When we watched Eurovision, there was something trashy that stood out about the songs in English. It was around that time that I dedicated my life to making music, pledging that my band would never sound like any of the wallpaper music on the junk tape that night.
But today there was no band. There wasn't even a tape. I had been told in conversation that there weren't tapes anymore. Or even CDs. It all came in the air, wirelessly. I learned vinyl was back.
What a strange world.
I learned a lot watching television and speaking with my physical and occupational therapists. While I learned how to lift myself in and out of my wheelchair and strengthen my muscles, I also learned that we had elected a black president. A black president. It felt more of a feverdream than the coma, and I was able to deduce that the years of his presidency were remarkably stable. I also learned that I mistook the president Bush that was in the newscast - that George Bush's son was also elected to be president, and that he started a perpetual war in the Middle East that was fought through the entirety of my coma.
I also learned that I was feeling more and more depressed. In this blackness and repetition, there was no end to the suffering that began the moment I woke up. I remained incarcerated in my body. I was feeling as though I had given up before anything started.
But I think it was because it never started.
Nothing in this world is guaranteed.
Nothing in this world is wonderful and sacred, and one must understand that to take the world for what it is, they need to take advantage of everything they can while they can. One mustn't compromise for anything. The world is beautiful, disgusting, heartbreaking, wonderful, tragic, wholesome, and an absolute whore. We're going to die anyway.
Twenty five years ago, I hadn't taken advantage of anything. I only scratched the surface, and my future was snatched from me regardless of the circumstances I thought I would be in only a few months from the accident. It was a fiction.
I would have preferred the fiery drug-fueled coma death to this.
But this... I was a man in a wheelchair. My existence surrounded everything I could and couldn't do in that chair. My hair, my appearance, my wrinkles and cacking voice would be nothing more than demerits to my character. I had never been so vain in my life as the moment I was resigned that I no longer had anything to be vain about. The enthusiastic and optimistic me was never coming back. Old, feeble, and crippled was my sentence.
And so, the nothingness grew. The light faded, sucked into the inescapable maw of a black hole heart. What was next? Death.
Over the next four weeks, doctors wanted to make sure that I was able to eat solid food and use the bathroom on my own prior to allowing me to leave to the next rehabilitation step.
I learned how to do these things.
I also learned that there was a trust set up for me that was paying for my medical treatment, insurance, and the family home and its upkeep. I just had to get better. I began looking forward to each marker and milestone.
My spirit improved when I was transferred to the rehab center. It was like a nursing home attached to the hospital. Most of my neighbors were the elderly and the terminally ill.
The place was depressing, masked in a design that barely resembled an Italian villa. The halls had beautifully constructed oval archways, elegant crown molding, and large exotic fish tanks. Foliage dotted the halls, and dining rooms were silverwared and tableclothed. Scratched beneath the veneer at every turn were little signs of hospital. I rolled everywhere on industrial linoleum tile, and occasionally passed a crane for lifting and hosing off patients. Plastic bumper rails bordered every wall so gurneys wouldn't destroy the plaster.
It was beautiful. It was horrific.
My roommate was Ester. Ester had a stroke seven years ago when she was eighty nine, and perpetually remained in rehab.
Ester got up every morning, put on her makeup in the mirror, and spent the rest of the day in her wheelchair kicking herself around our floor. She wore a solid inch of red lipstick around her mouth that nearly bordered the bottom of her nose to the top of her chin. Her eyeliner that appeared to be applied with a fat-tipped magic marker. It was sixties mod-clown-horror.
No one ever came to visit Ester. Photos on her side table featured two young couples and their children. Until the morning I finally addressed her, I thought she was mute.
"You really slathered it on this morning, Ester." I don't know why I said it. I was in a frisky and optimistic mood, eating my breakfast in front of the television watching the news cycle repeat for the sixth time.
"Yes."
She looked at me, her gigantic Joker-smile wildly careening from one end of her mouth to the other. Her lipstick was applied in a moving car for twenty hours. Her eyes literally popped from dark, skeletal sockets.
I stopped mid-chew, the gelatinous eggs sitting disgustingly against my pallet, shivering along with my nervous tongue. It was one of the first solid foods I could eat before I could leave the hospital. Whatever this egg product was, it wasn't anything to look forward to after eating through my arm for so long. I swallowed.
"I'm sorry, Ester."
"Yes."
"For some reason I thought you were catatonic or something. I don't know why. I think it's because you haven't talked with anyone the whole time you've been here. Not the nurses, not family, not me. Although I know I have only been here for a week, or so.
"Anyway, I'm Todd. I was in an accident, and then I was in a coma for a very long time, and now I can't walk. I need to figure it out from here. They need to make sure I'm healthy enough to live on my own.
"If you need anything, let me know."
"Yes." Her head bobbed pleasantly. A smile. I could have said anything.
We became great friends. I learned that she was a tremendous listener that I could unload on whenever I was having a bad day. Ester could only say "yes" because of her stroke, and she needed my attention as much as I needed her affirmation.
