Love You Hard

by Abby Maslin

  But it was on my wedding day, when both my parents walked me down the aisle, my father clutching my left arm, shuffling gingerly and trying not to fall, my mother on my right side, keeping us upright out of necessity, that I saw myself in them both. The soft. The hard. That delicate place that rests between the two.

  CHAPTER 11

  September 2012

  On the third of September, TC’s thirtieth birthday, our families and friends gather at the Nats’ stadium to commemorate his thirty journeys around the sun. The location is fitting: TC is a huge fan of our local team. Over the years, I have suffered through many long exchanges between him and my mom, trading stats and making predictions.

  “T, what do you think about Zimmerman this season?” my mom will eagerly ask. “Did you know about his shoulder injury?”

  Although TC probably pays less attention to baseball than my mom does, she considers him to be the resident baseball expert. It’s a touching gesture, knowing TC will be honored at a place in which we’ve shared so many light and happy moments as a family, but it’s also unsettling. I can’t quite detach baseball from the night of his assault.

  I choose to pass on the game. In the end, it simply feels too strange to celebrate TC in any place TC cannot be himself. Instead, I spend that night at the hospital, sitting at his bedside with Vanessa, who has been so busy helping me coordinate the logistics of my crazy life that she hasn’t even had a chance to visit with TC yet.

  Like all new visitors, she takes a deep breath as she enters TC’s room, unsure of what to expect. I settle myself in my usual spot, that empty space on the right side of his bed that he no longer remembers to occupy now that he is exceptionally left-dominant.

  On every visit, I bring my whiteboard—a staple of my fourth-grade classroom—which, I’m hoping, might have some applicability here. If TC cannot understand the oral language he hears all day, perhaps writing will be an effective way to reach him. In an attempt to put Vanessa at ease and fill the silence of the room, I wish TC happy birthday and scribble the words as I speak, hoping the combination of visual and auditory information will allow him to understand some of what I’m saying.

  Jack went to the game today, I write underneath, in my neatest, peppiest teacher handwriting. He even tried soda!

  I am baiting my health-conscious husband, exploiting this detail for its shock value, in the hope of some response. But TC’s face shows nothing. A moment later, he grabs the whiteboard from my hands and gestures emphatically to the marker.

  “You want this?” I ask, confused.

  He responds by grabbing the marker from my clutch and fiddling with it in one hand until he has successfully popped off the cap with his left thumb.

  YONG NOYE GE GEGRINR GN YOPGR AVE AVENU, he writes.

  My mouth is agape as I watch him moving the marker, forming real, legible letters. I whip around to exchange jaw-dropped expressions with Vanessa.

  TC is pointing excitedly to the message he’s just written, trying to convey its importance through the one eye that is not bandaged.

  “Oh my God.” I inhale with delight. “These are real letters.”

  The words themselves make no sense, but Vanessa and I study the whiteboard just the same, hoping to translate his message into distinguishable language.

  “Is he trying to tell us what happened to him that night?” Vanessa asks, pointing to the words YONG and AVENU.

  I shake my head, still speechless. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  We are beside ourselves, half a beat from calling everyone we know, beginning with Detective Saunders, who’s taken over the case from the homicide detectives who are no longer necessary. Is this the kind of thing he could enter into evidence?

  If there was a doctor in the room, no doubt he’d be frowning and reminding us to calm ourselves. This may not mean anything, I can almost hear in my head. One scrambled message does not guarantee TC’s language is intact.

  But there is hope. Some indication that behind blank stares and obvious distress, all is not lost. TC is trying to communicate. My husband is still here.

  * * *

  The thing I’d most like to give TC is the thing I believe could be most instrumental in his healing: Jack. Without words, he broaches the subject, hinting at Jack in every interaction. It’s a question he can convey only through facial expressions. Where is my son? Why won’t you bring me my son?

