The Girl I Didn't Marry

by Annabelle Costa

  “Hello,” I say breathlessly.

  “Hi, Nick.”

  It’s Jessie. My pulse quickens at the sound of her voice. I haven’t seen her since that first time she came by—I keep putting her off, although I’m scared she’s just going to show up one of these days. I don’t want her to know what’s going on with me, and it’s getting harder and harder to hide it. If she comes, she’s going to find out. It won’t take long for her to notice that my legs don’t move and that there’s a catheter stuck in my dick.

  “You okay?” I ask her. “Your dad hasn’t been giving you trouble, has he?”

  Maybe I can ask Tony to pay Mr. Schultz a visit. He owes me. Big time.

  “No, he hasn’t…” There’s a hesitant tone in Jessie’s voice. It gives me a bad feeling in my stomach. “Nick, can I ask you something?”

  She knows. Fuck. She definitely knows. I wonder who the hell told her. Chrissy? It was probably Chrissy. Goddamn Chrissy and her big mouth.

  Well, it was inevitable.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I heard…” She coughs on the other line. “I mean, someone told me that… well, that you can’t…” She pauses, waiting for me to jump in. When I don’t, she blurts out, “Nick, can you still walk?”

  I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t want to lie to Jessie, but I don’t want her to know the truth yet.

  “Not yet,” I finally say. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Jessie. I’m having some problems in that area. For now. But… I’m going to get through it. It’s all just temporary.”

  And that’s the truth.

  “Oh.” She sounds relieved. “I thought that… okay, well, that’s good. I mean, it’s not good, but at least you’re going to get better.”

  “Right.” I take a deep breath. “But I really need to focus on my rehab now and… it’s probably better if you didn’t come here for a while.”

  There’s a long pause on the other line. “How long is a while?”

  “Just till I’m better.”

  “And how long is that going to be?”

  Christ, what’s up with all these questions? “Soon. Okay?”

  “I just want to see you,” she says softly.

  I want to see her too. She has no idea how much. It kills me that I can’t be with her right now. But the thought of her seeing me like this, lying helpless in bed, or God forbid, in a fucking wheelchair makes me sick. That will not ever happen. I’ll make sure of that.

  “Soon,” I tell her again.

  I hope I’m not lying.

  Chapter 28

  Nick

  “So we need to talk about Nick’s future.”

  Dr. Stark is addressing my parents, but I’m also in the room. I’ve been in the hospital three weeks and he’s decided I’m ready to be discharged. It hasn’t been a fun three weeks. About a week in, I started throwing up and my belly pain got a lot worse. It turns out my intestines stopped working. They kept me on fluids through the IV and there was talk of opening my gut back up, but then I got better.

  My gut feels like it’s been in a war. There’s a big scar where they opened me up, even though the staples are now gone. And everywhere else there are bruises from the medicine they inject that thins out my blood. My belly hurts me every day, but I know it’s not the worst of my problems.

  My parents are sitting in chairs in my room, and I’m in my bed. I’ve got my brace on so that I can sit up and participate in the conversation. Dr. Stark suggested I sit in a wheelchair and we go to a conference room to talk, but I said no. I don’t know what part of “I will never sit in a wheelchair” he doesn’t understand.

  “My recommendation,” Dr. Stark tells us, “is that Nick go to Rusk Institute to do acute inpatient rehabilitation.”

  “For walking therapy?” I ask.

  The doctor lets out a sigh. “Nick, at this point, I think it’s foolish to spend any time working on walking. This therapy will teach you how to be independent at wheelchair level. They’ll show you how to dress yourself, bathe yourself, transfer yourself… so you don’t have to be dependent on nurses or your parents.”

  “But I want to walk,” I say.

  “Well, I want to be a seven-foot-tall NBA player,” Dr. Stark says. “We can’t always get what we want. We have to focus on what is possible.”

  Fuck him. I wish I could walk out of this meeting. But I’m stuck here.

