Practically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  “I know,” I said, trying not to sound exasperated. How many times did she want me to apologize? “I would have loved to have been there, but—”

  “But your friends’ needs always come before mine.” Her tone was flat, more of a statement than a question.

  “That’s not fair,” I said. She had no clue how much work I had to do, scrambling to squeeze her in between all my million other prioities.

  “You’re always cancelling on me,” she said with heavy emphasis on “always.” “I don’t even get it. It’s the end of senior year, your AP tests are done, you got into PSU, and you’re not up for valedictorian. Who cares what kind of grades you get now?”

  “I care. But you apparently don’t.”

  “I’m going to ignore that comment because you’re obviously stressed.”

  I held back the urge to say, “No, really?” and instead stared down at my phone incredulously and said, “Yes, I’m stressed. I have a paper due tomorrow in history class and I haven’t even started writing it. Instead of figuring out how to write about post-September-11th US foreign policy practices, I’m talking on the phone.”

  Leia paused for a long moment before saying, her tone a bit softer, “Have you asked Em for help? She loves this stuff. You know she probably even knows more than all the history teachers in your school.”

  “I don’t need Em’s help. What I need is a few hours to get stuff done without people interrupting me.”

  I could hear her take a deep breath on the other side of the line, the same way she always did before pasting a faux smile on her face to talk to people like Brooklyn. “Fine. If you want me to leave you alone, just ask. You don’t have to snap at me like that.”

  Her tight tone popped the bubble of frustration and I imitated her deep breath before saying, “Sorry, you’re right, I’m stressed. Can I talk to you later?”

  “Sure. I’m going to bed soon, though.”

  I dropped back into my desk chair and mentally ran through my schedule. “How about Wednesday? I was going to cram some studying in for a half hour at the patisserie by the dance school. Want to meet me there at 4:30?”

  “That works. I’ll head over right after I finish with the kids at the library. We’re making rhubarb cobbler from some of yesterday’s harvest. Emily found a really simple recipe for them.”

  “Exciting.”

  Leia’s laugh was tight, but at least it was a laugh. “Very. Okay, see you tomorrow. Good night.”

  “’Night.” I didn’t wait for her to add on anything else, just hung up and stared at the clock. I could get another three hours in before going to bed and finish everything else up in the morning. “I can do this,” I muttered to myself, as I slid my history book back towards myself and tried to find where I’d last left off.

  Chapter 17

  “If I were you, I’d raise tuition for next year if you want to keep operating. You can’t keep afloat if you keep charging the same amount as you did a decade ago. Inflation is an actual thing.” Dad’s voice drifted out of his and Mom’s bedroom and I paused on my way past their door, popping my head in the doorway. Dad waved and gestured for me to come in. “Just packing,” he mouthed at me, then pointed at the phone he’d perched on the dresser. I dropped onto the floor and maneuvered my legs into a butterfly stretch. Ever since I’d been little, I’d enjoyed listening to Dad giving people advice—he always made sense and always seemed to know exactly what to say. Since I’d managed to finish my paper in record time that morning, getting ready for school could wait a few more minutes.

  “Inflation might be an actual thing, but I have a lot of students who won’t be able to afford to dance if I raise prices. As it is, I’m the only affordable school in the region.” Aunt Drina’s voice sounded stressed as it came through the speaker.

  “You won’t even have a dance school if you can’t afford to pay your lease.” Dad expertly rolled a pair of perfectly ironed trousers into a neat log and put them into his small carry on. “And how’s that air conditioner working?”

  Aunt Drina seemed to ignore the dig about the air conditioner. “I’m sure if I can have a successful summer session, I can avoid raising tuition next year. I was thinking of setting up a Zumba class on Saturdays all summer.”

  Dad didn’t pause as he turned to pull a few polo shirts with his company logo out of his dresser. “Will you have any students? If they’re not at the shore on Saturdays, they’re avoiding shore traffic. I wouldn’t count on a big break in the summer, Drina.”

  “I just can’t raise tuition like that, David. I opened this school because I love dance and want to share that love with all kids who want to dance, not just the ones who can afford it.”

  Dad looked over at me and raised an eyebrow, giving me a ‘see what I’m dealing with?’ expression. “Love doesn’t pay the bills. Speaking of, how many full scholarships are you floating this year?”

  She made a huffing sound. “That’s beside the point.”

  “Probably more than enough to pay for that air conditioner and replace all those floors you keep talking about,” Dad said. “Not to mention the shoes you’ve bought for a few of those girls. I know how expensive those ballet toe things are. Look, I know you want to help everyone, but you have to think about your bottom line. The bank won’t even think about another loan if your business plan is all about giving away free classes to everyone who says they need them.”

  “This is kind of a non-negotiable,” Aunt Drina said, her tone light but firm. “I know turning around underperforming business units is your specialty. Can you help me with any ideas that don’t involve leaving some of my students behind?”

  Dad shook his head, but there was a good-natured expression on his face. We’d both expected that answer. “Fine, email me your budget and business and marketing plans. I’ll see what I can do.”

