by Abby Maslin
“Eleph . . . elephant,” he says, pushing his thick black eyeglasses higher on his nose. I still don’t know that TC’s glasses do much besides serve as a funky accessory. The last ophthalmologist we saw reiterated that the damage to his optic nerve was permanent. The glasses, he explained, were for TC’s good eye.
“He was too big! I sent him back!” TC now smiles triumphantly.
It goes on like this for an hour: Linda, pointing to short phrases, drilling phonetic sounds, helping rewire the circuits of TC’s brain so that the words he visually extracts from a page can be translated into oral language. Progress is incremental. He’ll start with this board book; he’ll work up to a meaty paragraph from a newspaper clipping or a magazine.
Later in the day, he’ll work with Ellina. She’s the one responsible for helping TC develop the communication skills needed to perform functional tasks. Ellina’s sessions are fascinating to me. On one day, she might have me face the wall as she gives TC an image and instructs him to describe it to me precisely enough that I can guess what it is. On another day, she’ll have TC reading the grocery store circular, explaining what’s on sale this week and what’s not, and then following up with a pretend phone call to the store to inquire about their business hours.
It’s magical, this setting, in which we can finally breathe and let all our shit hang loose. No one here expects us to be eloquent or composed or anything other than what we are: tired, determined, ready to accept all the help we can get.
The time between sessions is spent in the InteRACT break room, where we take our meals. Since he’s been discharged from the hospital, TC has more than recovered his forty-pound weight loss. In fact, all those extra hamburgers I’ve been feeding him have left a little something extra around the middle. Together, we decide to recommit ourselves to vegetarianism for the month. It’s a luxury, having the bandwidth to pay attention to what we’re eating again.
We sit with our plates of veggies and pasta at a long table with David, Val, and their partners/caregivers. This is the first time we’ve ever been in the company of someone else with aphasia, and these meals are the perfect example of why this program feels so life renewing.
“How’d you like that pasta dish?” Val’s partner, Ray, asks the group with his thick Canadian inflection.
I try not to be the first to comment. Val, David, and TC all want a chance to participate in the conversation, but everyone around the table understands we must give them time to gather their words first.
There is no judgment during these mealtimes. More important, there is no pity. No one looks upon TC and me as if we’re different and unfortunate, even though we’re more than twenty years younger than all the rest. When David turns to me during dinner and tries painfully to tell me about his granddaughter in Kingston, I know better than to interrupt and supply him with the words he’s searching for. Every therapist I’ve met has emphasized the importance of letting the person with aphasia struggle on their own.
I have such immense respect for these three humans, my husband included, who are willing to struggle for ten whole minutes simply to be able to share that, yes, they like the pasta too.
I look at TC during every session, and I am overcome with respect. He’s never wanted anything more than what he’s working for right now, and his commitment to it is palpable in every small moment.
My husband is not ashamed of what he cannot do. He is not embarrassed to struggle in front of us all, to trip and fall over the words of a baby’s book. Life will never again be like that night in the phosphorescent lagoon. TC cannot hide his challenges or inabilities. If he is to overcome them, he must face them completely.
* * *
We are alone together all the time now, my husband and me. No doctor appointments with which to fill the hours. No Jack, crawling up our legs, begging to be entertained. There is no one else who can command our attention. It’s just him and me, in our funny little university apartment, learning how to be a couple once more.
It almost feels as if we’re dating again. In part, it’s the structure of the program, which invites its participants to play as often as they work. There are weekly field trips: bowling, geocaching, movies, a trip to the mall. While I try on jeans at the Gap one afternoon, TC and Ellina take a walk. A few minutes later, I see him strutting proudly toward me, a sixteen-ounce cup in his left hand.
“What’s this?” I ask, smiling curiously into his beaming face.
“Oh, nothing,” he says, handing the coffee to me. “Just a hazelnut latte. With almond milk,” he adds as he walks away.
These small accomplishments, like being able to order off a menu, have a monumental impact on TC’s confidence. What’s more is that I don’t have to feel guilty about watching him do the work. I’m under strict instructions from everyone here, including TC, not to interfere or take over.
With no parents or young toddler to worry about caring for, and with professionals now serving as TC’s teachers, I feel very nearly spoiled, just at the idea of being his wife again.
* * *
TC’s language is strengthening every day. You wouldn’t think it’s possible to observe the progress over a short period of weeks, but the impact is obvious to me, and Linda claims it will be even more obvious once TC returns home.
That might not be so soon, though.
During our final InteRACT group outing, at Nova Scotia’s Museum of Natural History, Linda pulls me aside to talk privately about TC’s progress.
We’re standing near a giant replica of a shark skeleton when she turns to me and begins speaking to me in a hushed tone.
“Abby,” she says. “It’s pretty incredible everything TC has accomplished over the past month. I have to be honest—I’m blown away.”
I nod, trying to keep any potential happy tears at bay. “We can’t thank you enough,” I say. I’m a broken record at this point, every day telling our team of therapists and interns that I can’t imagine our lives without them. But it’s true.
