Critical Injuries

by Joan Barfoot

  Therefore to move; although not yet.

  There were her lungs, pumping; her heart, beating; her blood, she could almost feel the blood slipping warm through her arms to her fingertips, and along the multitude of small venous trails winding in complicated ways around her ribs’ sturdy, flexible structure. All those nearly lost places.

  But. Thereafter, the no weight, no sensation of all parts below. It was oddly difficult to distinguish the precise endpoint. Somewhere around her hips, as near as she could tell. She looked up into Dr. Grant’s face and thought that like half her body, he was erasing sensation, expression. Watching hers, though, assessing it.

  “So you see,” he began. “Good news and bad news.”

  “Yes, I do see,” she agreed.

  A half measure, then. One of fate’s, or God’s, or mere chance’s little compromises. She had thought, mainly, death or life, kill or cure. She hadn’t very closely examined half-life, partial result, semi-cure. Just one goddamn time, and this would have been a good one — oh, anger flared up, she could feel anger quite well — she would like a total, complete, one-hundred-per-cent measure of something. Something good, of course, was what she meant; total disaster being strangely common in the world. Look at people fleeing starvation, rape, war, who have lost everything — there’s total disaster on both large and personal levels. So obviously that’s possible. Why not total joy?

  Now what? “Now what?” she asked. To feel Lyle’s fingers holding hers was a magic thing, to understand Madeleine’s fingers stroking her arm also was, and to know that with some effort she could embrace Jamie and Alix, both of them hanging back, both of them watchful, undecided. But she was not, right at that moment, grateful. “Now what?” was an accusation, and intended to be.

  “Now you have a lot of work to do, and a lot of good things to look forward to. Now you’re far, far better off than you were a few days ago. Although I do realize it’s not everything you hoped.”

  No shit.

  Work, yes. Weeks and weeks, month upon month of it. Rehabilitation, that sterile, unfreighted word that amounted, mainly, to anguished learning of new tricks, compensating ways of hauling herself up, down, and along. Boring and painful, an especially unfortunate combination. Praise for finally pulling herself upright with a tight grip on parallel bars, and dragging herself along them a very short way purely with the new rippling, tensing, surprising powers of her arms, the happy applause from her trainers and dear Martin who was there at the time, was distressingly gratifying. She was, in truth, flushed with accomplishment. Later she wondered if that was just pitiful; but decided it wasn’t, quite.

  Very annoying, those legs, though. Eventually she could have whipped along fairly perkily without their dead weight.

  Brave, daring Lyle had the tiny, trouble-making fragment of bullet set in a silver ring. “A souvenir of the wars,” he called it as she opened the small velvety box, and looked relieved when she first laughed, and then smiled, and then placed the ring, gleaming dully, on her middle finger, right hand.

  He has an odd, good touch with the celebratory and sentimental.

  It’s good, too, to be able to think of him again in terms of light touches; but what will he do, what has he been doing, for more adamant, ardent touches? That golden body out there mowing the lawn, back and forth, back and forth, is not one that goes unused easily. He told her long ago that in the several years between Sandy’s death and meeting Isla, there was no one important to him but his sons. He didn’t say, and he’s a lawyer and speaks carefully about delicate matters, that there was no one in his bed, or his life, just not in his heart.

  The rules of love, even if there are such things, alter. She has been the shocked survivor of this hard fact before.

  He went to the hospital just about every day except when he was out of town for something to do with one case or another. Same when she was shifted to the rehab centre at the same hospital. Madeleine went almost every day, too, except for a few-week stretch when Bert got the flu and then she got it, too. Both she and Lyle learned the exercises Isla had to do, they were both taught how to help her.

  Isla hasn’t minded Madeleine raising and lowering her legs, bending and turning them; although Madeleine is obviously uneasy, scared of doing harm she can’t predict or understand. Isla imagines it must be a lot like having a new infant in the house: constant assessments and cautious gaugings, as well as small triumphs. She hates to think of herself that way, but all this must surely seem somewhat familiar to a mother. At any rate, it doesn’t seem totally unfitting to be helped and touched and manoeuvred by Madeleine.

