Love You Hard

by Abby Maslin

  Spring is when TC and I have always chosen to avoid the most “D.C.” parts of the city. Fall is for the residents, the season in which we claim the supreme beauty of the city for ourselves and marvel in sharing it with no one. This is the season in which we used to put Spencer on his leash and stroll in a loop around the Capitol, downhill on the north side of the building, around the Reflecting Pool, and then a steep uphill climb on the south end.

  But like TC, I’ve been indoors for so long, I’ve missed the subtle, evolving transition to my favorite season. For months I’ve been breathing recycled hospital air and sipping from stale coffee cups, forgetting that life continues to transcend our individual circumstances, that it travels on seemingly effortlessly for those who are not trapped in the gray place between life and death.

  As I sit breathing in the crisp, delicious air and absorbing the scenery of our neighborhood, the truth is that I’m so damn jealous of the strangers before me that I can hardly see straight. The audacity, I think. Just going home to your family. Why is it so easy for you?

  Try as I might, I can’t stop looking for TC among the crowd, just as I did that first morning. Some afternoons, on my way home from Eastern Market, I walk along that grassy patch known as Turtle Park, where Detective Saunders believed TC was assaulted, and try to imagine the scene in my head. The boys stopping the car. TC lifting up his hands in defense.

  I’ll never know exactly how it went down. Now that the young men are in custody, arrested after a neighbor overheard them bragging about TC’s assault, each has pointed a finger at the others, and conflicting accounts make it impossible to know who is actually responsible for TC’s injuries.

  I’ve done my part: I’ve put on a dress and brushed my hair and stood in front of TV cameras, begging for help. My visibility is what helped bring these three young men to their neighbor’s attention in the first place. I can feel good about that at the same time I feel sick about exploiting our privacy. TC would hate to know his picture has been on TV as much as it has. He’d hate to think that anyone might refer to us as the “poor Maslins.”

  The details of TC’s assault matter to the team of lawyers and detectives involved, but they don’t matter as much to me. I am less interested in knowing who swung the bat than I am in understanding how one human inflicts violence upon another.

  Everyone in TC’s life has an individual, contrasting response to their anger. With the exception of my dad, who doesn’t say much about TC other than to offer the occasional “I’m sorry, honey,” the men are prone to visceral fury. My godfather, Jim, pounds his fist on the table as a string of expletives follows. Others make dark comments, vengeful remarks about the particular form of justice they’d like to see served.

  The women internalize their rage differently. For us, it presents itself as tears, stress, weight loss, and insomnia. Of everyone, Bethany understands she has the least at stake. If she feels traumatized, she buries her anxieties within, keeping her attention on my mental state. Likewise, my mother has learned to forge ahead during difficult circumstances as these. It is only in a moment of unguarded reflection that she divulges her shock.

  “When you first called that morning, all I kept hoping was that TC was cheating on you. But I knew he never would. After we got off the phone, I collapsed flat on the floor.”

  Ruth and I are the most weathered of the female bunch. While she loses sleep, I fall easily into slumber, my body so physically taxed from the work of mothering and caregiving that I cannot keep my eyes open at the end of each long day. I fuel myself with adrenaline, actively surrounding myself with friends and eager for distractions that will ward off my loneliness, as Ruth and Don hunker down in the privacy of their yellow cottage in St. Mary’s, providing emotional support to each other.

  I take it all in, everyone’s reaction to the same event. I run hot and cold, so angry I might kill someone, so sad I could kill myself. But I don’t like the thought of wishing ill on others, of relishing someone else’s equal misery. It’s not the way I want to live.

  If I had a choice, I’d rather just not be associated with these young men at all. I make it a point not to say their names aloud. It’s toxic, the energy surrounding the assault. Some may feed on it, but I am repelled by it. I don’t want our names linked with anyone else’s, our future inextricably tied up with theirs.

  I can sidestep it for only so long. Most days I keep my eyes pointed forward, committed to TC’s recovery, to his needs at the hospital, but in a few days, I will face two of the young men in court for a preliminary hearing, and our circle of loved ones is abuzz about how this event might go. I wonder if these men will look at me. Or if they’ll sit in regret, their eyes cast to the floor in shame. And if they turn away, I wonder what the source of that shame will be—a deep feeling of remorse for the life they’ve robbed a man of? Shame over being caught? Or shame for the sake of appearing shameful, for the chance of a little leeway or compassion from the judge?

  The hearing is only the first step in what is likely to be a long, drawn-out legal case. There will be evidence collection and trial preparations. Separate trials for each of the individuals involved. Separate sentences if anyone is found guilty.

  And throughout all that, there will be the continuing circus of our everyday lives: paperwork and motherhood and medical emergencies and more. I will allow myself rage when I need it; I will not turn off the spigot when my anger needs a chance to flow. But if I give it all the berth it demands, I sense it will consume me.

  And I will not give anyone or anything that satisfaction.

  * * *

  One night, shortly after TC’s admission to the National Rehabilitation Hospital, I almost relax. I am sitting on the couch, polishing off a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with Claire and Bethany as Jack sleeps soundly in his crib down the hall. For a brief, solitary second, I am not thinking about TC. I am laughing and trying to convince my two best friends we need matching unicorn tattoos.

