After a long period of quiet, Phoenix became aware of Caleb’s low, murmured voice. He had no way of determining how much time had passed and whether he’d slept.
“No, I’m not going,” said their mom, in answer to some question Phoenix hadn’t heard.
“You look like crap, Mom.”
“Excuse me?” she said this almost as an afterthought, as if she surely hadn’t heard Caleb properly.
“You need grub, too,” Caleb admonished.
“I don’t want to leave.”
Paying their mother no mind, Caleb stood. “Something hot. Follow me,” he insisted.
“But—”
“Come on, soldier, this is an order.” Chalk it up to the unspoken power of twins, but Caleb intuited that Phoenix needed time to himself.
Caleb put his arm around their mom. “C’mon, we won’t be long.”
Phoenix opened his eyes long enough to encourage his mom. “Go eat something,” he managed, his voice cracking.
She studied him a long time, without saying anything.
Phoenix nodded towards the door. “Go.”
She fussed over placing the nurse’s call button within Phoenix’s reach before reluctantly leaving his side.
“You need a haircut,” she told her tattooed son, looking up at his overgrown mane.
“Just for that, you’re buying breakfast.” Caleb said, throwing Phoenix a smirk.
Phoenix watched them move on able legs towards the exit.
The door, half a room away, may as well have been across the continent. The distance to the floor mocked. Yeah, right. Just try to get down. He could brace himself with one leg and then what?
Now that he was alone and conscious, Phoenix needed to take a hard look at himself. He flung the sheets off with one hand. It was an alarming sight. His leg ended too early. His arm was a swollen mess of bandages. One fall had truncated his life in half. Framed by nostalgia, his old life seemed full and happy. His new life, he couldn’t picture.
This can’t be real. Fuck. I can’t do this. I need help.
Orchid.
No. Never Orchid.
The one woman who could help, he couldn’t imagine in this abyss of horror.
CHAPTER 10
A MARTYR FOR MY LOVE FOR YOU
Phoenix
Phoenix glanced down at his uncovered limbs and pulled the hospital blanket over his legs. It didn’t make the sight any better. Mom helped him straighten the bedspread and smoothed it with one hand.
“Are you cold?”
“No, I just don’t want to see—”
“You look fine,” she lied. “You’re still you,” she insisted. He was in too much pain to argue.
She looked like hell. Caleb looked even worse than when Dad died. Which meant Phoenix’s half-state between life and death was worse than death.
His mother and brother spent the day taking turns bringing him any small measure of comfort. They helped Phoenix adjust his position, poured him cool drinks, and encouraged him to eat. His mom punctuated the periods when he was awake by reading aloud his correspondences. She skipped business emails to share personal notes from friends and colleagues. Sincere if stuttered expressions of sympathy, especially the impossibility of “get well soon,” left Phoenix feeling worse. It reminded him of a world that kept going, even if he might never rejoin it.
Mom skipped from emails and texts over to photos on his phone.
“Who’s this?” she asked, showing him a selfie that Orchid had taken of the two of them.
They looked happy. Ignorance is bliss. If only she knew, what would she think? A lump rose in his throat when he didn’t want to feel anything.
“Who is this?”
“Orchid,” he said.
“Is she a friend?” Mom’s eyes scanned the pic again.
“Someone I know from work.”
“She looks like more than a co-worker,” she said, squinting at Orchid’s dimpled cheek pressed against his.
“At one point, it looked like that might be the case.”
“Does she know about your accident?”
“She doesn’t.”
“Do you want to call her?”
“No.”
Mom leaned back at the sharpness in his tone. “Text?”
“No. She’s in China,” he said, as if that were an adequate excuse.
“You sure?”
“I’m positive. And I’m tired.” He turned, closing his eyes. Would there be more reminders of Orchid? Hope not. There’s no point.
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.
A sturdy woman in dark blue scrubs entered, pushing a wheelchair.
He couldn’t help but stare at the hulking contraption.
She introduced herself with a firm handshake and explained she’d come to help him to the bathroom and would first remove his catheter.
“Is that something I could do . . . myself?” he mumbled.
She beamed. “Nope. My specialty.”
Caleb led their mom to the window, giving Phoenix a small measure of privacy.
The nurse pushed the bed’s plastic handrail down out of the way. She smelled like antiseptic soap and talked as she worked.
“This wheelchair is a one-handed model,” she explained. “It’s set up as an amputee chair, weighted so that it won’t tip back.” Amputee chair? Does she have any sense how much it sucks to need a wheelchair, much less a one-handed amputee one?
“There, all done,” she said, covering his lower half with the hospital gown. “Now, let’s get you up.”
Finally.
She pushed a button to adjust the bed upright. “You feeling dizzy at all?” she asked.
“Uh, no.”
At the sound of the bed’s motor being activated, Caleb and his mom returned. An audience, great.
The nurse wheeled the chair right next to the bed. “No dizziness? That’s good. Your balance might feel different but you’re going to swing your legs over the side,” she instructed, wrapping an arm around him for support.