Thom was the other connection I made in rehab. He was my physical therapist, gigantic at seven and a half feet tall. He had long, dark brown hair and the look of a Samoan who was two steps away from murder.
Thom approached physical therapy like a drill sergeant. Every moment of my therapy, four hours a day in their efforts to get me out of the hospital as soon as they could, brought shouts and tasks hammered at a speedy clip. It was stressful and liberating. I felt the progress I was making at the end of each day.
"...and I somehow need to push myself up from my chair and reach over to that bar and let myself down on the toilet? What if it rolls away?"
"YOU PINSY-ASS FECK," and when he shouted, his south Pacific accent shone like daggers in his deep voice, “HOW A'YOU WORRY ABOUT THE WHEELCHAIR ROLLING AWAY WIT' PISS DRIBBLIN' DAWN YA LEG WAITIN' TA' LONG IN THE DRUG STORE LINE TO BUY YOUR TAMPONS?! GET DA'DICK OUT'CHA MOUTH, LIFT YA'SELF UP, AND SIT ON DA CAN."
Of course I ended up doing it. Sitting on the toilet, it became apparent that I had nothing to worry about.
"Well! I did it," I observed optimistically.
"Yes, y'did," he replied. When I wasn't working toward some goal in my therapeutic process, he turned into a gigantic, burly puppy dog. His eyes turned from bulging red marbles to cool brown orbs. His accent lessened, and his voice warmed. "Let me know if is too much. Sometime you need some motivation. I can turn it off if you need.”
"Sure."
"You had good coach in high school?"
"I didn't like sports."
"Well, you have good coach now."
At the end of our sessions, he would pump a meaty hand toward me and wrap his arm around me in a burly hug. He was all business, but as much of a snugly bunny as he was a tough stone.
Thom taught me many methods of maneuvering my new lot in life. He helped me tone my muscles as much he helped to tone my mind to take on my new challenges. Never had there been anything so difficult in this life, and I hadn't even started.
This life. Starting t
his life...
When my mind wandered down this lane, I had the most difficulty.
I was in the rehabilitation center and hospital for six months of my forty-third year. If I lived to be seventy-five, that meant that I only had a little over thirty years left of existence. I used up half the time left I had on this earth in a hospital. I was in a coma for more of my life than I was not. Most of that time wouldn't be usable. It wouldn't be anything but wheelchair and discrimination and sexless sorrowful loneliness.
Bill was my useless therapist. He waas everyone's therapist in the rehab center, and went room to room for his sessions. He had asked if I had considered ruminating on the small moments that I had that made life worthwhile. I had very little that I could consider to be worthwhile small moments. Was one overcoming needing help with taking a shit? Or bathing while someone stood there with me? Learning that my dreams were completely dead at this point, or that the life I have lived with fame and enjoyment and fulfillment was nothing more than a coma dream? Hell, even the mundane was depressing - Michael Jackson was dead. Michael fucking Jackson.
"I never realized that you were a fan," he responded.
"I wasn't."
"Well?"
"Well, I mean, I listened to Thriller so many times as a child that the tape wore out and my mom needed to buy me another. I guess I was a fan. But you know, over the years his escapades with the law and the tabloids and his getting whiter and whiter, or whatever... I thought everyone lost patience."
"You know, Todd, they gave him an autopsy. He died because he had overdosed on drugs administered to him by his doctor. Turns out he actually had vitiligo universalis - that pigment disease he said he had the whole time."
Therapist Bill was just making small talk, but there was a little jewel in this.
"Here is a little moment of happiness. I hope everyone who wrote something about his skin ate their words. There was probably a thousand retractions printed after that," I said. “Here is a small moment.”
"I don't think tabloids print retractions," he clarified.
"True."
"Do you think you can find a little joy in your existence, though? Look at little moments and take them like these little diamonds to polish in your mind and ignore the little things?"
"It is just too much. Every moment. There are still troops in Iraq. Still troops in Iraq. What, has it been thirty years at this point?"
"Well, not exactly. Nine-eleven."
"Nine-eleven. Everyone is nine-elevening me. What is nine-eleven."
"One thing at a time..."
"One thing at a time."
"Yes. Let's change the subject... Your family's lawyer wants to come in and speak with you. Are you ready?"
"About what?"
"The estate, what happens next. It looks like you will be out of here soon."
"I will be out of here soon?"
"Your doctor tells me that everything is looking fine, and they are just checking some final things. Your PT thinks you're there. Your OT. Your doctor is on the far end of the needle on your potential health complications, but you can eat and use the bathroom. Personally, I'm not sure you are ready, but that is only because of your overall lack of progress with me. You still remain somewhat resistant to-"
"-I have been doing my best. This is a lot to process." Poor Bill. It's me, not you. Let's break up.
"I know that. I was able to make some contacts for you and got you some therapists that do home visits on a regular basis. The best part is that it's all wrapped into this treatment. You will have it if you need it. You do need it, Todd. But that's entirely up to you."
"Thank you."
"There's also a nurse that will visit daily, and Thom will be visiting regularly as well. He is on the payroll here, but does home visits as an independent contractor to patients he likes on evenings and weekends.
