Locked Inside

by Annette Mori

  It was late spring when Carly came to visit me on a Saturday. It wasn’t unusual for her to visit on Saturdays because even when she had a date with Darian, she always spent a few hours with me in the morning. My parents bonding time with me came in the afternoon. It was the one thing that was sacrosanct with Carly and me—our Saturday time.

  Carly shuffled into the room and looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I was reading a book on my reader and quickly pulled my laptop stand closer so I could type a message.

  What’s up? You look like you lost your best friend and since I’m sitting right here, I know that can’t be the problem. I pushed the laptop in her direction for her to read the screen.

  Carly tried to smile at me, but her smile never reached her eyes. “Darian and I just broke up. She had a girlfriend in California. That’s why she’s going to Berkeley. Apparently, I was just a diversion until she could get back to California and her girlfriend. I am such an idiot.”

  I turned the laptop back around and typed, I knew I never liked that bitch. She has squinty eyes. You can’t trust anyone with squinty eyes.

  Carly peered over my shoulder to read what I’d written and laughed. “Squinty eyes? That’s the best you can come up with? You’re hilarious. Good thing I didn’t get around to sleeping with her. It might be old fashioned, but I kinda want my first time to be with someone I’m madly in love with.”

  You weren’t in love with her?

  “Nah. I liked her a lot and she was fun to hang around with. Squinty eyes or not, she was hot. You have to admit, she was pretty easy on the eyes,” Carly said.

  Good riddance, I say. She has a weird mouth too. In four months, we’ll be in college and the possibilities will be endless. Next time, I get to approve or disapprove of anyone you want to get naked with.

  “Weird mouth? Never mind. Suddenly I find my social calendar completely open. How about a date with your bestie tonight? We can either see Iron Man 2 or a chick flick called Letters to Juliet.”

  Sounds good. Would you rather go to Iron Man 2 and avoid the chick flick?

  I knew that she didn’t really mean this was a romantic date, but I was thrilled with the vernacular she used when describing the evening’s festivities.

  Carly plopped in the chair next to me. “Oh, Belinda, you are so perspicacious—it’s my word of the day. It means having strong insight and understanding of things. Thanks. Yeah, probably a good idea because I’m still feeling a little emotional. I hate that she affected me that way. I suppose I cared for her more than I thought I did. It hurts.” Her eyes welled up and the tears tumbled down her cheeks without restraint. Now that the flood gates were open, she sobbed as she laid her head on my lap.

  The minute I saw her sit down, I had pushed my laptop away. Carly was always very physical with me and I knew that whenever she was emotional, her craving for touch was the only thing to keep her grounded. I stroked her head. Although I still struggled with my fine motor skills, I was now able to show affection without the clumsiness of the first few months of rehabilitation of my limbs.

  She lifted her head and looked at me. I knew I was in love with her by this time in our relationship, but I didn’t think I’d ever let my emotions show. She’d once told me that I had the most expressive eyes and that it was easy to read me. I wondered if she was reading me now.

  Her head tilted and once again I thought that maybe she had stronger feelings for me than friendship. It looked as if she was struggling with a big decision and then I could tell she was doing the Carly switching gears routine as she abruptly kissed my cheek and moved away.

  I knew this was an opportunity lost to tell her how I really felt. The moment came and went so fast, I didn’t have the chance to get it back even if I had the nerve—which I didn’t.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In 2010, I was one of more than twenty four thousand people who took the GED exam in Washington State. More than eighty-three percent of us passed the exam and my score was in the top ten percent, which was good enough for the UW. The GED exam is a lot harder than people think and in order to pass you have to achieve a score of four hundred and fifty within four hundred and ten minutes. The passing score is equal to or greater than a score earned by the top sixty percent of graduating high school seniors. They don’t call it the GED in our state, instead it’s referred to as a Certificate of Educational Competency. My math score, of course, was the weakest, but even that was a respectable five eighty since all I needed was four-fifty to pass. I had proved to everyone that I had the chops to make it in college.

  Carly and I celebrated by going out for pizza. I was curious about alcohol, but pizza and beer would have to wait until I got into college. I suppose I didn’t really need anything to make it that much more difficult to control my limbs. Fortunately, I wasn’t one of those drooling invalids. I just wasn’t ever going to be good at something like neurosurgery or fine art painting.

  We were sitting in La Fiamma, a wood fire pizza place that was a favorite of the locals, when Darian strolled in like she owned the place. I couldn’t speak, but I could glare. Carly hadn’t seen her come in yet, but when she saw my expression, she looked up.

  “Be nice, Belinda,” Carly warned.

  What? I didn’t say anything, I wrote on the tablet I carried around with me everywhere.

  “Very funny, Belinda. I saw you flip her off and your glare scares the shit out of me,” she stated.

  Oh, please, like my glare or entirely appropriate hand gesture even registers with her.

  By the time I finished writing, Darian had strolled to our table with a gorgeous blonde in tow.

