by Aimee Ross
She had brown hair, big eyes, and a perky energy that reminded me of a favorite student teacher of mine. Instantly, I felt at ease.
It didn’t last long.
“Already? Like right now up and moving?”
Mom was in the awful orange chair by the window reading. I saw her look up at this and raise her eyebrows, but she didn’t say anything.
It had been only nine days since the accident. It was too soon.
“Yep! Gotta get those muscles working,” the therapist announced.
Danielle started by putting me through a few basic arm and leg exercises to gauge my mobility range and strength. There wasn’t much of either.
“Do you think you can sit on the edge of the bed?” she asked.
I hadn’t actually moved on my own since before the accident, because nurses had been helping me. I was scared.
“I haven’t tried yet. How do I do it?”
I was surprised to hear my own words. I had to actually ask how to move my own body, one I had lived in for forty-one years. And now I was a stranger. First, it had been in my own home, as an intruder grabbing all my belongings to move into a hotel. Now it was my own body, as a foreigner getting my bearings to adapt to this new land. Both places I used to belong. Until expulsion.
“You can only put weight on your right arm and leg, so use them for leverage and balance,” she instructed. “Try to push yourself off the bedrail there, and move the rest of your body around until your legs are hanging over the side. Think you can do that?”
I could tell she was not going to help, that this was a test. She stood away from the bed to watch. I didn’t want to do this yet, but I knew that eventually I’d have to try. And maybe if I did, she’d leave sooner.
“I’ll try.”
I used the bed controls to lift the mattress to as close to a sitting position as I could get, then I put my right hand on the bed rail. I grasped it tightly and pushed hard, scooting my body down the mattress while turning and lifting it at the same time.
I grunted, slowly pivoting left, but I barely moved. I was dead weight.
The cast on my leg felt like it weighed fifty pounds, but I managed to inch my legs over a little at a time, until I ended up half on and half off the edge of the bed, almost on my side. I laid there for a moment, catching my breath and wondering why I agreed to this.
“I can’t do it. I can’t sit up.”
“Yes, you can, Aimee,” Danielle said. “You’re almost there. Try.”
I knew she was right. And I couldn’t keep lying in this position, twisted and uncomfortable.
I put my right arm behind me and pushed against the mattress to boost myself. Everything inside me tightened, and somehow, I found the strength to pick myself up and move my legs a little more. Finally, I was sitting, hunched over and breathless, on the left side of the bed. I felt like I might collapse from utter exhaustion.
The last several minutes had sucked right out of me what little energy I had. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to move. I had been a lump in a bed with over a dozen fractures and punctures for well over a week now, and it was a minor miracle that I could actually sort of sit. How would I ever walk again?
“Aimee, that was awesome—you did great,” Danielle said. “Now you need to stand up.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, I’m not—but only long enough to get from the bed into that chair,” she said.
Sure, yeah. I’ll just stand, Danielle.
Man, was she pissing me off. Had she not just witnessed my struggle to the edge of the bed? If and when I finally did stand up, I thought I might punch her.
I sat on the edge of the bed feeling woozy and like I might fall backward. Danielle set a walker in front of me that was different from any I’d seen before. This one had a single handle—made for someone who could only use one hand—and it looked tricky.
She bent down to move all of my tubes and wires aside.
“Now I want you to grab the handle of the walker with your right hand and lean on it while you lift yourself off the bed. Don’t use your other arm, and don’t use your left leg. Just this side.” She gestured with her hand from my right shoulder down to my right thigh.
“But how am I going to do it? I don’t think I can.”
I didn’t feel strong enough. It was one thing to use my good arm to scoot myself down the bed and into a seated position, but quite another to lift the dead weight of my useless, fractured body while balancing on my good arm and good leg.
“You have to use your core as support, Aimee, your abdominal muscles,” she explained.
Yeah, well, my “core” had only recently been cut open, moved around, and left to close up on its own. Wasn’t reading my chart a part of her job?
But I kept quiet, sitting there staring at the walker. I couldn’t wait for her to leave.
“Come on,” she said. “You can do it, Aimee.”
I hated her.
Lean on one hand and lift up from your core.
I grabbed the handle of the walker with my right arm and pushed down, hoping it would give me a start. Nothing happened. My rear end was like a powerful magnet, begging for that bed, holding me down. I struggled to pick myself up and realized I had no strength in any part of me—the fractured parts, the non-fractured parts, nothing. I grunted, pushed down again, and tried from deep within to lift myself. Again, nothing.
Time stalled.
I couldn’t move my own body.
In just nine days, my body had transformed from a normal standing, running, walking, dancing, climbing stairs, and moving body to one that felt like it was paralyzed.
I had been reduced to inert mass.
I tried rocking to gain momentum. I must have looked like a huge, blue hospital-gowned blob, swaying and grunting and shaking, my left arm hanging uselessly at my side, the heavy cast cementing me to the bed. The rocking lifted me enough to quickly fall sideways, gravity having other plans. Danielle grabbed one side of me and Mom grabbed the other, while I groaned the words, “What now?”