  Not by Lyle, though, and not by her children. Lyle should never even see her legs, or lift her, or wheel her or ever have to take her capacities and incapacities into account, although he has to, and does. To have as well her withering calves and thighs under his manipulating hands — no. Above all else she does not want to be his helpless child, his burden, his very own personal cripple.

  Although she is all of that. He is attentive and has the wisdom also to just let her be; but he can’t help it, neither can she, that balances have shifted.

  That the unexpected word for this is shame.

  It’s different from being embarrassed. That has to vanish, or be bitten down on, or otherwise put out of mind, and she learned fast in the hospital, and again in rehab, that dependency is by definition immodest. Need instantly, flatly, overwhelms preference.

  But shame — that’s what swamped her in the moment, finally, of driving up the laneway, rounding that curve, seeing the place in full bloom, coming home just like that very first time with Lyle, years ago, except this time the kids had strung a huge red and white “Welcome home” banner between two porch pillars — in that moment of utter familiarity and absolute strangeness she glimpsed herself here again and felt shame: for no longer being the woman who marched capably around here on her own two feet, that woman who needed her loved ones only for love.

  Now her needs are capacious. A physiotherapist is to come three days a week, for a while, to run her through her meagre paces, although many of the exercises Isla can now do on her own. She is committed, as in the rehab centre, to four half-hour sessions each day, raising and lowering herself from a bar, curling her arms, hands grasping weights, carefully shifting her head, up and down, back and forth.

  Now her arms are taut and hard as metal, muscled and brown. They get stronger and more capable every day. In terrible contrast, her legs are shocking, remain shocking, become more shocking all the time, poor pale and skin-shrivelled hopeless things. She thinks if she were a sea creature, something sensibly designed along those lines, her useless legs would simply drop off. Humans are not so efficiently constructed, and so her legs, too, have to be exercised, the aim to sustain blood circulation, to stretch irrelevant muscles. So that, strangely enough, her legs don’t have to be carved away somewhere down the line, atrophied and, moreover, diseased.

  Also as Dr. Grant likes to say, you never know, fresh possibilities are always emerging. It’s not, he insists, out of the question that these legs of hers will be of some use again someday.

  One fine use would be wrapping them around Lyle’s lean hips.

  Now that she can feel his skin, she remembers desire, if in small, flickering ways. They seem to edge towards it now and again, but Lyle is careful, careful. Or tactful. Or unwilling.

  The day before he brought her home, he said to her, as he did years ago in a quite different context, “Let’s just relax and see how things go.” He was leaning forward in his chair, knees touching her wheelchair, holding her hands, looking into her eyes with an expression she thought contained too much kindness, which she saw as forbearance. “We’ll find our own ways, don’t worry.”

  It was generous, what he said, and even probably true. But that still doesn’t make it possible.

  She also doesn’t believe Dr. G
rant. Or she has decided that what he said about hope has nothing in particular to do with her. She can’t waste scarce hope on faint possibilities. It has taken months for her to retrain and redirect hope, so that it’s becoming as taut, hard, metallic and muscled as her arms.

  Diminished resources become monstrously precious.

  She has been busy for months examining various monstrosities.

  Now there are new ones, of a different sort, right in front of her, no avoiding them. A ramp, wooden and unweathered, swoops from the porch to the ground. Inside, Lyle has widened doorways to make way for her zoomy new wheelchair, what he calls “the sportscar model” for its lightness, manoeuvrability, and speed. He has refitted, carefully and capaciously, the bathroom downstairs so that it is now the very model of a spartan, gleaming washroom for the handicapped. She loathes the sight of it. He said he made a choice between converting a room downstairs into a bedroom or installing one of those chair-lifts on which she can ride up and down stairs, and decided on the latter. He custom-ordered it to blend with the house itself, with wooden arms and iron fretwork at the sides and a paisley cushion, but it is an ugly thing nevertheless, a blot on his wide, graceful staircase.