  I explain, in English, which is a very unreliable mode of communication these days, that a visit with Jack is, unfortunately, a long way off. The first opportunity they’ll have to be together again is when TC eventually moves out of the ICU and transfers to the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) across the street. The move is still likely a few weeks off, so in the meantime, I try to fill TC’s room with as many reminders as I can of his life outside. I bring in homemade posters and photos and tack them to the wall, pretty much guaranteeing that whichever direction TC turns his head, he will be surrounded by his family. I bring in loose photos and flip through them one by one, narrating each scene.

  “Remember this?” I ask, not waiting for a response. “This was from the beach just this past summer. Remember how much Jack loved the pool? Remember how you threw him in the air and yelled ‘Dunk-a-cino!’ before dipping him under the water?”

  TC takes the photos of Jack into his left hand and grips them tightly, shaking them in my face.

  “I know, honey,” I soothe him. “He misses you. He’s doing so well. He’s at home now with Mallet. But he loves you. And he’s the best. Isn’t he the best?”

  Next, I bring in our wedding album, which came in the mail just days ago, a belated anniversary present I designed online to make up for the fact that we’d never had one made after the wedding. As I strum through the pages now, I observe the little details, the ones I was too breathless to notice on the day of: TC’s hair in dire need of a cut, my toothy grin in every photo where I’m staring directly at him, my body full and luminous in contrast to my shrinking, dying father beside me. I put the album in TC’s hands and turn it over. The phrase THE BEST IS YET TO BE stretches auspiciously across the binding of the back cover.

  I bring in my laptop and play for him the song that three of his musician friends have written. In college, they’d played in a band together, a jazz/hip-hop fusion sound featuring TC on the electric guitar, an instrument for which he’s never actually had a lesson. The first time I saw Flow Down Street Six play, at a Bucknell house party the spring after TC graduated, I was awed. Two hundred people stood beside me, cheering on my shy boyfriend, as he slipped seamlessly into the role of rock star.

  What a thrill it sent down my spine, watching the music take over his body. TC’s creative soul lived to perform, but he recognized the realities of making a living out of it. As the years passed and the members of the band began to go their own ways, I could still find TC plucking the guitar in quiet spare minutes, his fingers dancing effortlessly across the strings, making simple melodies for Jack.

  His bandmates were there in the waiting room on the second, maybe the third, day. There have been so many visitors, it is all fog to me now. They returned home that night, distraught over TC, and channeled it into the perfect song. I play it for him now, convinced he will recognize the wistful sound of Ben’s saxophone, Adam’s soulful voice, and John’s syncopated rhymes.

  We pray for better days/I praise the sun’s rays/That gaze upon your face/I know that someday we’ll chit and chatter, laugh and watch a family happily ever after/We’ve got you, that’s all that really matters.

  I can hardly breathe as the sound fills the room, and I watch TC take in the sound he recognizes so well. I blink back fat tears, wondering how it’s possible to feel so much at once. Gratitude for his survival and for the innumerable acts of love we are receiving. Profound nostalgia as I picture TC onstage, his guitar strap resting across his shoulder, lost in the process of music-
making, occupying a side of him scarcely seen by the world. And choking fear of the unknown, wondering what happens tomorrow and the thousands of days that come after.

  TC closes his eyes as the song comes to an end. Our tears fall in unison.

  * * *

  There are three chief ways in which TC’s brain injury is revealing itself. First, there are his physical deficits, the hemiparesis, or partial paralysis of his right side, which has weakened him, from the muscles in his face all the way down to the toes of his right foot. This is likely to be permanent, aided only by intensive physical therapy.

  Then there is his speech, the big unknown. The area in which he continues to make baby steps, most recently being removed from the ventilator attached to his tracheostomy tube. In a few weeks, we’re likely to know more about TC’s speech and how much of it remains, particularly what his specific brand of aphasia is likely to look like.