Their strength held and then turned me slightly, setting me down in a chair.
“Do you think you can sit there for a bit?” Danielle asked.
“Maybe.”
I was panting, winded.
She did it—she succeeded.
Danielle went to work with other patients, and Mom went to find something for lunch. All I could think about was doing the same thing all over again to get back in bed. I was already so tired.
“How are you doing, Aimee?” Danielle asked when she returned.
“I’m ready to get back into bed.”
“So soon?” she asked. “I’d really like to see you sit there a bit longer.”
I had been sitting, hunched over, in this uncomfortable, plastic, wing-backed chair for several minutes—an eternity. The huge sponge-covered wound of my abdomen ached from slouching, and I was tired from moving. I wanted to be back in bed.
“I can’t. I’m hurting.”
She gave in, telling me she was happy with my progress, and helped me return to my only comfort. This time, relying on her strength, I let her do the work.
“I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do it all over again.”
Danielle smiled and waved as she breezed out of the room and on to her next victim.
I felt sick.
Tomorrow was far too soon.
I hated my body and what it had become. It wasn’t mine—my body had been new and improved after the heart attack. I had worked out three times a week for twelve weeks with trainers in cardio rehab, getting healthy, toned up, and strong again. And for the last month since rehab had been over, if I didn’t walk during my hour-long lunch break from my summer writing workshop, I danced with my girls in prepa
ration for drill team camp.
But the last four months of getting in shape didn’t matter. Not to this body.
I could barely move. I couldn’t pick myself up to stand on my own two feet. And it hurt, everything hurt.
I didn’t see how waiting until tomorrow would make any difference.
• • •
Getting up and out of bed the day before had taken a toll, and somehow, I had pulled a muscle in my back. The pain was excruciating. Sharp, knifelike pains reminiscent of childbirth stabbed my lower back in waves, incremental but constant.
I lay there crying, wishing for something, anything, to take it away. None of my injuries had been this painful, and I still had two more hours to wait for my scheduled pain meds.
I buzzed the nurse anyway.
I was twisted left, positioned on my side, head tucked into my shoulder, when the nurse arrived. She saw I was crying, something I hadn’t done yet because of pain. She told me she could bring something to get me past the “break-through” pain until my scheduled meds time, and it worked. My muscles relaxed enough to let me rest.
When doctors made their rounds later, one of them mentioned that in a few days I should start working with the physical therapist to get out of bed.
In a few days? I couldn’t believe it.
What about all the anguish of yesterday? Not only was I suffering from traumatic injuries inside and out, but now I also had muscle strain from moving around and getting up. I knew in some part of me that it had been too soon, but Danielle had been adamant, and I’d felt I couldn’t say no.
When I told the doctors about my visit from physical therapy, they were surprised. They told me to wait a day or so for further movement, and they would let the physical therapist know. I knew that eventually I’d have to try to get up and move again, but for now, I could rest.
Danielle arrived a little while later, which was unexpected. When I told her what the doctors said, she was obviously taken aback. Lines were getting crossed somewhere, but that wasn’t my problem.
I was not getting out of bed. Doctors had told me I could wait. End of discussion.
Her stoic, cold expression said she had other plans, however. Her job description: get people who don’t believe they can move to move. So that’s just what she would do. End of discussion.
But not me. Not today. I just couldn’t.
And more importantly, I wouldn’t. It was my body, my decision.
“Can we please just try again tomorrow? I can’t move my back at all. I think I pulled something yesterday.”
She didn’t know me—she didn’t know that I’d give anything to be able to get up and use the bathroom or walk the hall. All she knew was that her patient was not cooperating. And when she continued to persevere, show no sympathy, and explain why I should get up, I cried. Again.
Seeing my tears, she managed a smile, said yes we could try tomorrow instead, and left. Just like that.
Victory.
Oh, thank God, I thought as I exhaled deeply. Without realizing it, I had been holding my breath.
I pushed the tears from under my eyes with the fingers of my good, right hand and relaxed into the cradle of the hospital bed. I knew Danielle would write “refused therapy” on my chart today, but this new body needed rest from the strenuous work of the day before.
Besides, there was always tomorrow.
And I wasn’t going anywhere.
• • •
The days and nights in the Trauma Clinic faded in and out of one another, one right after the other, broken up only by visits from hospital personnel or my family. Hospital-bed existence became routine.
My body was an oxymoron, new to me but broken, and I didn’t understand its limitations yet. Within the first few days awake, I watched my roommate hobble back and forth to the bathroom, wishing so badly that I could do the same. I wanted to sit on a toilet or wash my hands. I wanted to splash water on my face and brush my teeth.
It would be easy, I thought. I could favor my left side and move with my right, balancing my weight on the side with strength. Then I could just hobble to the bathroom using anything around me for support. I could do it, couldn’t I?
