in."
"There's not much to say."
"Start with that picture, the one of your family. Tell me what happened to your brothers."
I looked at her hand on my arm. I wanted to wheel myself out of the room, to be anywhere else. But I didn't want to lose her touch. I took a deep breath, sucking in the surrounding air and letting every bit of it out before speaking.
"Crazy Joey and Slow Richie," I said. "That's what Mom called them. Joey was crazy all right, would try anything. He finally swallowed the next big thing and killed himself."
I felt a tremor in her hand. As if to hide it, she pulled the hand away and swept a curl from her face. For the first time since I'd met her, she looked shaken. All the guys she'd seen coming back from the war, and my brother OD'ing got to her?
She steadied herself, a momentary lapse of confidence, and changed the subject.
"And Richie?"
"Richie was different, a good kid, but he was born slow. My mother used to insist he had nothing wrong with him. He was just slower than the other kids. He used to follow me around, even though he was two years older. He always had a dumb grin-perpetual happiness without cause. And he was always humming that song, the Christmas carol from the music box. Never learned the words, but hummed it all year round."
"Where is he now?"
"After my mother died, Richie wandered off. I haven't seen him in six years. Probably homeless, maybe dead."
"Did you try looking for him?"
"What do you think?"
"I think," she said, "that you can use some help, that maybe I should sign you up for a PTSD group."
I gripped the arms of the wheelchair tighter and half rose.
"You mean a bunch of guys griping about how bad the war was? You think that'll fix everything? What happened was real, not my imagination. Talking about it won't make it go away."
She stood and wandered over to one of the treadmills and picked a flower from the cup holder. When she turned toward me, I thought she was about to offer it to me.
"Would you like to get out of here sometime, Freddie? Out of the hospital for a while?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean an excursion. I can order a chair car. You haven't been outside in a couple of months. Might do you some good."
"Are you asking me for a date?"
She flushed. "Sorry. We have strict rules against fraternizing with patients."
"Then why are you asking? Can't you take me wherever you want?"
"I need your consent."
"Where would I go?"
"I'll figure something out."
"But you'd come with me?"
"If that's what it takes for you to agree. We're not accomplishing much here."
I watched her holding the flower. What was it? I used to know. Not a rose. Maybe a lily, like the kind they put around a coffin at a wake. But her look was different than someone at a wake. More like someone desperate for yes.
I was taking too long to decide. She turned to replace the flower in the cup holder. I called her back.
"I'll go."
***
After I was back in my room, I sat on the bed thinking. I couldn't dodge the memories any longer.
A month after Mom's funeral, as I was trudging up the walkway at the end of a long day, Richie ran up to me with that silly grin and asked again if I knew when Dad and Mom would be coming home. I lost it. He'd sat through three funerals. At each, when the minister had asked if a family member wanted to speak, he'd nudged me and said: "You do it, Freddie." But he still didn't understand that Dad had died, that Joey had followed him eagerly to the grave, and that both of their deaths had devastated Mom.
I tried to temper my words, but they came out hot. "They're gone, Richie, all of them, and they're never coming back."
He looked at me like he was surprised and said nothing, just stumbled around in little circles under the basket. And then he began to sob. Raw heaving sobs, loud enough so neighbors opened their windows to see what was going on. They watched for a few seconds, shook their heads, and closed the windows again.
The next day, he ran off.
I'd promised Mom I'd take care of him, but how much could I do? I'd started college, enlisted in ROTC to cover my tuition, and had a long commute. Most of the insurance money had gone for the granite crypts Mom insisted on having-she had a fear of being buried in the ground. I barely had enough left to keep the gingerbread house, never mind pay for someone to sit with Richie. So I placed a necessary bet-that he'd be there every night when I came home.
I lost.
I tracked him to the bus depot at the rotary by the bridge. The man behind the ticket counter remembered him. He'd bought a ticket to Boston with the few bucks I'd left him.
I knew Richie liked to ride the T, ever since the summers when Mom used to take the three of us to the beach at L Street. So I spent the next three days on buses and streetcars and trains, crisscrossing the city from Brighton to Mattapan, from Dorchester to Revere, till 12:30 in the morning when the T stopped running. Then I'
d crash on a bench in the subway, eat junk food from vending machines in the stations, and hope for a miracle. I showed his picture to anyone who'd listen, the T police, the guys who made change in the stations, the lady sitting next to me on the train. I'd get off at each stop and search the streets for four blocks in either direction.