  “Hey, Carly, Belinda. Um…this is Paula. She’s visiting from California. We went to high school together before my folks dragged me to loggersville. No offense, but Seattle, land of the loggers, isn’t much compared to San Francisco. She’s gonna be my roommate at Berkeley,” Darian confessed.

  Paula was outright staring at me.

  I narrowed my eyes at the two interlopers. I was used to being stared at and her gaze didn’t faze me one bit.

  “Why don’t you guys join us? We’re celebrating Belinda’s success with her GED,” Carly offered.

  Paula scrunched up her face and looked like she needed to spit out something distasteful from her mouth. I suspected she thought I was beneath her for celebrating my GED success. I was used to people looking down the ends of their noses at me and treating me like I wasn’t good enough to plant my wheelchair on their earth.

  To Darian’s credit, she congratulated me. “Hey, that’s great, Belinda. So now everything is good to go with UW?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  Carly beamed at me. “She scored in the top ten percent of the state. You know, they’ve done some research on this and people who score in the top ten percent get better grades than honor students. I’m so proud of her. She even smoked the math portion.”

  Paula looked bored. “We don’t want to crash your party.”

  “It’s okay, Darian, you and your girlfriend can join us. Nothing will spoil my mood tonight,” Carly said pointedly.

  Darian’s eyes got wide as she mouthed, I’m sorry. I suspected that she knew she’d hurt Carly and didn’t want to rub anything in her face. I could respect that. I got the feeling she cared more for Carly than she would admit to. Maybe her girlfriend made her choose. I thought she made the wrong choice, but I was certainly glad it worked out that way.

  Darian and Paula reluctantly joined us.

  “So…you’re the mute they thought was retarded,” Paula blurted out.

  Darian slumped down in the booth.

  I braced myself for Carly’s explosion. “Hey, shit for brains, where did you learn your social skills? What are you, five? I can’t believe you just said that!”

  Paula shrugged. “Sorry. Bad choice of words. She hasn’t said a word and doesn’t really look like much is going on. How’d you know she understood you?” Paula asked.

  “Is t
hat an honest question or are you continuing to be an ass?” Carly looked at Darian. “You left me for this insensitive donkey dung?”

  Darian had the good sense not to react to that last question. I got the sense that conflict was something she avoided at all costs.

  Carly had a very protective side to her when it came to me and in combination with her bruised ego, I was afraid things would go downhill quickly.

  I touched Carly’s hand to calm her raging volcano. I knew the lava hadn’t even reached the top yet. If I didn’t stop her, she would begin spewing hot ugly insults that would make a sailor’s head spin.

  I quickly wrote my answer on the tablet and pushed it to Paula. Carly recognized there was something going on and at first we established a rudimentary means of communication with eye blinks. She got her mom to arrange for some testing and voila, here I am, ready to go to college next year.

  “Interesting,” Paula remarked.

  “So are you all set for fall? Did you get the accommodations all worked out with the dorm room and everything?” Darian asked.

  I was absently stroking Carly’s hand and it seemed to keep her temper in check.

  “Yep, all set. We have our own bathroom and everything,” Carly responded.

  “Well I should hope so. It must be a pain in the ass to get ready in the morning. Do you have your own personal assistant to take care of your…uh….you know…bathroom requirements?” Paula, the insensitive, asked.

  I had to give her points for her directness. At least she wasn’t one of those to avoid the sensitive topics.

  I squeezed Carly’s hand and quickly wrote, I manage pretty well on my own. I need a little help here and there and Carly’s been there for me from the very beginning. I guess I’ve lost all sense of embarrassment around her now. Being helpless will do that for you. My illness has certainly been a humbling experience. I have no choice, but to accept help from those who freely give it. I am able to tell the difference between help freely given and assistance that feels like an obligation.

  It took me a little time to write my response and I could tell that Carly was anxious to read it. I could tell the moment she’d read what I wrote because a big smile engulfed her face.

  We’d had a few arguments about this very issue. I wanted to hire a home health aide, but she insisted it wasn’t necessary. I worked like a dog to make sure I could do as much as possible on my own and I’d come a long way, but I still needed someone.

  “Belinda and Carly have been best friends since Carly discovered that Belinda had locked-in syndrome. I don’t think she knew what it was called at first. It’s a pretty rare syndrome to have. If I wanted to hang out with Carly, I knew I had to respect their bond and accept whatever time she would give me,” Darian confessed.

  Now, that was an interesting statement to make. I wondered if her reconciliation with Paula had more to do with feeling a little out of sorts about our relationship, than choosing Paula rather than Carly.

  “At first I was jealous of you, Carly, but then I just figured you’d keep my baby warmed up until we had a chance to be together again. I knew that our plans for Berkeley would eventually come to pass and I’m a patient woman.”

  Paula narrowed her gaze at me and then at Carly. “Honestly, I’m surprised you two never got together.” She pointed at Carly and me. “You obviously care a great deal for one another, what’s the hold up?” Paula asked.

  Damn, this woman was like a heat seeking missile and good sense and social graces never entered into her brain. Hello, I’m in a wheelchair and can’t talk, I wanted to scream.

