Permanent Marker

by Aimee Ross

  For the past two weeks, I had been feeling so sorry for myself, when I really should have been feeling thankful. The Universe had protected us that night—it was evident in my memories, it was evident in those photographs, and it was evident by my injuries.

  But it’s hard to be thankful when you’re angry.

  • • •

  I spent three hours a day in physical and occupational therapy, and I hated it.

  I complained about it.

  I even tried getting out of it.

  But I also knew that it was preparation for leaving. I had nothing better to do anyway.

  In those first days, physical therapists had to pick up my shaking body, too weak to move on its own, and set me on the square, wooden bed’s red exercise mat. There, I did the minimal work required. I couldn’t wait to go back to my room and get into my bed.

  Even so, the physical therapists were a breath of fresh air, a welcome break from the grumpy nurses of the Spinal Injury Rehab floor. Patients were always coming and going, and most times, the therapists were dealing with the frustrations of ten of us at once. Still, they remained positive and welcoming, special kinds of cheerleaders. The scopes of their jobs were fascinating—they worked with so many people. People in wheelchairs, people without limbs, people behind walkers.

  People who were damaged—some beyond repair—people like me.

  But my challenges were minimal next to some, a thought I tried to keep in perspective. My new body gained strength, and in just over a week, I had progressed from arm- and leg-lifting exercises to making my own wheelchair transfers and hopping without the use of my one-handed walker.

  Occupational therapy, however, tested me in different ways. Here, simple tasks to work my fine motor skills were more difficult than I anticipated: playing games, putting puzzles together, moving a little plastic car around a peg board, balancing on my good foot for minutes at a time. All to improve my eye-hand coordination and reflexes. Soon, I was also practicing gross motor skills like getting from the wheelchair onto a bath seat in a tub or in and out of a vehicle.

  As therapy got easier, I realized that going home would soon be a reality, and that scared the hell out of me.

  Here I had the care and protection of nurses, physical therapists, and a hospital room.

  Home was an old, roomy apartment I’d moved into only two months ago and where my mother would live with me playing nurse. How would I really take a bath or get out of a car or maneuver my wheelchair? Practicing to do it, which was really pretending, wasn’t the same as actually doing it. My body was so fragile and scarred.

  And yet I’d witnessed its resiliency. Physical therapy had taken everything out of me, but I kept pushing myself to move.

  The desire to go home paired with the fear of leaving safety.

  Just months before it had been the desire to leave safety paired with the fear of leaving my children and making a mistake.

  My, how quickly things change.

  March-May 2010

  Suite Number 304 at the Hampton Inn: my first “new” home. The place to start my also “new” life.

  Sounds like a commercial, doesn’t it? “Come stay with us and restart your life! Enjoy your new freedom in a room at the Hampton Inn!”

  One large room all to myself in a two-star-rated, standard hotel. A place for transitory, impermanent, or temporary dwelling. How ironic, this new freedom of mine.

  I was a mere traveler, a tourist in my own life. I didn’t belong anywhere anymore.

  But maybe it was best: a gentle, stress-free dipping of toes into the foreign pool of independence. There was no new living space to furnish (yet), there was no need for cooking (yet), and there was nothing to clean (yet). I had two queen-sized beds, a chaise lounge and couch, a TV and desk, and even a kitchenette. The suite’s cost included a hot breakfast buffet, and I could venture to any one of numerous fast-food establishments or even Walmart. I also had housekeepers and front-desk clerks who catered to my every whim.

  I imagined them sharing my story in the linen storage or behind the front desk. I was the lady who’d just had a heart attack—“It’s true! And she’s only forty-one!”—after splitting from her husband. I was a sad story.

  And so I lived there for almost a month, waiting on my apartment to be available.

  My parents insisted on it.

  But I was alone and living without my children, half an hour away from them.

  The center of me, the balance of my universe, was missing. I had been an active, present mother for seventeen years with three children who spent every day of their lives with me. I kissed them goodnight each and every night.

  But they had stayed at their home. And their father wasn’t enforcing any kind of a visitation schedule.

  This strange new life wasn’t natural, and it certainly wasn’t the way I had imagined it.

  A part of me was relieved to be away from the responsibilities of wife and mother, the craziness of daily decisions, chores, and stress, but guilt crept in. I wasn’t taking care of my children, and I should have been. I didn’t want their father filling the role that I had for almost eighteen years, particularly when he usually stayed on the sidelines. Why was I the one who had to leave?

  And yet, maybe this was what I needed after a heart attack: the disquieting quiet of a lonely hotel room. I just didn’t know how I was supposed to heal without my children.

  Jerrica, Natalie, and Connor.

  I missed them desperately. Natalie’s chronic morning sniffles and TV snuggle time with Connor every night. The echoing “What’s for dinner?” from three different mouths, the groans or sighs following the reply. The never-ending pile of kids’ dirty laundry.

  I couldn’t wait for my apartment to be ready. Once out of the hotel, I was sure the kids would be around more, and together, we could start a routine for them staying with me on a regular basis. Together, we would make a new home.