  The weeks leading up to this night have been long. I’ve been stationed at the hospital day after day, taking notes during TC’s therapy sessions and trying to keep him company during the slow stretches of hours in which there is no therapy. I dress for my visits with him as if it’s my job. In reality, that’s exactly what it’s become.

  Each day I pull a different outfit from my closet, sampling the collection of back-to-school clothes on which I’d blown last year’s teaching bonus and which will now never be debuted in the classroom. I slip on a pair of cute wedges or heels and run a brush through my extra-long hair, a muted shade of golden brown that hasn’t been cut in months. Haircuts, incidentally, are one of the hardest things to make happen in a crisis. Within weeks, Jack’s hair had become a white, floppy mess that hung past his eyes. Mine, a raggedy forest of ombré split ends, a look I call “accidental ombré.”

  I am sitting on the couch, legs crossed, experiencing a rush of something that feels like ease, when my cell phone rings, displaying the hospital’s phone number.

  “Ms. Maslin?” the caller asks, her voice pursed.

  “This is she,” I reply. “Is everything OK?”

  “This is Donna. I’m one of the nurses on duty at the rehab hospital. I’m calling to let you know your husband just had a fall incident. He tried to get out of bed on his own, and he landed on the ground.”

  My voice springs into alarm as I put a finger to my lips, signaling for Claire and Bethany to hush. I debate reaching for my keys. “Well, is he all right? Did he hit his head?”

  Donna’s voice is calm. “No, we don’t think so. But we can’t have patients getting out of bed on their own. We’ve looked him over, and we’re going to place him in restraints for the rest of the night.”

  I let out an exhale. A sigh of relief and a breath of empathy for TC. He hates restraints. I remember those agitated days in the ICU when nurses would use Velcro bands to adhere him to the bed after I left at night. No s
hit they didn’t like patients getting out of bed on their own. This was something I learned firsthand the evening he’d been discharged to the rehab hospital.

  As luck would have it, after all that preparation, I hadn’t been there to witness the transfer. As a confused TC was being wheeled in his cot across the glass breezeway that connects Washington Hospital Center to the National Rehabilitation Hospital across the street, I was sitting across town in my weekly graduate school class.

  When I returned to the hospital after class that night, I happened to enter TC’s new digs at precisely the moment of pinnacle mayhem: watching him try to rip off his ankle and chest restraints as a nurse and doctor pinned him to the bed.

  Confused by the flurry of activity, I had sprung into action, rushing to TC’s left side. “Whoa! Honey! Lie back. You need to lie back on the bed,” I directed firmly.

  The nurse, a tall dark man with a thick West Indian accent, was clearly irritated. “He cannot get out of the bed like that,” he scolded. “We don’t babysit here. He’s being a danger to himself.”

  I nodded, trying to keep TC still as I indicated my understanding. “I just think he’s a little confused about where he is!” I shouted over my husband’s grunting. “He doesn’t mean to be uncooperative.”

  And with those words, TC began yanking his mesh safety vest over his head, where it became caught on his trach plug, the plastic piece sealing off the hole created by the tracheostomy surgery. “Shit!” I yelped. “TC, do not move! Just stay as you are!”

  It was too late. The moment he lowered his arm, the plug fell from his neck, exposing the open wound. “It’s OK. It’s OK,” I repeated, mostly for my own benefit as I stared into the sphere of bloody flesh.

  Dr. Murphy, herself in a wheelchair, rolled herself over to assess the damage. “I can’t put that back in there,” she concluded. “That’s the kind of stuff they do across the street. We’re going to need to discharge you and send you back over.”

  I closed my eyes in involuntary prayer. It was already 9:30 P.M., and with the exception of graduate class, I’d been at the hospital all day. Hours spent waiting for discharge papers, talking up the transition to rehab, and eagerly anticipating the next phase of TC’s recovery. If they sent us back, I could predict with certainty what would happen next: they’d officially discharge us from rehab, ask me to pack up TC’s new room, assign him another room at the hospital from which he’d just departed, and then we’d spend the next few days in hospital limbo, waiting to be readmitted to NRH (if another bed became available). We’d effectively be wasting days TC could use participating in precious therapy.

  In short, I would not be going home to sleep that night.

  But Dr. Murphy could not be convinced to try replacing the plug herself, and so off they whisked us back across the glass breezeway to the basement emergency room of Washington Hospital Center, where, for more than three hours, we waited to be seen by a doctor.

  For all his previous agitation and distress, TC had officially tired himself out. By the time the doctor arrived, he was deep in slumber and slobbering on the white sheet of his cot.

  “What happened here?” asked the relaxed, salt-and-pepper-haired physician, who peeked through the curtain, unfazed by TC’s open wound.

  I opened my mouth and sighed, trying to compose a brief summary of the epic saga of the trach plug. “Anyway, I don’t think he meant to hurt himself,” I heard myself conclude. “It’s just very difficult for him to understand why he’s being moved from one place to another.”