The response from my nurses was a resounding no. Using the bathroom was off limits—that was made clear—but they would take my catheter out, as long as I used a bedpan. I agreed, having no idea going to the bathroom would be one of many things I would never take for granted again.
The refrains of recovery: Get your rest. Your body heals more quickly when you’re sleeping. Aimee, you need quiet.
The reality of recovery: constant interruptions.
My blood was always drawn in the wee hours of the morning, interrupting what little sleep I got, and soon I became an expert at knowing which phlebotomist needed more practice and which did not. Because of the chest tubes, my lungs were X-rayed for fluid by the same handsome technician who visited before breakfast every day, always smelling like he was on his way to a date. My daily meds were also administered before breakfast, but those for pain came when necessary throughout the day, most times alternating with my vitals being taken.
Aides washed me in the mornings, changing the bed sheets around me, almost always right before the doctors’ rounds. Teams of doctors visited each day, making me feel like a science experiment or, as my brother had put it, a “miracle.” The wound vac pump, as well as the fluid from my chest tubes, had to be drained every few hours, the dressings changed every couple of days. The scrapes, incision sites, broken bones, and my IV were also checked during each nurse’s shift, just in case the one before had forgotten.
I couldn’t turn on either side because chest tubes stuck straight out of the skin under my arms. If I spent too long on either hip, the dull pain of a broken pelvis turned persistent and sharp. I couldn’t move my left arm, heavy and achy with metal, or my left leg—the cast had it cemented to the bed. My broken ribs and sternum hurt the worst, like serrated knives poking or jabbing my lungs if I breathed too deeply or coughed. And my abdomen was a gaping wound, covered only by a sponge; the area around it was bruised, swollen, and tender.
Discomfort was non-stop—even the slightest jarring reverberated through my entire body. So I stayed at a forty-five-degree angle, and I learned how to fall asleep on my back. Sleep happened only at the most random times—typically after pain medication, and not surprisingly, just as a meal was arriving—but rarely at typical hours and never when I tried. Most nights, I turned off the TV around eleven and shut my eyes, waiting for sleep. Quiet, sterile gray darkness would settle over the room like translucent gauze, while nurses’ muffled voices went to and fro outside the door, but I just lay there awake and annoyed.
Danielle came every day. Sometimes, twice a day. I dreaded seeing her walk into my room, even though I knew she would stay for only a little while. Sometimes she put me through exercises and sometimes she didn’t, but she always had me get up and into that chair. I managed to sit for longer and longer periods, usually eating my lunch or watching TV there, until my abdomen or pelvis couldn’t take the discomfort any longer. I got stronger and stronger, improving slowly in my ability to control my strange new body, but those bits of time exhausted me.
Some days, getting back into my bed made me feel guilty, but it was where I lived. In fact, my whole world was within an arm’s reach. The tray to my left held my makeup bag and nourishment—snacks, leftovers I was saving, and ice water, and the bedside table to my right was stacked with my laptop and a pile of reading material—novels and gossip magazines. Confined to a bed for who-knows-how-long, I would actually have the time to read, an English teacher’s dream.
But I just wasn’t interested. And it just wasn’t enough to keep my mind busy. I couldn’t focus enough to read anything of real length. I would open a magazine or book and read a few sentences only to stop and think
, Who cares? Facebook updates on my laptop were about all I could manage. When I watched TV, I stayed away from the news, usually getting lost in the cooking of Food Network or the competition of So You Think You Can Dance. I just didn’t care, couldn’t care, about people I didn’t know, whether real or fictional, and their trivial tales. I didn’t have the energy to empathize with them when I had worse, more significant things affecting my life.
I hated that someone had done this to me. I was also lonely there in that bed. I had just started to gain control of my life in a new apartment near my children. My relationship with them, strained from the divorce, had been improving.
Then wham! Out of nowhere, the control was gone, and I was undone, dismantled to my very bones.
I was so angry. What had happened to my life? Was God punishing me? How had I survived when the other driver hadn’t, and everyone told me I shouldn’t have? So much guilt.
Night after night, these questions plagued me, overwhelmed me, and the longer I stayed in that hospital bed, the more I felt cocooned and safe from their answers. Actually, even if lonely, I felt cocooned and safe, period. People here took care of me, fed me, tended to me, and made me comfortable. I didn’t know if I would ever want to leave the safety of this protective new home.
Outside was a scary, uncertain world where your life could change in a split second.
You could have a heart attack all alone without anyone around to help.
Or a car could fly out of the darkness, smashing you to pieces.
A Week after the Heart Attack
I needed to get my things. Whatever I could fit into Mom and Dad’s SUV, anyway.
I had lived in that house a long time—twelve years—long enough to believe I would never leave the safety and protection of the home where my own family lived. I knew the front door would be unlocked, but I was still sneaking in on what felt like a covert, secret mission. And with two accomplices: my parents.
They had insisted on bringing me, just as they had insisted that I was not returning there to live. Worried about stressing out my already weakened heart, Mom and Dad had reserved a suite at the Hampton Inn for me until my new apartment was available.