  But that didn’t happen.

  • • •

  After three weeks of living in a hotel, I moved into my second “new” home: the bottom quarter of a huge, old house on the main street of Ashland, a half hour from Loudonville and worse, still a half hour from my children.

  “Mom, are you allowed to have pets?” Connor asked me when he visited for the first time.

  I had left behind our schipperke, Bear, and three cats.

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t,” I said, frowning.

  “But Mom, don’t you miss them? Don’t you miss Bear and Alex and Oliver and Mo? You used to see them every day. Maybe you should come see them. Or, hey, maybe they can come with us to your place sometime!”

  He was eleven and didn’t quite understand.

  “Yes, baby, of course I miss them,” I said. “And someday, when I have my own house where we can have pets, we will. I promise.”

  I wanted to cry.

  But not now. Not in front of Connor.

  Yes, I missed my pets, but I missed living under the same roof as my children even more. And I hated Kenny. He refused to make an alternating schedule work, letting the kids stay wherever they wanted, and of course I knew where that would be—in their own beds with their pets. It was punishment—the worst kind—and he knew it.

  Night after night, I sat in my brand-new chaise in my brand new “home” staring at the TV, wishing I was somewhere else. Somewhere my children were. I kept a tissue in one hand to wipe away the tears, a glass of chardonnay in the other to sip away the pain. I cried every night. I drank every night.

  Not only was I living without my kids, but I had been shunned by old friends and acquaintances who had sided with Kenny, especially obvious at softball games for the girls. I was stared at, talked about, and pointedly ignored. I left many games—and sometimes even the small-town grocery store—alone and cryin
g, guilt overwhelming me once again.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. In fact, a friend of mine had even warned me.

  “So what’s going on? Something’s been bothering you,” Carol said. She leaned in and lowered her head, looking me in the eyes.

  We were at a writing retreat, and she could tell I needed someone to talk to.

  “I think I want a divorce.”

  I hadn’t said those words out loud yet. I was still thinking, planning, gathering advice and information. Carol was the first person I had told—I knew she would be honest with me.

  “You know, Aimee, some people are going to think you very selfish for this,” she said in her soft, gentle voice.

  I blinked the warning away. I blew it off.

  “Oh, I’m sure they will.”

  My reply then was flip, but now I knew Carol had been right: People did think I was selfish. Maybe even stupid.

  Still, I didn’t understand. How could they judge me when they had no idea about my marriage, my relationship, my life? And how was it any of their business?

  From the outside looking in, you’d never know.

  I was no longer a wife, barely a mom, and I was caught between two worlds: the one I had just left and the one I wanted so badly. Who was I, and what had I done?

  • • •

  I caused my own heart attack.

  Not like when you smoke three packs of Winstons a day, or you can’t breathe after climbing a set of stairs, or you eat bacon and red meat and fried foods.

  Not like that.

  Doctors, who are much more knowledgeable than I on the subject, have said my heart attack—an “anomaly”—was caused by high blood pressure due to stress, and I believe them, I do, but I wondered if more was going on. So, I researched.

  I came across Broken Heart Syndrome and wondered if I’d found something that fit.

  Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women, but Broken Heart Syndrome, also called Takotsubo (“octopus trap”) Cardiomyopathy, is a real thing. Harvard Health Publications say that up to five percent of women evaluated for a heart attack have this disorder, which can be brought on by strong emotions, such as grief or anxiety. And according to PBS NewsHour, ninety percent of broken-heart patients are women, who are ten times more likely to suffer from Broken Heart Syndrome than men. Google also says there are more than 200,000 cases per year.

  The American Heart Association says that Broken Heart Syndrome, or stress-induced cardiomyopathy, is usually misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms are similar, though there’s no evidence of blocked arteries. The occurrence of a stressful event causes adrenaline and other stress hormones to surge, which also causes shortness of breath, chest pain, sweating, nausea, and vomiting.

  Just like what happened to me.

  Cardiologists believed I had an arterial dissection that had “miraculously” repaired itself by the time they performed the heart catheterization. They’d said there had been only a “little damage.” I also had no blockage.

  All broken-heart patients studied recovered within a couple of weeks, unlike a person who has a massive heart attack and never gets back to normal. I was discharged from the hospital after just three days.

  But the tipping point was finding out that all broken-heart patients had experienced some profound emotional sadness, significant emotional shock, or physical stress. That was me, too.

  Yep. Self-diagnosis: Broken Heart Syndrome.

  I didn’t, and still don’t, take the vows of marriage lightly. As a girl dreaming of my future husband, I was adamant about divorce: it would never happen to me. I believed in love. I believed it was the only ingredient a relationship needed to succeed.

  But maturity proved my girlish idealism wrong—it didn’t hold up.

  I wanted that happily ever after; I really did. But I didn’t feel it anymore. And I couldn’t keep my promises any longer. I hurt someone I cared about. He threw his wedding ring at the wall. The cruel metallic clink still haunted me.