  “We did find an alternative,” Pop says. He pulls out a small booklet that he showed me yesterday. “There’s this physician named Dr. Duncan who does steroid shots to the back, and then does an outpatient therapy regimen. He told me on the phone he’s had really good success getting patients with spinal cord injury walking again.”

  Dr. Stark takes the brochure in his pale hand. He flips through it, his gray eyebrows raised. “This looks like a scam to me.”

  “A scam?” Ma says.

  Dr. Stark shrugs. “I just don’t see how this treatment could possibly work.”

  “I talked to a guy on the phone,” Pop says. “He told me he had the same exact injury as my son, and he’s now able to walk again with Dr. Duncan’s therapy.”

  Pop told me about it yesterday. A guy who had the exact same thing as me. He told Pop the doctors told him the same thing—no chance he’d ever walk again. Give it up. And now he could walk without even using a cane.

  “I think we need to be realistic,” Dr. Stark says. “Inpatient rehab will get Nick mobile again. It will teach him to avoid complications of his injury. It’s exactly what he needs.”

  I notice I’ve been sliding down in the bed, because the muscles in my lower abdomen don’t seem to function anymore. I push myself up with my arms, keeping an eye on the tubing of my catheter to make sure I’m not stretching it. That’s another complication I’ve had. They tried taking the catheter out, but nothing happened. I couldn’t piss for anything. They had to put it right back in.

  “I want to do Dr. Duncan’s therapy,” I speak up.

  Dr. Stark just shakes his head. But what the hell does he know? This hospital is like a machine, pumping out injured guys, no concern for what their lives will be like after.

  “It’s your decision, Nick,” Dr. Stark finally says. “We can send you home and you can do that outpatient program if that’s what you want. I think it’s a mistake though.”

  He won’t think it’s a mistake when I walk back into this hospital six months from now to show him how wrong he was.

  Jessie

  “I can’t believe in one week we’re going to be high school graduates,” Chrissy says. We’re lounging in her bedroom, supposedly doing homework, but not really. You can’t do homework with Chrissy—that’s one of the things I’ve learned about her over the years. She gets too easily distracted by just about everything. It’s actually amazing that she’s managing to graduate at all—she’s coasted by on mostly D’s. She doesn’t have any immediate plans for college. “Do you dare me to be completely naked under my graduation gown?”

  “No,” I say. It would be just like Chrissy to flash the audience when she picks up her diploma. She’ll be the first kid to get suspended during graduation.

  Chrissy plays with a lock of her dark hair. “Is Nick coming?”

  “How should I know?” I reply irritably.

  Nick and I haven’t talked in a week. He’s only called me once since he came home from the hospital, and he told me in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want me visiting him. He said he needed to focus on getting better. After two calls where I nagged him to let me come over, Mrs. Moretti started telling me he wasn’t available to talk.

  At one point, I walked by his house and considered knocking on the door. I didn’t do it, mostly because I knew it would make me feel even worse when he turned me away.

  “Can he walk yet?” Chrissy asks. She of course knows the whole story. She knew it before I did, but she was afraid to tell me.

  “I said I don’t know!” I snap at her.

  Chrissy rolls her eyes
. “God, Jess, you are so irritable lately. Are you on your period or something?”

  “Shut up,” I say.

  I don’t have my period. Is that, like, the only reason that I could be irritable? That I’m menstruating? In fact, not only do I not have my period, but I haven’t had it in…

  When was the last time I had my period?

  I’ve gotten it since Nick and I had sex, haven’t I?

  Haven’t I?

  Oh no.

  “You okay, Jess?” Chrissy asks. “You look really pale all of a sudden.”

  “I’m fine,” I manage.

  It’s been about five weeks since the prom. I should have my period by now. I lost track of it with everything that’s been going on, but it’s clearly late at this point. Not just late. It’s really late.

  Oh God.

  “I have to go,” I say. I stand up, nearly tripping over my own feet. I’ve got to get out of here. And then I’ve got to find Nick and talk to him.