  Those are the most obvious changes. Thanks to her practised, muscular arms, with concentration and care she can pull herself out of the wheelchair onto the sofa, or into bed. They can share a bedroom again. She can touch his skin in the night, and he can fold his arms around her. They cannot any more, though, fling themselves lavishly and fervently around one another, and there are things — things is how she thinks of them — that protrude from her body and perform various functions — functions is how she thinks of what they do — that cause her, and perhaps him as well, to do what is necessary to keep lower bodies apart.

  It’s early days. They are still circling new customs, devising new habits.

  “It’s a triumph for all of us, you know,” Dr. Grant said, “that you can go home.” Because if his surgery hadn’t worked, if he hadn’t restored some capacities, this would have been nearly impossible. Also if she hadn’t worked so desperately, herself, all this would have been nearly impossible. She longed so hard for the picture that’s in front of her now, so amazingly, vividly, perfectly real that it seems in some way unreal: the porch and its spindled railings, the gardens, the looming trees, the expanse of lawn Lyle, shirtless and golden, is methodically mowing.

  Yes, she worked very hard for this. Yes, it was worth it. No, she would not want to be anywhere else.

  Only, there is shame.

  She tips her face up towards the sun. At this time of day, sunshine beams into the porch, lights it and heats it, and this moment, this very sensation, is what she longed for, precisely. She wanted air, she wanted colour, she wanted, to the extent that it’s possible, to be free.

  A year ago, if Lyle were mowing the lawn she’d be out crouched in the garden picking tomatoes or flowers or weeds. Or in the kitchen pouring beers for the two of them. Or taking a turn herself with the mower. The lawn is huge, but Lyle hasn’t ever wanted one of those riding mowers because he says this one gives him needed exercise. Also contemplation time, since it’s a dull job that needs to be done but leaves the mind open.

  So what is he contemplating today, going back and forth under the sun?

  In the old days they came home from their different, interesting careers, and outdoors they painted, and trimmed greenery together, made gardens and repaired eavestroughs and sheds, and indoors they cooked, cleaned, played together. Without kids, household chores had a different quality than they used to, which was that they didn’t feel so much like chores. They went for walks, too, down the lane, across the fields, just small outings, nothing strenuous, but also nothing she can contemplate now.

  Oh. Something else. Sometimes on their walks, they have lain in the tall grains of one or another of their rented-out fields and made airy, cool love.

  These stabbings of loss sneak up.

  Well, they are bound to. She knew that. She just didn’t realize how they’d keep startling her.

  She is hardly seductive now, or desirable, with her limp limbs and various attachments, unwieldy, repellent. She is watching a man of considerable beauty mowing a lawn, and has a desire to stand and go to him and lean into his back, wrap her arms around his ribs, his chest, his whole miraculous self.

  Except that it’s a theoretical sort of desire, reclaimed from memory.

  Anyway, making love is many things, many ways. Many feelings as well, of course.

  When he shuts down the mower, the silence is abruptly immense. He pulls his shirt off a fence post and wipes off his sweat-shiny chest. He looks across green and blue space at her, smiles. She smiles back. Before, she might have gone with him indoors, upstairs, into the shower. They would have roughly, gently, scrubbed each other’s apparent and hidden surfaces. They would have laughed, embraced this way and that, and maybe made their damp way to bed, bodies linked top to toe, happy impulse.

  Today, going by her he pauses, touches her shoulder, says, “You okay?” and when she nods, continues indoors.

  She’s cried several times since she got home; quiet weeping, like now. Not wanting him to know the extent of her grief. How scared she is.

  She saw this moment, on the porch in sunshine, but as a photograph, a still life, an achievement. Which it is, but it is also a narrow, hard-to-discern opening to something else.