He placed one hand on the bed and levered towards the side of the mattress. His weight felt strangely distributed, his left side oddly light, his right side weighted and awkward. He bit his lip. She studied the beads of sweat he could feel forming on his forehead.
“Okay, take a break. What’s your pain level?”
“Really bad,” he said, as fire rocketed everywhere, the pain refusing to be ignored.
“Very intense?” The woman in blue asked. “You want to wait ‘til later?”
“No, it’s okay. It’s like a six out of ten now.” He waited for the waning sensation to catch up with his fib. I need to get out of bed. “Or five.”
The nurse nodded. She wrapped her arms around his back and braced herself on the bed. Between the stinging pain, Phoenix realized what she planned to do.
“You’re going to help me by yourself?”
She paused and looked at him, surprised. “Why not?”
“Aren’t I too heavy for you?”
“I doubt it. I weigh more than you.”
“No you don’t. I weigh—” He stopped, a new realization hitting him.
“Besides, it’s just for long enough to sit in that chair,” she continued, ignoring or oblivious to the horror washing over him. He was no longer a six-foot, 165-pound athlete. He weighed no more than this stocky woman. He had less agility than a two-by-four.
Caleb stepped over. “You want to show me what to do, in case I ever need to help out?”
Phoenix groaned over the thought of his twin aiding him out of bed. The humiliations kept coming.
The nurse demonstrated the spots where she steadied him for his brother to observe. “Ready?” she asked, and then encouraged Phoenix until he was brief
ly up on a single leg, and just as quickly, down in the seat. He grabbed the armrest, instinctively seeking to balance himself.
“This is a stump board,” she explained, helping him position the swollen mass of his severed leg onto a padded surface jutting out from the seat of the chair. “It’ll keep your leg at the proper angle to prevent swelling.”
Oh, god. Amputee. Stump board.
He didn’t have long to contemplate the unfamiliar phrases that seemed to have nothing to do with him. Being seated instead of prone, he felt like he’d been set adrift in a vast space. Unmoored from the bed, he grew dizzy.
The nurse set them into motion, wheeling the IV pole while guiding his chair.
Mom hurried ahead to open the bathroom door.
The nurse pushed him over the threshold, not just into another room, but into another life. “Okay, we’re going to practice transferring onto the commode.”
A toilet sat framed by industrial grade handrails. How the hell am I going to get onto that? Before he could tackle the seemingly impossible, he caught sight of himself in the mirror, which was angled towards the ground for someone seated. The first sight of his new form struck him with a wave of repulsion, almost a physical force. Framed in the chrome edges of the looking glass sat a disheveled figure in a wheelchair—half man, half bandages, oddly truncated and unsettling in the asymmetry of its body.
The nurse must’ve thought he was looking at the sink. She pointed out the brush suction cupped to the inside of the porcelain.
“That’s so you can wash one-handed. Just pump some soap and scrub your hand against the brush. The occupational therapist will show you.”
He stared at her, the magnitude of his adaptations dawning on him one icy trickle at a time. Does this mean I’m going to become a suction-cup brush-carrying freak? If he had to think about how to wash a hand, what other thousand things would he have to do differently?
The nurse, moving to the next task, wheeled his chair adjacent to the toilet.
“First, we’ll practice. Just put one hand here,” she said, indicating the right-hand grab bar, “and an elbow here.” She pointed to the wheelchair’s armrest. Her stern expression left him no choice. He did as instructed. She steadied an arm around him, helping him push up from the upholstered seat to sit on the porcelain one.
His brother, watching from the doorway, scowled, hands on hips.
Phoenix was clothed and this was just practice, but still, he felt the loss of privacy.
“Sitting to pee for the rest of my life is going to suck,” Phoenix said, trying to keep the sharp edge in his voice more ironic than self-pitying.
“Who cares,” Caleb declared. “I’m goddamned grateful to see you mobile again.”
“This isn’t fuckin’ mobile.”
“Language,” Mom scolded.
Caleb’s glower deepened. “That’s mobile enough. You could’ve died. I freakin’ said goodbye.”
The nurse reversed their steps and situated Phoenix back in his chair.
“Sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Phoenix said, chastised. Nothing felt right. Not only the burning through his limbs and unclear thinking, but also his moods which swung as wildly as a carnival ride.
The nurse pushed from behind and dragged the IV pole. “Let’s get you back to bed. I want to give you medication so I can change your bandages, check the swelling, and let you rest. Then the psychotherapist will be in later.”
Psychotherapist? Great. What lies will I have to tell to keep this therapist off my back? That I’m adjusting? Glad to be alive?
Good thing ad guys excelled at spinning stories.
CHAPTER 11
I THINK I FOUND THE CULPRIT
Phoenix
Sascha hid any shock over Phoenix’s bandaged injuries with a cherry red pout. “Hullo, luv,” she said, cupping his cheek and leaning over his hospital bed for a kiss.
She stood back studying him with a cock of her head, not breaking eye contact.
Smart move; don’t look at the missing parts.
Then she loosened the drawstring of her knapsack. “Caleb and I stopped by your place. He’s parking the truck.”