  Lastly, there is his left eye, the total damage of which is still unknown but which continues to heal nicely from the ocular surgery he had in August. The damage, however, is to the optic nerve, which cannot be healed through any surgery or course of treatment. TC may be totally blind in one eye; he may be partially blind. But until he is well enough to string together words, it is impossible to know what he’s able to see.

  Imagine for a moment a normal eye exam: the doctor asks you to place one hand over your good eye and read out the letters you can see with your bad eye.

  Now imagine you’ve got only one working hand with which to cover your good eye. And that the doctor’s instructions make no sense. You can hear him talking, but it sounds like a character in a Peanuts cartoon, one long stream of muffled garble. Even if you were able to use your years of eye doctor experience to guess at his directions, you still can’t convey exactly what it is you can see. You can’t make the letter A with your tongue. You try to say V and release a flood of nonsense words instead.

  You could try to write it—that’s probably your best bet—except that there’s still a chance your thought pattern will be broken before the pencil hits the paper. The thing you mean to say will look like Chinese to you once it’s spread across the paper and you’ll wonder, What did I just write? And Can anyone read this?

  These are the complicated factors we are up against. Every part of TC’s functioning seems to be inherently tied to another. Communication of all types is limited.

  After getting off the ventilator and having his trach plugged, TC is transferred to a step-down unit in the hospital. Now we await the A-OK to transfer him to rehabilitation at the National Rehabilitation Hospital across the street. There he will stay for an unknown number of weeks, continuing to receive intensive speech, physical, and occupational therapy until he is functional enough to return home for good.

  We pass the time until his discharge from Washington Hospital Center doing exactly what we’ve been doing since August: hanging out in his hospital room. But now that TC’s condition has stabilized, there are far fewer visitors during the daytime. With the exception of his therapists and a paid hospital babysitter, who sits in the room when I can’t be there, it is mostly him and me. And an extraordinary effort to make sense of each other.

  After passing the barium swallow test, two important milestones were reached: One, he was permitted to eat soft foods again, allowing his PEG tube to be removed. And two, he began initiating many more sounds, fantastical combinations of slurred words and straight-up gibberish.

  One bright afternoon, sitting at the foot of his bed, I pull out my iPhone to try to capture all the nonsense coming out of his mouth.

  Patrick, another of TC’s close friends from Duke, made this suggestion during a recent visit. “You should really think about documenting more of TC’s progress on film. It might be helpful for him to see as he gets better.”

  It was a good idea, even if it was hard to imagine a TC who could look back on these days with any meaningful reflection.

  In a happy haze of lethargy, TC mumbles out of the left side of his mouth. “Honey, munshawish-awick,” he tells me through half-lit eyes, leaving me to initiate the translation.

  It’s clear by now that he’s better with writing and best still at math. I take out my handy-dandy whiteboard once again and drill the toughest math facts I know: the formidable multiplication tables. The math TC uses at his job is undoubtedly more complex—a series of intricate models and sophisticated equations—but as a fourth-grade teacher, I’m working with what I know.

  4 × 5 = ? I test him.

  And like the smart-ass he selectively shows himself to be, he responds with 20/1.

  Touché, Mr. Maslin. On to the next fact.

  Doctors remain cautiously optimistic about his recovery, promising nothing in terms of the specific skills TC might regain but satisfied to see him medically stable. The next phase, rehab, will be a test in stamina. For three hours a day, TC will be expected to participate in therapy. The focus has shifted, from an acute medical situation to his chronic, long-term recovery. This is the marathon Mladen referred to back in August, a series of small, incremental milestones that promise to be far less dramatic and hope-inspiring than TC’s early days emerging from a coma.

  As of now, I’ve still got the stamina I’ll need to make it through this next phase. Having a goal to work toward has been essential to keeping my spirits up. First, getting TC out of the ICU. Now preparing for the world of rehabilitation. For as long as we’re in the care of a hospital, the road map is clear. I just need to continue showing up.

