I'm Still Here

by Kathryn R. Biel

  Wow, pretty unprofessional language for a doctor. I pointed to my head again. I pointed to the staples, in case he couldn't understand what I meant.

  "You had a closed head injury. You had to have a craniotomy to relieve the pressure on your brain. Do you remember what happened?"

  I shook my head. I also signed "no" using my left hand. It felt unnatural to use my left hand, as I was a righty. Well, I had been a righty. I was guessing I'd be a lefty from here on out.

  "You fell and hit your head on a curb. You hit it here—" he leaned over, and pointed to a spot on the left side of my head, about two inches above and just in front of my ear. "You were immediately unresponsive. You passed out, which is how you fell."

  I frowned. How did I pass out? How did I hit the curb? Wasn't I in my car? I needed to be able to speak. I mimed writing with my left hand.

  "Write?"

  I nodded. He got up and left the room. He came back a few moments later with a pad of paper and a pen. He leaned over the bed rail to operate the controls. He moved the head of the bed into a more upright position and then moved the little table inward so I could use it. He lowered the table to the proper height and handed me the pen and paper. He was leaning close to me while making sure the bed and I were properly adjusted. He smelled really good. Familiar. I wondered if he wore a cologne that I knew somehow. Maybe it was something an ex-boyfriend of mine had worn.

  With the incredibly poor penmanship of a person using their non-dominant hand, I wrote, "Car accident?"

  He looked at my chicken scratch. "Car accident? No, you weren't in a car accident."

  I frowned at him. I remembered getting rear-ended. I had been eating a Ho Ho. So I wrote, "Ho Ho."

  "Ho Ho?" Man, this was going to get annoying if he read everything I wrote aloud. I could still read for Christ's sake.

  "No, you didn't have a Ho Ho. You fainted and went down. You ..." he broke off. I could swear he was choking up. "Yes, you were in a car accident while eating a Ho Ho. That was over two months ago."

  I looked at him. I was pretty sure my facial expression was something akin to Gary Coleman's, "Whatcha talkin' 'bout, Willis?" face.

  He continued. "You've been in a coma for eighteen days."

  Eighteen days? I had lost eighteen days. Check that. I had lost the last two months of my life. My eyes must have gotten pretty big and some of the machines started beeping. The blood pressure cuff on my left arm began to get tighter.

  "Esther, you need to calm down. It's not good for your blood pressure to rise like this."

  Okay, seriously Doctor? You tell me that I've been in a coma and can't remember the last two months of my life and you don't expect my blood pressure to rise. I kept getting more and more agitated. A few nurses came rushing in, followed by a different doctor. He must have been a more senior doctor, because he made my doctor leave pretty quickly. I heard him barking out orders, including for something called Ativan. A nurse whipped out a needle and pushed it into the I.V. in my left hand. Within moments, the world went dark and calm. Ahhh, peace.

  The next time I opened my eyes, Charlie was sitting where the tired doctor had been. I wondered if he had gotten in trouble for making me upset. I hoped not. He was probably guilty of using poor judgment, but that was undoubtedly due to his fatigue. I was the one who freaked out. I needed to control myself better. On the other hand, whatever they gave me was pretty darn nice, and it totally chilled me out. I still felt a little Zen from it. I looked at my right hand, which Charlie was holding. I was going to do this. Coma or not, brain injury or not, I was going to get better. So, in order to do that, I knew I needed to get started moving. And the way to do it was to try, no matter how difficult it was. I looked at my hand and thought about each bone and muscle curling in to squeeze. As I looked and thought, I was able to control my hand and make it contract, squeezing Charlie's hand.

  Reflexively, she squeezed back. Then it occurred to her what had just happened. "Oh Esther! You squeezed my hand!"

  I smiled at her and looked at my hand. I squeezed again, and she squeezed back.

  "Esther, you're moving your right hand! They said they didn't know if you would be able to. They said you might be paralyzed on the right side."

  That stopped me cold. I froze and let go of Charlie's hand. A panicked look crossed her face, and she started back tracking. "Don't freak out, okay? They said maybe, they weren't sure. They said it would be a 'wait and see' situation. But I knew you would persevere."