“Would you consider bringing TC back for the July session?” Linda asks. “I feel really confident he could make so many gains if he had another month to keep working. And honestly”—she leans in—“I don’t always say this, but it might not be impossible that he could return to work one day.”
I look at her, unable now to restrain my tears. “Are you serious?”
Of all the sentences I’ve ever wanted to hear, this might be the greatest of them all.
I understand what’s at stake here. It’s not the job itself TC needs in order to feel he’s conquered the mountain. It’s what the job signifies: his ability to contribute to society, his ability to take care of his family, his purpose as a person walking on this planet.
The job doesn’t matter to me. We need money, of course, but the gears are in motion for me to return to my job in the fall, meaning we can make ends meet for a little while. If it’s a long time or maybe even never before TC earns another paycheck, I know to my bones he is a person of value. His struggle is the most difficult thing I’ve ever seen. Witnessing it has been my hardest struggle. It’s also been the greatest teacher I’ve ever known. For before I watched TC pick himself up from the ground on which he could have easily given up the fight, and before I watched him dust himself off with the resolve of a warrior, walking resolutely into battle, I didn’t know people could be so brave. Or that their strength was tied inextricably to their struggles, not to their victories.
I am better for having known this man I call my husband.
“Linda,” I hear myself say, “if you’re serious, we’ll absolutely make sure TC returns for the next session. I hope you believe me when I say you’ve given us our lives back.”
* * *
On the weekend before we are to leave Halifax, I fly home to collect Jack. We’ve been granted special permission from Linda and the team to allow Jack to be with us for the final week of the program.
The plan is for me to be gone only for a night, but it’s the first that TC has ever been left alone overnight.
“If you have a seizure, you know who to call, right?” I press him for the tenth time before I walk out the door.
“Yes, honey.” He nods. At least he’s taking me seriously. “I’ve got Linda’s number and Ellina’s both on my phone. Promise, promise,” he adds.
“OK.” I sigh with trepidation as I kiss him on the cheek. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me with anything you need.”
The next day, I return with a two-foot-eight-inch-tall bumbling, tumbling ball of energy. Jack spurts vibrantly down the halls of the InteRACT building, providing a wild, magical contrast to the three mild-mannered, speech-impaired adults in the room.
TC is to give a presentation today, a graduation requirement, if you will, that he’s been working on for nearly the full month. The topic is us. More specifically, Jack and me.
He begins his PowerPoint tearfully. “This is for Jack. Yes, you, Jack.” He laughs, pointing to our child, who has wedged himself on a chair between two of the graduate school interns.
“And for you, my lovely wife, Abigail.” He gestures to me, now really trying to control his voice.
I whip out my phone to video this moment, the first public speaking TC has attempted since his injury, but I find myself crying and laughing simultaneously, and it is difficult to hold the camera steady.
TC begins by telling the story of Jack’s birth. He speaks earnestly and imperfectly, using his hand to gesture, referring to Jack’s entrance as the moment he “hopped right out” (not an entirely accurate verb choice).
For his presentation, he has compiled a collection of photos. And I don’t even know how he managed to come by them all, so poorly versed is TC in downloading anything from social media. Although, to be fair, he wasn’t exactly a Facebook guru before his injury.
The first photo is of pregnant me. It was the last photo taken before Jack was born and in it, my arm rests underneath the bulge of my belly, and my eyes look into the camera as if to say, TC, put down the goddamn camera. I’m in the middle of a contraction. Which is probably what I was thinking at the time.
TC struggles through some of the words in his presentation. He can’t say the word pregnant without stumbling over the first syllable two or three times, but by the end, everyone in the room is applauding, touched at his heartfelt delivery.
I am beaming, emotionally overflowing, proud of TC, grateful to have our son in the very same room. The three of us have made it through nearly a year of hell, and I savor this happy moment as a small reward for all our effort.
As I am learning at every turn in the road, there is nothing easy about this process of reconstructing our lives. It asks everything we have to offer, plus a little more we must reach for. But I recognize what we’ve been given, a chance only the lucky receive: to begin again, our family intact.
I will not waste it. I cannot lose sight. I must keep this moment fresh in my mind, alongside all the other tiny victories—reminders of why this battle is worth fighting.
CHAPTER 21
August 2013
We arrive back in D.C. on August 2, two weeks before the dreaded one-year anniversary of the assault and three weeks before my old classroom is to be flooded with nine-year-olds once more. I am lucky to have gotten my job back, grateful to my principal for holding my place.
“This is the new normal,” advises everyone in our lives, down to the mailman. “It will look the same, but it won’t feel that way.”
I take that piece of advice on the chin, unwilling to accept the distinct possibility that year two of this experience might be as nail-bitingly difficult as the one we’ve just endured. Please stop robbing me of every tiny, tender crumb of hope, I’m tempted to retort. I don’t need any more preparation for the “real world.” It sucks out there. I get it. Oh, how tired I am of well-meaning, unsolicited advice.
But goddamn it if they’re not right.