No miracle.
At the end of the third day, as I sat on an old packing crate at the edge of an empty parking lot, a torn trash bag from a dumpster caught the wind and released its contents in a gust. Styrofoam packing peanuts skittered across the pavement. I stared at their dance, watching puffs of my own breath glisten under a floodlight, and gave up. Richie was gone, disappeared into the great underbelly of the city. Time to look out for myself.
He was a good kid, Richie, always cared what happened to me. What if some kind soul had taken him in and given him a job? He'd be a good worker if you gave him repetitive chores like Mom used to do, folding laundry or picking rocks from a garden. I wondered what he'd look like now. With no one to cut his hair, had it grown long? Had his fair skin darkened from living on the streets?
I shimmied to the edge of my bed, reached out, and grabbed the crutches leaning against the wall. If I'd used them in PT, dammit I could use them now. I shuffled over to the closet and balanced on them while I rummaged through and found the military-issue carton with my personal stuff. I took out the music box and wound the key, then switched the lever on. The Christmas carol began to play.
Wouldn't it be great if Richie heard I was in the VA hospital and came to visit, came walking through that door this very minute. I listened. Footsteps approaching in the corridor. When I looked up, Nurse Dinah was there, come to give me my meds. I flicked the lever off.
As I teetered on the crutches like a toddler, she took off her Coke bottle glasses, swished the lenses with the corner of her lab coat, and held them up to the light to check for smudges. Then she put them back on, and the eyes behind the glasses crinkled as she broke into a smile.
Chapter Seventeen
Up with the Good
Becky brought me outside the main entrance of the hospital and down a ramp to the parking lot where several other vets were lined up waiting for a ride. I twisted around in my wheelchair and glanced up, my first external view of the building that had been my home the past two months. It had a decorative turret at its highest point, a cupola on top and arched windows staring out in all directions. I bet the turret wasn't handicap accessible.
"So that's where you've been keeping me captive."
Becky grinned but didn't dignify my comment with a reply. When my turn came, she wheeled me onto the mechanized lift. The attendant hit the lever, and the platform whirred until it was even with the bed of the van. Then they rolled me in and locked me down.
Once we were on the road, I badgered Becky to tell me where we were going, but she insisted on leaving our destination a surprise. Stuck in the back, I had no idea where the van was taking me. But after a while, I could see through the windshield that the trees were getting stumpy and the horizon was drifting farther away. I began to get that sense of anticipation I had as a kid when approaching the ocean. By the time we crested the bridge over the canal, I knew. She was taking me to Cape Cod.
I didn't know whether to be angry or pleased. It did feel good to be outside for the first time since coming back to the States. But I hadn't been to the Cape since going on active duty and wasn't sure I was ready for a return.
"Why'd you pick the Cape?" I said.
She glanced up into the rear-view mirror and for a moment, our eyes met. I caught the hint of a smirk on her face.
"I like the Cape, don't you?"
"I was thinking something closer. How can you afford all this time?"
"I'm on my own today. It's Saturday."
Saturday. I used to count the days until my deployment ended, marking each box on the calendar with a black X. But now I'd stopped looking at calendars. Time was no longer my friend.
"Am I the best you can do for a weekend date?"
"I was hard up. Guess you're it."
I eyed the crutches she'd stowed in the corner.
"Dinah told you I made it across the room by myself?"
"Uh-huh."
"Is that why you brought the crutches?"
"You never know when you might need them. Maybe a curb or a stair or two."
"You know I can't do stairs."
"I've watched you do them in PT."
"PT's not the real world. I appreciate your taking me out, Becky, but don't get any notions. Across my room is one thing. Outdoors is another."
The smirk widened. "We'll see."
The van pulled into a dirt parking lot. Together, Becky and the driver maneuvered the chair onto the lift and lowered me. The driver synchronized his watch like we used to before a patrol in Iraq or a raid in Warcraft. One hour.
After a couple of minutes, Becky was rolling me along the sidewalk.
It was a clear day, mild for October. The Cape got pretty quiet after Labor Day, but the weekend's weather was nice enough that a lot of people were out and about. Becky told me she'd searched online and found a little burger place on the water. It was a few blocks away.