  Every day I carry a three-by-five-inch notebook in which I write daily notes to TC (If you drink another Ensure, we’ll leave you alone!) and construct elaborate to-do lists. There is a mountain of must-dos that have nothing to do with TC’s actual health. The amount of paperwork and phone calls is mind-boggling to me, and it is in these moments, trying to explain to a Bank of America representative why my husband can’t get on the phone himself, that I am visited by the first seeds of anger. It seems weird to me—that I should feel more fury over the paperwork in front of me than for the people who put us in this situation—but I am increasingly, incomprehensively angry about the goddamn forms in my life.

  And then there are the extras. The things I pile on in order to prevent myself from having a spare minute to indulge my grief: finding a dog walker, writing six jillion thank-you cards, responding to the hundreds of people who have emerged from the woodwork of our lives to extend prayers and condolences or to share their own brain injury stories. I could spend all day returning personal correspondence and still be behind. But keeping busy is a solution, the one thing I can do to prevent emotional paralysis.

  We have to be creative these days in order to keep TC occupied. There is a giant e-mail thread that circulates each night among me, Sean, TC’s parents, and his Duke friends. We have a calendar broken down, hour by hour, as to who will visit with TC. I am there during the day, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., and his friends are there night after night, patiently trying to engage TC in games of Connect Four or War.

  I am not doing this alone, that much is certain. There are people helping us in ways I’m not even aware of. Each evening I step through the front door of our apartment building and discover a hot meal wrapped in brown paper, waiting on the floor. I unlock the mailbox in the lobby and out falls a thick stack of envelopes containing handwritten letters and personal checks from people I’ve never met.

  I think of my favorite movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, and realize that our lives have begun to resemble the famous last scene, in which Jimmy Stewart throws open the door of his home and finds a crowd of people, their hands full of pocket change, every one of them eager to step forward and repay a favor to the man who has always helped them.

  We don’t deserve all this kindness. But neither did TC deserve this fate. Maybe there’s no such thing as “deserving” in life, no neatly packaged realities such as bad things and good people.
Maybe we’re all just entitled to the same simple gifts: a hug from a child, the love of a family, the kindness of those who wish to erase the suffering in the world.

  Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

  It’s true. We are rich beyond imagination.

  CHAPTER 12

  October 2012

  As summer fades, fall descends, reminding me that time marches forward outside the narrow confines of our hospital world. Soon it is October, one of the most beautiful months to be a Washingtonian, and try as I might, I cannot reconcile the dichotomy of my city. It is at once seedy, noxiously power hungry, racially tense, and perpetually struggling. It is also enchanting—the bustling, modern version of small-town Americana, where the fortunate among us know our every neighbor and every small tragedy circulates like the ripples in a pond.

  The enchantment of Washington, D.C., is hardly more present than it is during the subtle beauty of autumn. Our own neighborhood, Capitol Hill, which is charming on a regular day, becomes a regular Norman Rockwell painting during the early days of October. Outside on the brick sidewalks, kids try out their Halloween costumes in those dusk-filled hours between school and supper. Crisp ruby leaves collect in piles, only to be kicked, thrown, and reconfigured by a delighted group of preschoolers or an ebullient team of pickup soccer players.

  At night, I sit out on the stoop and watch the neighborhood families return home from the dog park or the playground. As the seasons change, so do the characters. Shorts are exchanged for jeans. T-shirts fade into a stream of knit sweaters and colorful scarfs. But every night it is the same. People pushing sleek-looking strollers. Young men with earbuds and a hurried step. Young women with yoga mats affixed to the backs of their bikes. Proud dog owners throwing Frisbees and mutilated tennis balls to eager, expectant dogs.

  What changes most is the scenery behind them. The passage of time has transformed the trees that line Lincoln Park from a sonorous, lush green to a harmonious bouquet of reds and oranges. While some may prefer the excitement of the first cherry blossom, spring is also marked by a bevy of activities: hordes of tourists piled into giant double-decker buses and entrance lines for museums and national landmarks that span city blocks.