  I could hear the sound of what sounded like excited typing on the other side of the line. “Thanks so much, I know you can make this work. You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Miracles are easier if you’re practical,” Dad said, and I resisted the urge to nod like a bobblehead doll.

  Aunt Drina laughed. “Practical may pay the bills but it doesn’t always fill the heart.”

  “Paid bills keep the heart healthy. But I’ll agree to disagree with you,” He responded with a chuckle as he rolled up the last polo on his bed and squeezed it into his bag.

  “Perfect.” She made a loud “mwah” sound over the phone. “You’re the best brother-in-law ever. Thanks for the early morning call. Have a good trip.”

  As soon as Aunt Drina hung up, I smiled up at Dad, who was rubbing at the bridge of his nose like he was trying to ward off a headache. “You know Aunt Drina won’t raise tuition or cut the scholarships, right?”

  “I know. She’s not exactly cut out to be a businesswoman. Corporate America would have eaten her alive.”

  I tilted my head and studied him with a smile. “So, what are you thinking?”

  “I’ll take a look at her expenses and see if she can cut something there, maybe see if she can figure out if her marketing costs are impactful or if she’ll have better luck doing something else. This isn’t exactly consumables, but business is business. You can do good things and be practical at the same time, it just carries more risk.”

  “Hmm.” I stretched out my legs and wiggled my toes at the ceiling. “Do you think she’ll have to close the dance school?” At those words, my throat clenched up a little bit. That school had been a huge part of my life for so long.

  “Dance schools are high risk businesses. Drina knew that going in.” Dad put his toiletries bag on the top of his perfectly packed suitcase and zipped it shut before turning to smile down at me. “But, don’t worry. I’ve helped save entire divisions when their keystone product market share disappeared. I think keeping a business open that has a lot of community goodwill and a very good track record for turning out successful students is definitely not impossible compared to that.”
r />   “But being practical is easier?”

  “Always. Planning and practical decision-making are the cornerstones of success. Like I told your aunt, love doesn’t pay the bills.” He picked up his suitcase and plopped it on the ground. “Speaking of, I’d love to keep talking, but I need to get to the airport.”

  The word ‘airport’ made my heart drop into my stomach. Flights usually meant more days away and Dad already had been away most of the past two months.

  “You just got back. Mom won’t be happy about it,” I pointed out.

  He gave me an “I know” look. “Mom never is, but she’ll have to deal. I’ll get an earful about it later, but she doesn’t understand this is important. Success requires sacrifice.”

  I’d heard that a million times, and even though I agreed with him, it didn’t make the worry in my gut less. He and Mom had been fighting so much lately, this wouldn’t help.

  “Where are you going this time?” I tried to keep my voice as perky as possible, even though the thought of another bunch of days without him around wasn’t an exciting prospect.

  “Indiana, Ireland, then Italy,” He said while checking the packing list taped in his passport case.

  “Three ‘I’s in a row, huh?”

  He laughed. “What can I say? I’m an efficient traveler.”

  I wracked my brain for another “I” place. “No India?”

  “That’s next month. I just need to find two more ‘I’ places to keep up my track record.”

  “I hear Iceland is nice this time of year. You know, they’ll have sunlight again.” I got up on my tiptoes to give Dad a kiss on the cheek. “Have a safe trip and have fun. I’m going to go get ready. Can’t be late to school if I ever want to take over the world.”

  He smiled and reached over to ruffle my hair as if I were still eight. “That’s my girl.”

  Imitating him, I reached up to ruffle his hair, too, laughing as he pretended to duck away. “Like father, like daughter.”

  Things to remember when designing for people:

  1. Not everyone thinks logically

  2. Most people never read the instructions (Why??? WTF is wrong with people?)

  a. Instructions and labels should be your last pick for controlling risk

  3. Once it’s in their hands, it’s out of your control

  4. Human beings come in a lot of different shapes and sizes…

  5. …And different levels of education…

  6. …And different capabilities…

  7. …And from different cultures with different things they’d consider normal or common…

  8. So you can’t just design for the most common user, you need to make sure you design for the full range of users

  9. Everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect.

  10. If you actually take the time to understand the end user in the beginning, you’ll have a better and safer product in the end

  11. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

  Chapter 18

  The physical therapy clinic hadn’t changed much since I’d been there as a patient in eighth grade for rehab for my knee. A few new pieces of equipment littered the room, but the same row of four therapy beds lined the back wall, each filled with a patient doing exercises with rubber therapy bands or getting ice and stim. The weird part, though, was seeing it from the non-patient side. “Thank you again for letting me come here and talk to you and your patients,” I said to Annie, the physical therapist Dr. Aubrey had suggested I contact, as she led me to a little table behind the clinic’s check-in desk.

  “No problem. I’m excited to have you here. It’s not often people ask our opinion,” she said, gesturing me towards a chair opposite hers. “I think it’s great that you’re taking the time to talk to actual patients for your project. And I think some of my patients might enjoy having someone to talk to, too. I know you can’t wave a wand and fix their problems because this is just a school project, but sometimes it’s nice to feel like someone is listening.”