On the way, we passed a basketball court. A bunch of kids were playing pickup, three on three. When I heard the sound of dribbling and the clank of the ball against the rim, my fingers started to twitch.
"Did you know," I said, "that we'd be going past a basketball court?"
"How would I know? I've never been here before. Want to stop and watch?"
I hemmed and hawed. Before I could come up with an answer, she wheeled me to the edge of the court and set the brake. They were kids, fourteen, maybe fifteen, not all-stars. They looked a lot like the ragtag bunch my dad inherited when we first came to the Cape. He tried to whip them into shape, but there wasn't enough talent in that small school, especially compared to the juggernaut he'd left in Boston. In his second year, after the seventh straight loss, he let them have it, told them they were a bunch of damned losers and would never be anything else. One of players told his mother, who was on the school board. Dad made a public apology, but it wasn't enough. At the end of the season, they let him go.
"Want to take a shot?" Becky said.
I turned around to see if she was serious. Becky had a playful side, but when it came to my rehab, she was a hardass.
"I'm in a fucking wheelchair," I said.
"People in wheelchairs play basketball, some of them pretty well."
She let go of the handles, waited until an out-of-bounds ball stopped play, and then stepped onto the court.
"Excuse me."
"Don't do this, Becky."
"Would you mind if he took a shot? He used to be a great basketball player but was wounded in Iraq. He's a war hero."
I ground my teeth and readied a response, but the kids came over right away. The shortest one, probably the point guard, handed me the ball.
"I can't."
"You don't want to disappoint them, Freddie."
She positioned me in front of the basket, halfway inside the key, at what used to be my launch point when I tried to dunk. The kids formed a semicircle behind me.
I stroked the nub of the ball, fingered the edge of the seam. I breathed in the leather. But how was I supposed to shoot without pushing off with my legs? I tried spinning the ball off my fingertips, once, twice, three times, glanced over my shoulder at Becky, and took a half-hearted shot.
Just short of the rim.
"Try again," Becky said as one of the boys retrieved the ball.
I did. This time, I compensated for no legs. It clanked off the front. The boys behind me shuffled nervously. Becky released the brake and rolled me a foot closer, whispering as she did so. "You can do it."
I held the ball in front of my face, cocked my wrist and pushed a little harder. Too much arm to be graceful. This time, it popped over the lip of the rim, rattled around, and went in. A cheer went up behind me and the
boys formed a line for high-fives, as if I'd hit a shot at the buzzer to win states.
Afterwards, I was furious with Becky.
"You had no right."
"It proved what you can do."
"That's not your job."
"Helping you get your confidence back is exactly my job. It shows how much you have left."
I pressed down on the arms of the chair with all my strength, and turned around to face her.
"You're wrong," I said. "It shows how much I've lost."
After that, we were both in a funk. We went on without talking, heading to the cafe. Before we got there, we noticed the ferry to Martha's Vineyard about to depart. Becky took me into a small park by the terminal to watch it go.
I compulsively scanned the perimeter before we entered. Not many places to hide. A few bushes on three sides and Vineyard Sound at the front. I listened for movement. A gull squawked overhead, and the waves lapped lazily at the shore, murmuring like the hushed voices of drowned sailors telling their stories. I sniffed the air. No smoke from a discharged weapon, no stench from a detonated explosive. And none of the hospital odors I'd become used to-disinfectant and hand sanitizer. I calmed myself down and released the breath I'd been holding in. Then I inhaled the salt spray as if for the first time.
The ferry captain blew his horn, signaling he was about to shove off. Overhead, the sun shone brightly, but the Vineyard was shrouded in mist. The offshore breeze had yet to push the morning fog out to sea. The island that was the ferry's destination rippled and blurred like a phantom world.
Becky rolled me to the center of the park and settled on a bench, stopping first to read the shiny plaque bolted onto its back. The fresh inscription read: Eva "April" Bryant. A Celebration of Life 1922-2008. Underneath was a quote: "So much to do, so little time."
"Now there's a woman with spunk," Becky said.
I was still humiliated by the scene at the basketball court, and the words spewed out without thought. "And you're saying if I had that kind of spunk, I'd be dunking by now. Is that it?"
"I was just saying she had spunk, that's all."
Along The Watchtower Page 9