  Chapter 29

  Nick

  I got my first session today with Dr. Duncan, and I’m really excited.

  I been home for nearly two weeks so far. Two miserable weeks. I know I can’t go on like this for very long, so I’m relieved to get started on some therapy.

  For starters, Pop bought me a wheelchair. I pitched a fit, but he pointed out that there wasn’t any choice. He couldn’t even get me to the car to drive home without my sitting in a wheelchair. And there were going to be times when I needed a wheelchair at home, or else I was going to have to get carried everywhere and I didn’t want that either.

  The wheelchair is a piece of shit though. It squeaks when you wheel it and the footplates are uneven—it looks like a hospital reject.

  I don’t spend much time in the wheelchair. Pop got me a hospital bed for the den, which has been converted into a bedroom, since I can’t get up the stairs to my old room. I mostly stay in the hospital bed all the time. I’ve got a TV in there, so it’s fine. It’s just a temporary thing.

  The hardest thing is having my parents help me with things that oughta be private. Ma sponge-bathed me a few days ago. She did it in pieces so I would never be completely exposed at once, but it still sucked. Pop dressed me this morning to come here—well, I could put on my own shirt, but he helped me get on my boxers, pants, socks, and shoes.

  Yesterday, my catheter needed to be changed. My parents did that one together, because they were both too scared to do it by themselves. That was awful.

  All I can think about is I can’t wait for Dr. Duncan to get me better.

  Ma pushes my wheelchair out to Pop’s car because I don’t like to wheel the chair myself. It’s the first time I’ve been outside since I got discharged from the hospital. I’m nervous about people seeing me like this, but there isn’t any alternative. Dr. Duncan won’t come to me. I gotta leave the house.

  When Pop transfers me, he just picks me up under my arms and legs and puts me in the car. I lost a lot of weight, so it’s not hard for him. When Ma moves me into or out of my chair, she does it differently—I grab onto her neck and she grabs onto the waistband of my pants, then she shifts me over. They showed her how to do it at the hospital before I left.

  Ma puts the wheelchair in the trunk while I buckle myself into the shotgun seat. My legs look tangled in front of me, so I pick them up to fix them. I wonder how long this treatment will take to work. I’m sick of this shit.

  As Pop drives in the direction of Dr. Duncan’s clinic, he says, “That girl Jessie called again this morning.”

  I cringe. I miss talking to Jessie, but I can’t anymore. She keeps asking all these questions and wanting to see me. I can’t do it. Not till I’m better.

  “You told her I was busy, right?” I say.

  “Yeah, I told her,” he says. “But she’s not a dummy. She knows you’re avoiding her.”

  I look down at my hands.

  “Why don’t you talk to the poor girl?” Pop says. “She seems like a nice kid. Pretty. Sweet. She ain’t Sicillian, but nobody’s perfect.”

  “I’ll talk to her when I’m better.”

  “Could be too late by then.”

  I chew on my lip. I worry about that sometimes. Then again, she waited through all of high school. What’s another few months? Jessie will wait for me—I’m sure of it.

  We get to the clinic, which is in a non-descript brown brick building surrounded by sparse green grass. Pop lifts me into my wheelchair, and then he pushes me into the building. I get this butterflies feeling in all the parts of my body I can still feel. This is it. I’m going to walk again. This guy’s going to fix me.

  Dr. Duncan turns out to be a tall, good-looking guy maybe in his thirties with dark hair and a solid handshake. He grins at me. “Nice to finally meet you, Nick. Eager to get started?”

  Hell yes.

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  He claps me on the shoulder. “I bet you can’t wait to get walking again.”

  I nod.

  His smile broadens. “What if I told you that you’re going to walk right now? Today?”

  I stare at him. For a second, the word Dr. Stark said pops into my head: scam. How the hell could I possibly walk? I can’t feel or move my legs. Even sitting up isn’t easy.

  But I want to believe it. And why would he say something that’s so quickly disproven?