  Of course what she was saying made sense. I knew my right side wasn't working. The doctor had said I'd had a closed head injury. It made sense that I could be paralyzed on one side of my body. Except I wasn't. It was so hard to move. But I could move. Okay, that thought calmed me down a bit. I was in the hospital and there were people here who would come in and help me. They would help me walk and talk, and I would be good as new.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Yeah, therapy sucked. I hated every single minute of every single session. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they were there to help. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew that it was good for me. But, man it sucked balls.

  I hated everything about everything. I hated that someone had to wipe my ass. I hated that I had a tube in my nose and down my throat to help me eat. I hated that I had to use a bed pan and commode. I hated that they had shaved my head. I hated that I could not remember the last two months of my life.

  I hated everyone and everything.

  I was not making the progress that I wanted to be making. Of course, I wanted to go to sleep and wake up back to normal. I didn't want to admit that this was my new normal. My days were full of therapies: speech, physical, occupational, cognitive. They wiped me out. Apparently I was medically stable, which was why they moved me to a rehab facility where I would get to do therapy all day every day. Woo-fucking-hoo.

  I wanted to hate my therapists, but there was still a quasi-rational part of me that realized this was not their fault. On the other hand, no one had bothered to fill me in on what exactly had happened. I knew from that doctor that I had fainted. That was unusual. I was not a fainter. Hmmm, that doctor. I wondered about him. He was pretty cute, and seemed pretty friendly. Too bad they had moved me to this rehab hospital. He wouldn't be my doctor anymore. None of the doctors that I had seen here so far were that cute.

  Charlie had come to see me every day in the first hospital and even the first few days when I moved to the rehab hospital. That was a good part of the day. I looked forward to her visits. Apparently my dad had had a pretty serious heart attack and had to have a quadruple bypass. He was still recovering, although I guess Cheryl and Dean had been to see me when I was in my coma. I thought I remembered seeing them, but then again, I also remembered seeing Aster, so who knows what my brain had been doing.

  The conversation with Charlie was pretty one-sided, what with me being aphasic and all. That was what Meghan, my speech therapist, called my inability to speak—aphasia. It was frustrating, because a lot of the time I knew what I wanted to say, but I just couldn't make my mouth move to form the words. Sometimes, I couldn't come up with a word that I knew I knew, so even writing or signing was difficult. Meghan was encouraged that I knew a little sign and was working with me using an app on the iPad to help me speak. Who knew iPads could be used for something more useful than Facebook and Candy Crush?

  Anyway, that usually happened only when I was with Meghan, so I was forced to sit and listen to Charlie prattle on about inane stuff. She seemed nervous around me. I wondered if it was because I looked so bad. She didn't want to look at me. She would look at me when she thought I wasn't looking, but then when I looked, she refused to meet my eyes. I knew something was up. I wanted her to spit it out. I hated that seeing her, which was the best part of my day, was also like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Today would be the day I asked her what she was keeping from me. I was going to have to write it, and I hoped I would be able to think of the right words to ask her when she was here. Damn aphasia.
>
  When I was in speech, I used the iPad to ask Meghan to help me write a note. It was slow and painstaking. Meghan did me one better, and I used the app to put together a series of words to make a sentence. She saved it on the screen and told me that I could keep the iPad for the day. All I had to do when Charlie got there was touch the screen and activate the message that said, "What are you not telling me? I don't want you to keep things from me. I need to know what's going on."

  I could not wait. It was the first ray of hope that I had felt since I woke up. I would be able to ask a question. I would have a voice and I would not have to search for words, since they were already there for me. Sometimes the words flowed in my head just like before. But it seemed whenever I needed to output the words, with sign or through writing, they just—poof—disappeared into thin air.

  But Charlie never came.

  Another day went by. No Charlie. She was gone and never even said good-bye.