  And then I hurt Jerrica, Natalie, and Connor, the people most vital to my life—my heart.

  I had broken my own heart.

  I needed to be near my children. They were far more important than my privacy and relief from a nosy, gossipy town, anyway. They were my normal.

  So, before the school year ended, I moved back to Loudonville and into my third “new” home: the downstairs half of an old, drafty Victorian house with a beautiful wrap-around front porch and dark, original woodwork. I knew the kids wouldn’t live with me, but they were within reach again, and that was all that mattered.

  Soon, the dirty laundry, 50,000 pairs of running shoes, teen magazines, and hair ties piled up around my new place, and I started to smile more. My kids were a happy invasion and close enough to be around every day, a necessity for my sanity.

  Time really can heal a broken heart, because I felt more like myself than I had in four months. Life started to settle and my heart started to mend. The muscle had been gaining strength through cardio rehabilitation, and its hollow chambers were filling with the substance necessary to maintain a regular rhythm again.

  Maybe it would beat stronger than ever.

  And it did.

  Until the night of July 27, 2010, when a young man’s car crashed into mine, leaving its permanent mark on my life.

  Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Clinic | Three to Four Weeks after the Accident

  “Your belly button! You still have it! How wonderful!” the nurse changing my wound vac dressing exclaimed.

  I had come to dread the dressing changes. Maybe she was making small talk to take my mind off it.

  “Sometimes they can’t save it, but yours is still here!” she continued.

  My belly button. The first permanent scar of my—of everyone’s—body. I hadn’t even thought about it.

  As she pushed and squeezed the skin surrounding the gaping wound of my abdomen, I winced, wishing this were already over.

  “When you’re finished with the dressing change, could you please check under my arm? Something hurts.”

  Each movement of my arm felt like it was rubbing against swollen, raw skin where the chest tube in my right breast had been removed.

  “Of course,” my nurse said.

  First, she removed the old dressing. The vac’s swath of black sponge was covered in a clear plastic film that stretched rib to rib and down the length of my abdomen, like a window into my body. I wondered what they saw from the outside looking in, all these doctors and nurses, through this window behind a sponge.

  The plastic came up with no trouble, but the foam sponge was another story. Because it fit just inside the wound, removing it was always uncomfortable. Depending on which nurse was doing the change, sometimes it was downright painful. Today’s nurse used the saline spray to loosen the sponge, making it much easier to peel up, thankfully. Phew.

  Once the old dressing was removed, the rest was easy. The skin around the wound was sprayed with a protectant so the drape’s adhesive wouldn’t tear the tender flesh, and then the wound itself was sprayed and cleaned with gauze. A new sponge was cut to fit, placed in the wound, covered with plastic drape, and the vacuum attached to the center.

  The nurse turned on the wound vac to check for leaks, but this time, there were none.

  “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got going on here,” the nurse said, moving the wound-change extras aside. “Can you lift your arm for me?”

  She peeled back the bandage covering the hole under my arm.

  “Oh my,” she said. She pressed the area around the wound and asked, “Does it hurt when I do that?”

  I flinched.

  “Ouch! Yes!”

  “You’ve got an infection,” she said. “I’ll have to get a sample t
o send to the lab.”

  She grabbed a piece of gauze to soak up the pus and continued to press. She swabbed the area just inside the hole for a sample of the bacteria, then cleaned and dressed the spot that had recently held a tube to drain my lung. Once the pressure was released, the pain under my arm was almost entirely gone. Phew.

  An infection couldn’t mean much, right? Just some Neosporin on the wound and a little more time. At least, that’s what I thought.

  Wrong.

  • • •

  I had MRSA. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. A staph infection. Just what I needed. Staph infections were notoriously bad.

  The doctor who brought the bad news told me this type of infection was common—at least among people in hospitals or other health-care facilities—but because of that, it had become resistant to commonly used antibiotics.

  Since my spleen, the body’s source for fighting infection, had just been removed, and antibiotics might not work, I was at extra risk. I had to be put in isolation, because I was a source for transmission to other patients, particularly those with weakened immune systems.

  Quarantined.

  Doctors and nurses would have to wear special protection and use caution in my care so they wouldn’t spread the bacteria to other patients. My children and family could still visit—yay!—but they would have to be careful, as well.

  I had been on the Spinal Rehab floor for only three days, and I was being moved away from other patients. Now I didn’t even fit in among people like me, who had undergone their own traumas and needed rehabilitation. The prospect of having my own room—freedom for the first time in three weeks—didn’t even appeal to me, and tears rolled down my cheeks.

  Why me, God? Why me? Why did that kid have to hit me? Why was I going through all this after suffering a heart attack? Wasn’t that enough? When would I start to feel better? When would all this end?

  I sobbed. I sniffled. I wallowed.

  “You stop that, ya hear?”

  The quiet words surprised me. They had come from my roommate, a middle-aged woman who didn’t talk much. Until now.