Jack and I arrive back in D.C. first, bidding goodbye to TC, who is beginning his second round of therapy at InteRACT. With a bit of his independence restored and the knowledge that he is in the hands of his familiar and caring team to help look after him, Jack and I try to resume some normalcy by joining my extended family for our annual Bethany Beach week. It’s a family reunion of sorts, at the same Delaware beach where my parents fell in love thirty-three years earlier, the place after which they named my sister. This week will be a chance to spend time with my cousins and their eight children, the bulk of whom are a few years older than Jack.
It was important to me to preserve this tradition in Jack’s life, especially this year, when he’s been through so much. A week in a noisy, crowded beach house eating grilled cheese for three meals a day is exactly what the doctor ordered after all of the previous year’s somberness.
When we arrive back in the city seven days later, it is a mad rush to put our apartment back together in preparation for TC’s arrival. I want everything perfect: the way he left it precisely a year ago. Only cleaner.
I unload our belongings from the cardboard boxes that have been sitting in storage since we vacated the apartment back in November. We’ve been renting the place out furnished during that time, and as I walk the hardwood floors of the home that is technically ours but most recently someone else’s, I feel the contrasting sensations of familiarity and foreignness. As if the last twelve months still linger somewhere in the walls, impossible to unwrite.
I hang our blue-and-white towels back on the rack and make up our bed with the same striped sheets we slept in one year ago. I put our clothing in drawers and hang TC’s shirts on hangers in the closet. I’d picked up the shirts by accident, just a few days earlier, when, on an errand to drop off dry cleaning, the woman behind the counter glanced at my account number, then disappeared into the back room.
She returned a few moments later, weighted down with a handful of men’s garments wrapped in plastic. As I was about to wave her away, insistent that they weren’t mine, I caught a glimpse at one of the tags: MASLIN, T. 8/17/12.
TC had dropped off these clothes the very day he was assaulted. And here they were, waiting at the dry cleaners nearly a year later, never even missed by us. After a moment of stunned silence, I bid the clerk a throaty and broken “thank you,” an atypical demonstration of emotion for a transaction involving button-down shirts.
As I walked out of the store, I felt the haunting weight of a particular innocence. I thought of TC’s arms stuffed with clothing on the last day of his former life. The blind faith that he’d return a few days later to pick up his shirts. The ignorance of the terrible future.
In life we make plans, big and small. We do so all the time, rarely questioning if those plans will come to fruition. But when we are visited by life’s curveballs—a moment no longer than the flick of a light switch—we are changed. The simple act of dropping off dry cleaning suddenly becomes an act of faith. Audacious. Anticipatory. Hopeful.
The dry cleaning was a small thing, but the timing of it felt mighty. I wondered perhaps if it was a nod from the universe, nudging us in the direction of where we left off.
* * *
A few days later, with bells and whistles, we greet TC at the Baltimore airport. Jack carries a sign—Welcome Home, Daddy!—and we wait in the arrivals area where he and Sean, who joined TC in Halifax for the last week of therapy, appear through the double doors exiting security.
Upon seeing Jack, TC’s face widens in an enormous grin, and his glasses lift high upon his cheeks.
“Buddy!” he cries out.
Jack bolts across the foyer with his arms outreached, his sign abandoned and forgotten on the floor. “Daddy, you here!” he cries.
Trying to keep his green backpack from slipping off his weak right shoulder, TC bends down to pick Jack up. “Yes, buddy. I know. I’m here.” He pulls J
ack closer to him.
“Hi.” I bend in for an eager hug. “We can’t wait to hear how the rest of your therapy went! Are you excited to be home?”
TC sighs. “I really, really am.”
We drive home that night full of promise, as if it is the beginning of the Christmas season and we know exactly what little joys to expect ahead. The comfort of our own mattress. The sound of the city bus that stops outside our window, doors opening and closing with a deflating whoosh. The walk across the park on Sunday mornings for almond croissants from the corner market. All the little creature comforts—the best parts of living in Capitol Hill—without the worst. Without the thing that has already happened.
As I watch TC step into his home for the first time in such a very long time, delight spreads across his face. I can see him recognizing with familiarity all the happiest parts of our former lives: bringing Jack home from the hospital, the surprise birthday party I threw for him three years ago (thirty friends spilling out of our miniature living room and into the narrow kitchen), and the endless hours spent curled on the couch people-watching through the windows of our tiny urban tree house.
But he cannot remember it in all the ways I do. The pacing of the hallway after my calls to 911. The cup of cigarette butts collected in the fire escape, a memento of all the stressful moments I relied on nicotine to breathe my way through. Or the ever-present sense of danger that surrounded this place. For as beautiful and charming as Capitol Hill was, it no longer felt safe to me. But then again, nowhere did.
We no longer draw from the same well of memories. TC is missing months of time, and that which he can account for is blurry, lacking crisp edges. As I watch him take in the details of our home, I know with certainty that if there is an imaginary finish line in this brain-injury race, we are no longer racing side by side. I am miles ahead. Or, at the very least, six months ahead.