  I was mad. Furious, red rage mad. If I could have thrown something fragile, I would have, if only to get the satisfaction of watching it smash into a million pieces. There was nothing fragile in my room. There were no flowers in vases. There were no cards, no balloons. I was one of seven children and there was not anything in this room that was personalized to me, with the exception of a dry-erase board that listed my initials and my nurse for the shift. When Aster had gone missing and was presumed to have jumped off the bridge, my parents put flowers out on the bridge for two years.

  I sat there all day again, waiting for my sister, but she never showed. It was the weekend, so there was very minimal therapy. It was over by eleven a.m., and I had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I got up and went for a walk. My physical therapist had told me to get up and move around. I was weak from being in the coma and lying around for almost three weeks. I was fortunate. My right arm was not functioning properly, but my legs seemed fine. My right arm could move, but it was effortful and I was clumsy. I seemed to have lost the dexterity in my hand, like I was wearing a big snow glove that weighed fifty pounds, all the time.

  I was slowly walking down the hall, holding onto the rail with my left hand. My feet were in the hospital-issue socks with treads. I had on sweat pants and a t-shirt. They were not mine, and I had no idea where they had come from. They were too big and made me feel terrible. I wanted my own clothes. I wanted my own stuff. I wanted to be in my own bed again. Even though I had only been in my place for a few months, it would still be better than this hospital. Yes, it was rehab, but it was a hospital nonetheless. I wanted to get back to my own life, but I didn't know if it was a possibility. No one talked to me. They seemed to think that because I couldn't speak, I couldn't understand. I needed someone to tell me what the hell was going on.

  As I approached the family room at the end of the corridor, I heard voices. Angry voices. People yelling at each other. I didn't want to eavesdrop on a personal conversation, so I turned around to head back towards my room. As I turned, I got a little dizzy and off balance. I fell into the wall a little bit but was actually able to grab onto the wide wooden rail with my right hand. It didn't feel right, and I wasn't sure I had a good grip. I guess I wasn't ready to be home yet. Dammit.

  I stared hard at my hand, willing it to work. Somehow, it held on and held me up. I knew in that moment that even though I had a long road ahead of me, somehow I would be all right. I was standing there in the hall, dressed in clothes that were two sizes too big, and staring at my hand like an idiot when someone bumped into me from behind. He was yelling at someone as he was leaving the family room. He was one of those people with the angry voices that I had been trying to get away from. The bump was not that hard, but it forced me to hold on tighter with my right hand. Miraculously, my arm did the job and kept me from falling over as I took three small steps to regain my balance. I was so shocked by the bump and the stumble that the words, "Hey—watch out!" flew out of my mouth without me even thinking about it.

  "Oh, sorry. Oh my God, Esther! Are you okay? I'm so sorry! What are you doing out of bed? Did you just talk to me? Are you all right?"

  I slowly turned around to see who was barraging me with questions. Whoever it was was now grabbing my arm. I shrugged him off and turned to look. It was that cute doctor from the hospital. What the hell was he doing here? I went to ask him that, but the words wouldn't come. Gibberish came out instead. Dammit again.

  "Esther, are you all right? I'm sorry, I didn't know you were out here. Speaking of which, what are you doing out here? Are you supposed to be out of bed? Were you coming into the family room? What did you hear? Are you all right?"

  Even if I had been able to speak, this guy wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise. Sheesh.

  He looked familiar, but I didn't know why. It seemed more than just my recollection of him as my doctor in the hospital. It seemed like a déjà vu or something, like I knew him from somewhere else. My brain was damaged and would not provide answers to me at the moment. It was busy keeping me from falling over. I couldn't answer his questions, so I turned around again and headed back to my room. I was getting tired anyway and was so incredibly frustrated that I couldn't speak when I wanted to. I knew I should have been encouraged that I had spoken a few words, but it was not enough. I wanted all my words back.

  I shook my head, mostly because I was disgusted with myself. Suddenly, this guy put his arms around me, turning me back to face him, in a crushing hug. Whoa—what the hell? And then, he kissed me on the top of my head!