"The timeframe on this is within the week, Todd."
"I think I can handle that. But what about Ester?"
"Who?"
"Kidding."
"Okay."
The next week passed with the introduction of more exotic foods. More meetings than I had the entire hospitalization. The lawyer leaving the house and all of the money from my parents to me indicated that there were no relatives, no family friends, nothing left that he knew of. He assured me that everything would be okay.
Oh, and here is what we deducted for our services.
Oh, and this is what we deducted to convert the house into a handicap-accessible building (Which may very well have cost the same as razing my parent's house and building an entirely new handicap-accessible house on the rubble...) (Or in the sky above it...) (With jets and fusion-compatible antigravity technology).
As this wrapped up, I needed someone to talk to and to be there for me. I needed it more than anything.
"...and the truth is that I don't know what's next. I'm scared."
"Yes."
"Scared, lonely, lonely and scared. It is as if there is nothing to my life now but to be the first forty-something orphan. I have been orphaned by my parents, my friends, and my own death and resurrection. Death is my parents now, and soon Death will chastise me. It makes no sense. What sense is there in life, when this responsibility comes all at once, and you have so little to do with it?"
"Yes."
"I will sit at home and watch television and eat TV dinners and waste away into a loafer in a chair, simply because I can't get out of the chair. I can't move but for where my wheels can carry me."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry... I'll make it. I have no other choice."
"Yes."
Ester smiled at me with her bright red suckling mouth. It was ghastly.
I had one chance to get it right. I have - I had - I have - I had. One chance. I was quiet, and Ester sat across from me, and she was quiet and kept nodding. I smelled urine. It was urine all the time.
"I have one chance," I told her.
"Yes," Ester replied.
"Yes," I responded.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Yes."
Yes.
Chapter 18
The steep stairs led to the stench of must and mold and basement rot. It was an intoxicating, familiar discomfort. My wheelchair was idle and empty across the kitchen. I sat at the top of the basement stairs.
A cold, still air of death wafted up. The basement hung damp. Like the rest of the house, there was no comfort in the familiarity of anything. Home was a crypt.
I had to carefully move down each plywood step, one at a time. I moved my butt from the top of a stair down to the next step. Then, I picked up and moved my left leg down one. I moved my right leg down one. I edged my butt down again, left leg, right leg. Butt. Left leg. Right leg. Butt. Left leg. Right leg.
As I crept, panted, and dripped to the halfway step, I began to see the bottoms of the washer and dryer resting on the concrete floor. Two things became apparent as the angular shadows grabbed my attention. One, was that laundry was not a part of my transition to having a handicap accessible house. It also became apparent that I hadn't turned the light on.
At least I got my ramps, stair lift to the second floor, and handrails.
I was drained. I bent to look into the basement. The air hung still. It hadn't moved in twenty five years. Dust hung in sparkly clouds, bars of light striking from the small foundation windows. Stacks of puzzles and board games, laundry detergent boxes with a bed of dust resting on top, even a basket with some clothes. Everything rested. Idle.
Despite the effort, I descended to the bottom. I looked under the stairs, and dad's tools lounged on a workbench with drawers and a little table that would be at knee height if I could stand. There was a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. There was a pair of old glasses. There was a pipe with tobacco ash. Dad rarely drank, rarely smoked, and rarely used his glasses, but these wholesome dusty artifacts were divine evidence that he existed where there was nothing else.
My arms pulled me from the
bottom of the stairs to where the band practiced. Here was the rug. A few silvery broken E strings and clipped string tips coated the carpet in a glittery patina. I pulled myself. A sharp pain bit into my hand. The tip of a string was jabbed in the meat below my thumb. Electric pain shocked me as I removed the inch of wire from the tender flesh.
I spread my arms out.
I put my face in the carpet.
I lay still.
Breathe. Stumble in my breathing. Musk and mildew, and this deathly air is my new existence.
The heir of death.
Breathe.
My notebook still sat at the corner of the carpeting. I pulled myself over, and held it under me without opening it. The years and the humidity left the book crinkly and hydrated.
I don't know what I expected to find in the basement.
The band's gear, all neatly stacked and ready to play? A stack of posters and tapes and stickers and CDs of our recording session? Photos of thousands of fans screaming for us in Boston?
The inauthenticity of my life gripped me as I struggled to recognize what was real and what was not. I was eighteen, and then I was forty-three.
I wept with my face in the carpet, my hand sore with a stabbing throb of intramuscular heartbreak. I felt my heart beat in my hand, stabbed through with a guitar string. I cried and drooled. I was an animal in the face of a dank, dark cellar facing down the decline of my existence. There was nothing on this planet. There was nothing.
This house was full of my nothing. My inheritance. My kingdom. There was a blue plastic watering can. There was a box with Monopoly in it and a bunch of rubber bands hanging off of a screw. There was three quarters of a box of laundry detergent. There was copper piping hanging from brackets on the ceiling and wispy fiberglass insulation that looked like my disheveled, forty-three-years too-long-for-this-world feather of hair. There was a ghost mask. There was a mason jar of coins. There was a stack of videocassettes.
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