  The doctor nodded in agreement, taking all of twenty seconds to pop the trach plug back in as TC slept. “They probably could have done this over there,” he contended. “I’m sorry this happened to your husband. At least he’s at a good age for an injury like this.”

  Huh? I must have misheard that last statement. In what way was this an optimal situation?

  “I just mean,” he quickly added, “that if your husband were any younger, it would be hard. Because he wouldn’t have been through school yet or learned any of the skills he needed for his job. And if he were any older, the recovery would be a lot more grueling. So, if you’re gonna have a brain injury, this is the best age for it to happen.”

  “Hmm.” I nodded, far too exhausted to accept this logic. “I guess that makes sense.”

  And it did. In a way. I imagined being the mother of a young child with a TBI, wondering if my kid would ever graduate from high school or live independently. I imagined being in my sixties, perhaps more dependent on TC than I already was, and learning how to care for a spouse who may never recover. There were always scarier scenarios, if ever I chose to reach outside my own world and ponder them. Optimal may be a stretch when referring to anything connected to brain injury, but I understood his point. You inherit the mess you inherit. And you try to show gratitude that it’s not worse.

  “What now? Where does he go from here?” I wondered meaningfully.

  The doctor smiled. “Let me call over to NRH. We’ll get him back over there tonight.”

  Now, as I field this latest setback, Claire and Bethany keep their eyes glued to me, waiting for Donna and me to hang up. For tonight at least, an emergency has been averted. She reiterates once more that TC should not attempt to get out of bed. I reiterate once more that I understand this fact and will do my best, in my pitifully limited capacity, to relay that to him tomorrow morning.

  I look down at the half-empty glass of wine on the coffee table before me. I should have known better than to let my guard down for even a minute.

  * * *

  On the day of the preliminary hearing, the event during which a judge will decide if there’s enough evidence to continue holding two of TC’s suspected assailants behind bars, I enter the set of glass doors to the Moultrie Courthouse in Judiciary Square and wait my turn to pass through the metal detectors alongside a noisy crowd. Assembled in this tiny partitioned area is a melting pot of jury members, defendants, witnesses, lawyers, and family members. Bethany and I stand close to Ruth and Don, and I watch the women in front of me place their purses on the conveyor, wondering if any of them could be a mother of one of the young men involved. That it’s possible we’re all just cornered here together, strangers waiting in a huddle for a security pat-down—the family of the victim and the family of the accused—seems like it ought to be against the rules somehow. Like our interactions should be more closely surveilled by some kind of authority.

  I knew this building a little already. It’s where I went to be fingerprinted when I started teaching in the District and where I spent four mindless hours waiting to be called for jury duty just over a year ago, only to be sent home at the end of the day. I’ve never been in an actual courtroom, however, and when we arrive, I see that it’s divided in half. To the left of the judge’s bench, reporters have gathered, notepads in hand. The hearing is open to the public, so I’m not surprised to see them here.

  To the right of the judge’s bench is where we sit. There are folks directly in front of us, family members of the defendants, perhaps, but no one exchanges eye contact or introduces themselves. Instead, we pile into one row: Don, Ruth, Bethany, and me. As we arrange our belongings and remove our jackets, I feel the reporters’ eyes staring me down.

  “This is fucking weird,” I whisper to my sister. “It feels like they’re watching my face.”

  Bethany nods silently, her mouth pressed into a hard smile of agreement. She’s not a trial lawyer, and she’s never seen the judicial system operate from this vantage point either.

  As proceedings begin, I feel tense, less and less able to stay put in my seat as U.S. Marshals escort the two defendants to empty chairs next to their public defenders. The third of TC’s assailants has already pleaded guilty, a move that means he’s now on the fast track toward a plea bargain. There will be no hearing or eventual trial for his involvement in TC’s assault. Ruth places one warm h
and on my back to steady me as I lean forward and glare.

  The men in front of me are so damn young-looking. Logically, I should have expected them to be. But up close, I am shocked by their youth. The lanky one with wire-rimmed glasses is seventeen, a high school senior I’ve learned a little about from a family friend who also happened to be his math teacher for a year. The shorter one, the alleged leader of the group, is just twenty, and he too wears a face of untarnished innocence. The men before me are certainly not what I’ve imagined: hard-worn criminals with some mastermind agenda. They are children.

  Anger begins to swell through each of my limbs, tensing my muscles and pulsating through my eyeballs. I feel angry, like a mother who has issued too many warnings in my lifetime. What the hell were you thinking? I want to scream. Or did you not think at all?

  The inside of my head sounds like a recycled television drama. I’m resorting to the quintessential parenting lines heard again and again, in those scenes where the thoughtless teenager borrows the car without asking or accepts a drink from someone she doesn’t know. But the truth is that I have no words for my emotional response. I’m struck speechless by the recklessness of these young men and their profound lack of empathy.

  There is a detail I learned a few weeks ago that I can’t stop thinking about. After TC’s phone was stolen, one of the young men powered it on, and a photo of six-month-old Jack, propped on the couch in a blue-and-white-striped onesie, appeared on the screen. I felt sort of bad, he reported to the cops after the arrests were made.