  “Come with me,” Dr. Duncan says, waving his arm at us to follow him into a small room. Pop pushes me inside, but there’s barely room to fit my wheelchair. A padded table is set up in the middle of the room, and Dr. Duncan nods at it. “Mr. Moretti, can you put your son on the table? He should be lying on his side.”

  Pop lifts me from the wheelchair and lies me down flat on the table. Then he has to help me roll over onto my side because I still can’t do it myself. I feel Dr. Duncan pulling down my sweatpants.

  “So like I told you on the phone, Nick,” Dr. Duncan says, “we’re going to do a series of injections, and then we’re going to follow that up with some movement therapy.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I’m just cleaning your back off with alcohol now,” he tells me.

  I can’t feel it at all. But when he injects me—I feel that. Shit, it hurts. I have to squeeze my eyes shut and grip the table because the pain is that intense. And then he does it again. I want to scream at him to stop, but I just bite my lip and tell myself that it will be over soon.

  There are three injections total, but it feels like a million.

  When he’s done, I’m coated in sweat. I feel Pop’s hand on my arm, shaking me. “You okay, Nico? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m okay,” I manage.

  “The nerves have to be traumatized so that we can stimulate healing,” Dr. Duncan explains.

  Makes sense. Hell, I’ll try anything that could get me walking again.

  He pats my shoulder. “I’ll give you a minute. When you feel ready, have your dad bring you into the other room, and Patty will do movement therapy with you.”

  That’s the part when I get to walk. I’m not going to wait long for that.

  As soon as the pain gets manageable, I have Pop put me back in my chair. I run my hands over my legs, trying to figure out if they feel any different. I try to move my right leg, but it doesn’t budge. Ditto with the left.

  Patty is waiting for me in a small room filled with parallel bars, weights, and lots of mirrors. Without meaning to, I come face to face with myself the second I get wheeled in. It’s the first time I’ve seen all of myself since I got shot.

  I look awful. I’m at least thirty pounds thinner than I was before, and I wasn’t fat to begin with. There are purple circles under my eyes that make me look like I haven’t slept in weeks. I hadn’t noticed that I’d started slouching in my wheelchair, so I grab the seat to straighten myself out. When I lift myself, my legs shift lifelessly, knocking against each other. I don’t look like a normal guy sitting in a wheelchair—I look disabled.

  I stare down at
my lap. I can’t look at myself anymore in this chair. It’s depressing.

  Patty is in her forties, tall and athletic with a spring in her step. She stands before me, hands on her hips. “Nick?”

  I lift my eyes to look up at her. “Yeah.”

  “You ready to walk?”

  Now she’s talking.

  I’d been wondering how it would work. How could my legs possibly support me? As it turns out, it involves bracing. Lots of bracing. Patty attaches them to the entire length of my legs, going all the way nearly up to my armpits. The braces feel tight and uncomfortable on every part of my body that I can feel. I only just graduated to not having to wear that painful plastic tortoise brace, so I don’t love having this on me.

  “All right,” Patty says. “Now we stand.”

  It’s not so easy though. Patty has to essentially haul me to my feet in front of the parallel bars. I grip the bars, feeling dizzy and nauseous and very unstable. I’m scared I might pass out.

  “Is he okay?” Pop asks.

  Patty squints at my face. “You wanna sit down?”

  I shake my head no. I want to do this. I want to walk.

  “All right then,” Patty says. “Let’s just stand for a few minutes.” Her face breaks into a smile. “When’s the last time you stood up? Enjoy it!”

  She’s right. It’s been about six weeks since I last stood on my own two feet. I never thought I’d be doing it today. It’s a good feeling, even though my head is spinning.

  “Okay,” she says, “now let’s try taking a step.”

  Is she freaking kidding me?

  “I can’t,” is all I say.

  “You can,” she insists. “You gotta put your whole body into it. Swing your body forward on the right using the strength in your arms.”

  I just stare at her.

  “You can do this, Nick,” Patty says.

  It takes me half an hour of trying, but by the end of my session I’ve taken two steps. Two of my own steps. I walked.