  I jumped back, stumbling a little. "What the fuck?" came flying out of my mouth. There it was—I could speak again, sort of. Why was this guy kissing me? Wasn't that really crossing the line between doctor and patient?

  "Esther you spoke again!" He still had me in his grip. I struggled to try and get away. "Esther, calm down. You're going to fall. Esther, listen to me."

  Something in his tone was eerily soothing, so I stopped struggling for a moment. I did not like that this strange man had his hands on me and had kissed me, even if it was on top of my bald head.

  "Esther, do you know who I am?"

  I shook my head and gave him what I thought was a menacing look.

  "So you have no memory of me?"

  I remembered him from the hospital, but it seemed like he meant something more. I shook my head again.

  His face crumpled and his shoulders sagged. Suddenly, he looked years older though just a moment had passed. "All right then, let's go back to your room."

  He turned me around and guided me back down the hall to my room. There was no more touching, certainly no hugging and kissing. While his advances had been surprising and unsolicited, there was something that was comforting about his touch. It sounded corny, but somehow, when he was touching me, I felt better. Without his touch, I felt alone and sterile. I needed human warmth and companionship. I was too alone. And even though I didn't know this guy, when I was with him, I was not alone and I felt connected. I had even been able to speak some, with purpose. Granted, it was totally reactionary, but it was a step.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  My physical therapist, Chieko, was a lovely woman who exacted torture like no other. Day after day, she put me through my paces, strengthening my body and challenging my balance like a drill sergeant disguised as a delicate lotus flower. I could not figure out why I was so tired. Granted, I did have a brain injury, but other than my right hand not working so great, I was fine. Except I wasn't, as I found out in my twice daily sessions with Chieko. Because I couldn't speak, she often rambled on while we worked, telling me about the exploits of her kids. Many of the people who were working with me talked at me and obviously thought I was stupid. Or just brain damaged. It was amusing and entertaining and kept my mind off the fact that I was as weak as a newborn kitten. It was also refreshing because she talked to me.

  To help build my endurance, Chieko put me on the elliptical machine. I occasionally used the elliptical at the gym but I preferred to run on the treadmill. Of course, I had
no way to communicate that, so I sucked it up on the elliptical. Frankly, it felt good, in a weird sort of way. I was so weak and out of shape. I couldn't figure out how that had happened. They said I had been in a coma for eighteen days. That isn't that long. It didn't seem right that I was this weak. In my previous life, I had been good for a solid forty-five minutes of cardio. Here it was, set for six minutes, and I was sucking wind as if I had just climbed Mount Everest.

  The gym where I did physical therapy was pretty impressive. It could put most upscale health clubs to shame. The people watching was totally different though. Instead of watching meatheads hit on the hard bodies, I was watching people with broken bodies, broken minds and broken spirits. Go figure, I end up with a broken mouth. There was an innocuous radio station playing in the background. I wasn't a huge fan of the channel but it sure beat the silence that enveloped me most days. Finally, a song came on that I liked. It had been popular when I was little, and I remembered Veruca had wanted to be just like Debby Harry. Aster had sung this song in a high school show and it always made me think of her as well.

  I was lost in the song and in my memories of my sisters. I felt so alone, so cut off from everyone and everything. At least my body was still working and I kept pumping away, taking out my frustration on the elliptical. The next thing I knew, Chieko was shaking my arm. I thought my time must be up. I broke my concentration and looked at the timer, but it still indicated that I had another minute. I looked at Chieko, who was obviously excited about something.

  "Esther! I cannot believe it!"

  I looked at her, not even trying to respond. I stepped off the elliptical, wiping my forehead. I made extra efforts to use my right hand. That sucker was gonna get back to normal. I might not be able to speak, but I sure as hell wasn't going to have a crippled hand too.

  "Esther, you were singing!"

  Huh. I hadn't even realized it. Maybe I was better? I opened my mouth to speak, but again gibberish came out. I sighed, shook my head, and stormed back to my room. By the time I got back there, the adrenaline of my workout and the thought of being cured had drained out of me as if someone had pulled the plug on a tub full of water. I sank down on the horrible hospital bed and wept.