The whole time she said nothing not about the process of eating.
“Did they tell you not to talk to me too?”
“What you might or might not have done before you came in here isn’t really a concern to me, Mr. Ambrose,” she said. “My concern is that you need to eat. Orderlies and nurses will help you with that, but it’s my job to make sure you’re ready.”
“They all think I’m a criminal.”
“People say you are,” she conceded with a shrug. “But that’s for courts to decide. As long as you’re here, you’re a patient. Who knows if you’ll ever end up in a courtroom. I mean, what are they going to do, put you in jail? Probably a trial at some point, I s’pose. My guess? You end up in a managed care facility. Maybe restricted visitors to keep you from coordinating bank robberies or something, but I don’t think it’ll take a jail to make sure you never rob another one.”
“I don’t remember any of it. I don’t feel like a bank robber,” he protested, wishing that saying it changed something.
“I have no idea what that would feel like,” she said, shrugging.
“Do you feel like an occupational therapist,” he challenged her.
“Hm,” she leaned her head and looking up and left a moment before she resumed scooping little remnant bits of Jell-O together. “I guess maybe I do.”
“I don’t feel like a bank robber,” he insisted.
“Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t,” she said, giving him a last spoonful. “Maybe you were. Maybe that part of you is gone. Those kind of questions are beyond me, though.” She had the luxury of not thinking about it, he supposed.
She recovered all the dishes and wiped his face with a napkin, ending the conversation. She reclined him back a little, but not too much to see the television.
“I’d say you’re handling food just fine, Steven. I’ll talk to the nurses and we’ll start working you up into a more solid diet,” she said as she took up the tray to leave. “Best of luck in your recovery,” she added on her way out.
It helped for a while to have something to watch. But as the stupid stories once again grew repetitive they held less and less hold on his attention, and his mind wandered more and more. The last thing he needed.
His thoughts came back over and over to the phrase, ‘multiple bank robberies.’ He wondered if he had worked alone, sticking up banks with a gun, or if he had been part of a team. What role might he have played in a team? Did they rob crowded banks, using tellers and customers as hostages, or did they sneak in at night and get money out of the safe?
He played out different scenarios in his head. In some he was alone, in others he was part of a team. When he pictured himself as the getaway driver that little fantasy appealed to him the most. He tried to imagine the thrill of the getaway, racing through city streets.
He wondered whether he was some kind of safe cracker. He tried to imagine himself holding a stethoscope to a safe while turning the knob. He wondered if that was even how it was done. Not having any idea how it was done probably reduced the likelihood that it was something he had ever done. But what if the skills to do it were all muscle memory? Those would be gone, right?
What other skills or talents might be gone forever now? Did he play music? Piano, or guitar, perhaps? That line of thinking was no better for his mood, and he tried to set it aside. His mind raced through a myriad of things he would never be able to do again. It only made things worse.
He tried to focus on the news more. What alternative was there? There was a story about rising crime rates in the city, and a snippet from a news conference where a husky black woman in a decorated police uniform insisted that the people had to put faith into the police force. So-called vigilante justice was not the answer. Still no mention of bank robberies. His focus on the news only endured a few stories further.
He had lost count of how many times the news had mostly repeated itself by the time an orderly came in.
“Hello, Mr. Ambrose,” he said, “I’m Robert. I’m here to get you a little cleaned up and changed.”
“Please, call me Steven.”
Robert did not have a new gown or anything to change him into, which confused him a little. He did pull a wad of something out of one drawer in the off-white cabinet under the whiteboards.
The ensuing process became the most humiliating thing in his entire life. Robert put on gloves and Steven learned he was wearing diapers. He had no control of his bladder or bowels, Robert explained. There was a catheter in place, and that would stay for a while, but as he was transitioning into solid food there would be stools to clean up now.
Somewhere through the process he wanted to cry—he thought he already was—but he was not and he did not. An emotional numbness built inside him to compete with the physical one.
Robert left him on his side, saying something about some kind of sores, but Steven was not listening. He saw little point. Whatever Robert had to say about what kind of care he needed, it would be someone else doing that caring. There was nothing he could do about it, so what did the details matter?
He faced the window, but through the closed blinds he could only confirm it was daytime. Was that a torture or a mercy? Seeing the outside would just be another reminder of more things he would never have again. He licked at his lips, determined not to drool. In that moment it seemed like the last thing he could do to cling to one final remnant of dignity.
He was still on his side when Robert came back with dinner on a tray. Somewhere along the line a nurse had come in and checked vitals. He had not paid attention to which one.
“Hello, Steven,” Robert said too cheerfully. “I’ve got your dinner.”
Robert spoon fed him a different soup, and a different Jell-O, but it might as well have been the same food as before. He barely noticed what he was eating. All he was really aware of was the hands feeding him—the same hands that had wiped his ass. This time he did cry.