  Carly waved her hand in the air. “Oh, Belinda’s not gay,” she offered as an explanation.

  “Hmm, coulda fooled me,” Paula retorted.

  Shit, shit, shit. This woman had no filter and she was surprisingly perceptive.

  Carly glanced at me and I just shrugged. I wouldn’t deny it, but I wouldn’t affirm it either.

  I was warming to both Darian and Paula. At least Paula didn’t ignore me or act like she was walking on eggshells when conversing with me. Maybe she had some misperceptions about a few things and probably a few pre-judgements, but she was open to education. She was willing to alter her view of the world when provided with additional information.

  The rest of our evening went well and Carly started to loosen up a bit and probably saw the same things I did. I wondered if Paula had a touch of Asperger’s syndrome because her honesty had no filter.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the fall of 2010, I started as a freshman at the University of Washington. All summer long, I worked on transferring myself from my chair to the toilet. My arms were getting stronger and by the end of the summer, I had successfully managed this feat. It was a monumental step in my recovery. This meant I would not have to depend on someone else and I could function on my own during the day. I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I would need very little assistance to care for myself. Of all of my accomplishments, this was the milestone that helped propel my recovery more than any other. I could be independent now.

  I knew I should have worked harder on getting my legs to function again or re-building the pathways to enable speech, but I didn’t want Carly to feel obligated to follow me around all day. I loved her company, but I didn’t want my relationship with her to have anything to do with needing her for my basic daily physical needs. It was bad enough that she satisfied almost all of my emotional needs.

  Our two families caravanned to the university campus armed with everything we would need to decorate our dorm room and provide the kind of technology I required to adapt to this new scary setting.

  The university placed us on the ground floor so that we didn’t have to take the elevator every time we wanted to go back to our rooms. I was thankful for this because the elevator was excruciatingly slow.

  Carly was jumping around like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. She was so excited to start college and live out the dream she had envisioned for us.

  “Look how cool this room is, Belinda. I sure am glad we have our own bathroom. I hate fighting for the shower in the morning. I love my sisters, but they are fashion pigs and it takes them forever to get dressed in the morning.”

  I smiled at her in agreement.

  “I’m glad this dorm has a fitness center, I plan to do my darndest to avoid the freshmen fifteen.” She turned to me. “I have one more load and then we can start figuring out a plan to set everything up.”

  Carly bounced out of the room.

  I was surprised to learn they had a fitness room in the dorm and that was the first place I wanted to visit while Carly retrieved the final load.

  Can we check out the fitness room? I wrote on my tablet

  “Sure,” Mom agreed.

  †

  The fitness center was a pleasant surprise. It had all the popular cardiovascular machines plus free weights and strength training equipment.

  No matter what I had going on, I visited the fitness center every day. It would become my second home. I didn’t start my exercise regimen until the second week of classes because I wanted to get comfortable with my new experience at college before beginning a different routine.

  An unlikely obstacle came in the form of having to navigate the heavy manual door to the facility. Unfortunately, the fitness center didn’t have one of those automatic doors where all I needed to do was push a button and roll right in.

  That first time, Mom opened the door for me, and a very imposing woman looked up. For a moment, a quizzical expression flashed across her face before she replaced it with a broad smile and a nod. She returned to her workout with a concentration unparalleled by anything I’d ever witnessed.

  “Well, this is very nice. You should be able to do many of your exercises right here at this facility. Do you think that Carly will be able to help you with those?”

  I nodded.

  The extremely buff woman looked up again and slowly disengaged from one of the machines as she made her way to us.


  “Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I’m here every day. Could show you a few things.” She stuck out her hand. “Name is Quinn.”

  Mom shuffled around like she had ants in her pants. It was always awkward meeting new people and I don’t think Mom knew how to react.

  I quickly wrote my name on my tablet, turned it in her direction, then shook her hand.

  If my response to her introduction surprised her, she didn’t show it.

  “Nice to meet you,” Quinn said.

  I nodded.

  Mom coughed. “Well, we’d better get back before they send the cavalry out to find out where we’ve gone. It’s nice to meet you, Quinn, and that’s a very nice offer you’ve made to my daughter.”

  “It’s no problem, really, I grew up around gyms.”

  I looked over my shoulder and waved at her before leaving the center. She responded with a genuine smile showing off her perfectly even, white teeth. Quinn had an amazing smile, full of warmth and genuine affection.

  †

  After our visit to the fitness center, the whole gang looked around the room and tried to decipher where to start.

  My desk looked like part of the bat cave with all the technology. I had a laptop, tablet, e-book reader, text to speech or TTS equipment, and other various gadgets to help me grasp things that were higher on a shelf than I could reach while in my wheelchair. Thank goodness my parents were well off because adaptive technology can be extremely expensive.

  My backpack hung on the side of my wheelchair and, when leaving the room, I used it like a purse, stuffing everything I needed inside before venturing out.

  Carly clapped her hands together. “Okay, electronics first. We need to find a way to organize all your gadgets for easy access without unnecessary clutter.”