Out tumbled familiar white T-shirts and navy-blue gym shorts. Folded, the emblazoned logos weren’t visible. Even so, he knew which ones represented his undergrad and graduate schools. Not long ago, those institutions seemed to hold importance in his life. Now, nothing did.
“How are you?” she asked, piling up workout gear on top of his bedspread.
“What do you think?” he snarled.
“I think you’ve had a run of tough luck, and it’s a good thing you’re strong.” She stacked the neat pile on his side table, then shook out a shirt and shorts. “How about these?” she asked, holding up the items to model them for him.
He ignored the clothing. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth. I’m not strong enough for this.”
She put one hand over his, the flowing sweep of a tattooed pattern made visible as her sleeve hiked up.
“I think you’re strong enough, luv. So does Caleb. So does your mom. And you’re not alone. Look how many people care about you.” She waved a hand to indicate the flowers and cards that lined the dresser top and windowsill. “Now let’s get you out of that hospital gown.”
“Sascha, are you crazy?” He felt like exploding. “Who cares what I’m wearing?”
With a shake of her mass of auburn hair, she stepped closer. “You’re the handsomest guy I know. I bet you’ll feel better in regular clothes. How about we give it a try?”
He twisted in bed, trying to escape the burning feeling traveling up his missing leg. At least his IV was gone, no longer trapping his movements.
“Aw, crap.”
“What’s wrong?” Sascha asked, alarmed at his contorted expression.
He grasped the side rail and sucked in a breath. “It’s phantom pain. The cut nerves are looking for the missing limbs and sending back messed up signals. My foot feels like it’s on fire. Ironic when I have no leg, right?”
“I’m sorry. Can I get you something?”
“This isn’t something an aspirin is going to fix.”
Her cheeks flushed. “I am so inconsiderate. I should go. I’ll tell Caleb to let you rest.” She scooped up the folded laundry and walked across the room. With one hand, she yanked open an empty dresser drawer.
Oddly, he suddenly felt the absence of her concern. “It’s okay, don’t go.”
She paused putting the items away.
“Let’s try it,” he said, gesturing at the abandoned outfit on the bed.
“You don’t have to do it to make me feel better. I’m supposed to make you feel better,” she replied.
“Actually, you might be onto something,” he admitted, sitting up. “Do you know this gown opens in the back?”
She came over to peer behind him. “Wow, this hospital gown look is so not your thing. The boxers underneath show promise, though.”
“Untie this sack while you’re back there, would you?”
She yanked at the knots from top to bottom. “You want some privacy while you get dressed?”
He shook his head. “It’s no more than you’d see at the beach.” He shrugged out of the surgical green fabric and tossed it onto the ground.
Her gaze traveled from his chest to his abdomen. “Oh my, you’ll have to tell me which beach.”
“Bad girl.” He pulled the shirt over his left, then right arm and over his head.
She handed him the shorts. “Don’t tell Caleb. He gets jealous enough.”
The bottoms challenged him. He shimmied the shorts up over his uninjured leg, and over the swollen mass of a knee. Then, he balanced his left elbow on the bedrail to inch up one side at a time until he’d wormed the waistband over his hips.
Sascha stepped back to a
ssess the effect. “There’s the Phoenix I know.”
He exhaled. “The better half, anyway.”
“You ad guys, nothing’s sacred.”
“We’re not above going low for a laugh.”
“Speaking of ad guys, you know that guy from your office was here right when you were first hurt?”
“You mean Dex?”
“Yeah, I think so. Big guy? Looks like a human teddy bear?”
“Ha, yeah, sounds like Dex.”
“And your aunt spent two days here with your mom.”
“I must’ve been a rude awakening for Aunt Betsy’s perfect life,” he said.
Sascha laughed, a tinkling sound. “Don’t worry. She was too busy being shocked over Caleb and me. I guess we’ve gotten more tatted up since she last saw us. She checked out my outfit like she was trying to decide whether to run, or hide.”
Phoenix pictured his aunt’s pinched expression. “You’re kidding.”
“I kid you not. And then she starts sniffing around Caleb like a police dog, all ‘are you doing drugs?’”
“He must’ve loved that,” Phoenix mused.
“Not as much as he loved the lecture about how your mom’s done enough for him through his teen years, and he better not worry her with his punk lifestyle, or some such b.s.”
“Punk lifestyle? She just can’t relate to anyone who doesn’t summer at the beach and winter at Vail.”
He looked down the bed at the white sheets. He wasn’t going to be skiing Vail anytime soon.
Sascha squeezed his hand. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s give your aunt something to talk about. When you’re feeling up to it, you come in and we’ll design you a tattoo.”
“You think some ink’s going to distract people from noticing what’s missing?”
“Nope. I think you should embrace that with pride, luv. You’re a hero. It’s survival scars. That’s you, nothing to be ashamed of.”
Sitting with a woman who got him, and wasn’t afraid to talk about his accident, he told the truth. “Sasch, that’s sweet but you know, I can’t even begin to tell you how badly this sucks.”
Goodbye, Orchid Page 4