  I nodded, unsure of what to say, instead pulling out my notebook and the set of questions Oliver and Mr. Newton had helped me put together and tried not to look self-conscious while doing so. I’d thought I was only going to talk to the therapists, not actual patients.

  Annie folded her hands on the table and smiled at me. “So, what are you working on?”

  “Your job is to look for problems, not solutions,” Oliver’s words echoed in my brain as I took a deep breath and said, “My grandmom had a stroke a few years ago and when she was recovering, she used a glove to help her use her hand and uncurl her fingers. I remember her complaining about that glove and I thought maybe I could come up with a better design?”

  She nodded. “Okay, so she had an assistive glove. Have you asked her exactly what she didn’t like about it?”

  I shook my head, wishing I had been clearer. It had been over a year but it was still a little hard to get out. “She died last year, so no.”

  The physical therapist cringed. “I’m sorry. Was it another stroke?”

  “No, pneumonia.” That was one of the things that had hurt the most about losing her and made me the maddest, that she’d died from a common infection in the twenty-first century. It was frustrating how we carry supercomputers in our pockets but can’t figure out how to keep people breathing through a simple illness.

  “Sorry.” Annie took that moment to turn around and dig through a drawer before putting a few gloves on the table that looked a lot like the one Grandmom had used. “We’re getting a lot closer to switching to robotic gloves to help with daily tasks—”

  “I saw journal articles like the study that was done for the Department of Veterans Affairs for the hand assistive glove. And didn’t the FDA just come out with a guidance for neural interfaces?” I couldn’t help but feel a little spark of pride at being able to show off some of my research.

  “You know more about that than me,” she said, with a laugh. “We’re on the treatment end, not the design side. But, anyway, we already have some great gloves for rehab for spasticity, which is when patient’s muscles can’t relax after a stroke and they have trouble unclenching their fingers. We even use a special kind of glove and computer program that turns rehab into a game using virtual reality so patients can retrain their brain and muscles to function again.” She slid a bulky black glove with springs and linkages on it across the table at me and I automatically picked it up to turn it around and move the fingers. “The springs provide resistance so, as the patient goes through their exercises, they retrain their brain and muscles to work together again. I like using it with orthopedic rehab patients, too, because it’s really good for retraining fine motor skills.”

  I played with the glove some more, ideas popping into my head for my own design, and I resisted the urge to tune Annie out and draw them immediately. “And the other kind of gloves?”

  She pushed a different one my way, a glove that had a few straps and not-so-obvious springs built across the fingers. “What these kinds of gloves do is help patients get through their everyday tasks by helping to counter the contracting muscles.” Seeing my tilted head and confused look, she curled her hand into a fist, then splayed her fingers wide. “It’s like an active splint that keeps the hand open but still lets the patient close it when they work against the springs. That’s probably what your grandmother used.”

  I nodded, not looking up from the glove I was turning around in my hands. I glanced down at my notepad for my first question. “So, what are the problems with what you have right now?”

  “How about we ask Julia? She should be finishing up in a minute or two.” Annie stood and gestured me towards a younger woman who was seated in front of a computer. She was dressed in one of my favorite workout clothing brands, and her dark hair was up in tight ponytail. She didn’t look like a patient, but maybe she was there with one of her grandparents.

  “I probably should talk to another PT instead of patients and their families, right?”<
br />
  “Therapists see and hear patient challenges but it’s good to get feedback from the patients, who actually have to live with the thing you design,” Annie countered in a good-natured tone, “and Julia is probably the perfect first patient to interview.” She turned her attention towards the woman. “If she has a few minutes to spare, that is.”

  Julia looked away from her computer screen and grinned at us. “Just call me specimen number one. I’ll take any excuse not to do my trig homework.”

  Annie seemed to decide to help move us past my faux pas. “Julia, this is Grace. She’s working on a project for school to design an assist for stroke patients, like you.”

  I blinked, probably looking a little bit like I was trying to imitate a fish, then tried to smooth the surprise off my features. Up until that point, all of the patients had been older and had really visible symptoms.

  “Aren’t you too young for this?” Looking at her a second time, I noticed something bulky under the long sleeve covering her left elbow and how, on her left hand, she was wearing the white glove-like thing that was connected to the computer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply—”

  She waved off my apology. “Don’t worry about it, no one ever expects someone as young as me to be a stroke patient. It’s actually super common for young women, but lots of doctors ignore our symptoms.” She let Annie help her out of the white glove attached to the computer and into a bulky black glove before following us to the table. “My roommate figured out something was going wrong and I was really lucky she rushed me to the hospital. Everyone said I probably would have died if she hadn’t.”

  I could feel my jaw tighten. “Are you kidding me? That’s completely unacceptable,” I said, then quickly added when I realized what had burst out of my mouth, “The part about doctors ignoring symptoms, not your friend saving you. It’s ridiculous.”

  “No kidding. In fact, when she got me to the ER, all the nurses at the desk just thought it was just stress until she forced them to listen to her and triage me.” Julia rolled her eyes and said, “You know, because, in their heads, the only things girls do is stress and overexaggerate our symptoms.”