  Snap out of it.

  This is a glorious day. And among the changes, those details Lyle has known to take care of, as opposed to the details they each have yet to discover, is a smooth poured-cement walkway at the bottom of the ramp, a fresh trail across the lawn to the lane and the new moss-green van, with its handicapped parking sticker, which she may hate but which of course comes in handy. Practical, competent, thoughtful, foresightful Lyle: simply doing these things, taking care of them in her absence.

  The smooth concrete beckons. She’s become a damn good wheelchair driver, deft on the corners and a devil on the downhill, actually found herself enjoying the rehab centre parking lot, wheeling about, testing manoeuvres. For the moment, she’s on her own. In a moment she has tucked the afghan tight and turned the chair, so lightweight and sturdy, and hurtled pell-mell down the ramp, flipping the switch for the motor, buzzing down, full-tilt, to the lane. Whirling at the end, buzzing full-tilt back. She is making her own breeze! This is fun. She’d like to travel a hell of a lot farther and faster, and one of these days she might learn to pop wheelies if that’s possible in this thing, but meanwhile this is her on her own, having a whim.

  Back and forth she goes, like Lyle with the lawn-mower, at each end of the walkway reversing and turning.

  It begins to seem as if the laneway could be manageable. A small journey, not the whole way, but just a jaunt through a short distance of hard earth and gravel. Given patience and time and a decent surface, a person can go almost anywhere in a good wheelchair. She could go to town. She could travel deeper into the country. She supposes it’s illegal to putter along the shoulders of expressways; otherwise she could really take off.

  Just to do it; not to escape.

  Okay, it’s bumpy, and she has to go slowly, and keep her eyes on the ground to foresee ruts and large stones. Steering is certainly trickier on a rough surface, and probably a heavier wheelchair wouldn’t bounce so capriciously. But how exhilarating, to be able to do this! To know she can get away, although she doesn’t want to get away, just finds she very much likes knowing she can.

  And can go back, too, when she wants. At the curve of the laneway she turns more slowly, cautiously, wary of the tilt of the land here, and stops. Here again is that first vision. Mutilated by ramp and walkway, yes, but that sturdy brick house, that embracing porch, those looming, sheltering trees. Well, home.

  And Lyle now stepping out onto the porch, dressed up in khakis and blue shirt, hair pl
astered down from the shower, looking around, looking this way, starting to laugh when he catches sight of her, starting to wave.

  She waves back.

  This can work.

  She throws herself into gear and hurtles cautiously forward. He steps off the porch. They meet on the new concrete path. She feels flushed and nearly triumphant. He looks, she thinks, impressed. It’s interesting to feel impressive. She must have been used to that before, out in the wider world, but it’s all new again to her now.

  “Hey,” he says, “making a run for it?”

  It’s also nice that they’ve pretty much given up worrying about any painful qualities attached to verbs. Like run. That was hard work, too, all that censoring, the flushing over some blunder or other. Observing embarrassment, not to mention observing her own sensitivities soaring a little too high. “Yup,” she says. “Trying to figure out how far this puppy would go on one charge.” Every night, once she’s in bed, the chair gets recharged. This one’s her starter model, with a second on order. She and Lyle are, as he says, very fortunate not to be poor. Well, she is fortunate, it’s her money, that exceedingly comfortable sum she and Martin got from selling the agency, that’s paying for home care, physio, wheelchairs. Lyle financed the house renovations. The loathsome bathroom alone cost a small fortune.

  “I was thinking about getting all the way to the road, so I could really zoom. And learning to pop wheelies, do you know how that’s done?”

  “Not a clue. On a motorcycle, yes, that’s how I fell off once when I was a kid, doing a wheelie and the bike and I both went flying. Mind you, that was accidental. I was actually trying to go straight and flat, and the thing just reared up on me.”

  “Were you hurt?” She’s pleased there are still new moments of history to learn, that they’re not running out.