Robert said things he probably meant to be reassuring, but none of it registered to Steven, who said nothing in reply. He had nothing to say; nothing he might say would matter. Robert rolled him to his other side before he left, and Steven watched the man walk away, closing but not completely shutting the door.
A nameless, faceless nurse came by sometime later for yet another round of vitals. He did not notice, or care, who she was. Neither of them started any conversation.
“Night time, Mr. Ambrose,” some other, chubby nurse said when she came in. He did not bother asking her to call him Steven. What would it matter what she called him? She introduced herself, but it did not register with him. They were changing shifts and she would be his night nurse, she informed him. She made grunts of satisfaction at the numbers she wrote on the clipboard.
She rolled him to his back and reclined the bed, suggesting he get some sleep. The day’s endlessly repeating, pointless news sputtered away at her slap at the television's power button.
He woke up during the night to bright light spilling in from the hallway, silhouetting the chubby nurse with her clipboard. The light hurt, and he screwed his eyes shut against it, wishing he could cover his eyes with his arm. That just reminded him that for all intents and purposes he did not have arms anymore.
Closing his eyes helped, but it was still not dark. He noticed a sense of a brightness off to the side, the same side as the nurse’s shuffling footsteps. He relaxed his eyelids. The sensation stopped a moment later, as did the footsteps.
“Not bad,” she muttered, presumably referring to the ever-so-important vitals they had to keep bothering him for.
“Sorry if I woke you,” she said on her way out. Not that it seemed at all sincere. He noticed a similar sensation of brightness for a moment as the door creaked back to almost closed again.
The next day started with a sponge bath. This nurse introduced herself as Tanya. He closed his eyes for the process, not wanting to see someone else cleaning him, and she hummed to herself as she worked. There was no conversation with Tanya. Sh
e left without turning on the television. That did not bother him. The news would just keep rehashing the same crap as yesterday or endlessly rehash some new thing that did not matter and he could do nothing about.
Robert and breakfast came not much later. The bland, lukewarm oatmeal was the least appealing thing yet, but he allowed Robert to spoon it into him, and he obediently swallowed each mouthful. If only he could choke on it, but this was the last place he could die of something so simple.
Sometime later Robert and another orderly came in with a wheeled gurney that banged the door open. It might have startled him, if that were possible, but even something that simple was denied him. Taken away by police gunfire.
“Okay, Steven,” Robert said. “We need to get you some scans and see how things are doing in that brain of yours.”
Robert and his partner moved the gurney alongside his bed. One wheel squeaked when the gurney turned. They slid him from the bed to the gurney, and his head flopped about like a rag doll’s. One of them straightened his head to face the ceiling while the other moved his IV from its rolling stand to a hook reaching up from the gurney.
A policeman’s stern, pudgy and red-nosed face came into view as they rolled him into the hallway. He heard clicking and rattling: handcuffs coming off.
“You don’t need to come with for this,” Robert told the policeman.
“Orders,” the cop said with an expression that reminded Steven of having coffee grounds in his mouth. Was that a memory, or just a sense memory? Maybe he would mention it to the doctor later.
“He can’t move,” Robert pointed out. “That’s pretty much what quadriplegic means. He’s harmless and he isn’t going anywhere. Besides, you couldn’t be in the room with him during the scan anyway, not with all that stuff you’re wearing.”
“Fine,” the cop said with a shrug, “but I’m following you as far as I can.”
“What’s he gonna do?” Robert protested. It occurred to Steven to wonder if there was a reason the orderly was trying to get the cop to wait behind.
“I have my orders,” the cop griped. “Trust me, sitting here babysitting the limp mannequin is the last place I wanna be right now.” The words stuck in Steven’s mind, taunting him. People around him resented him.
The gurney moved again, and he closed his eyes against the passing fluorescent lights.
There was a moment of a sensation he could only call brightness. It somehow seemed to be coming from below him and around him, which made no sense. He opened his eyes to find the source, but the sensation was gone. He could not help but think it seemed to have been coming from the three people walking with him. He closed his eyes, but the elusive sensation did not return.
They passed a wide double doorway and rode an elevator down. Again there was a brightness as if from all around him, but it lasted only a moment, as if simply noticing it made it go away. They rolled him through three more corridors until Steven no longer had even a guess what direction he had come. The cop waited at one door and a moment later the two orderlies transferred him onto the narrow scanner bed. This time one of them supported his head. The formed plastic felt cold and hard on the back of his head.
“We’ll be in the next room,” the one that wasn’t Robert said, and they left him.
The plastic slab slid him into white tubular machine.
“Try to hold as still as you c—oh, sorry. Habit.” Not-Robert’s voice said, sounding tinny through the speaker. Steven wanted to sigh to express his irritation, but he could not. It made no sense to him he was breathing under his own power but he could not control it. The thought just depressed him even further.
The machine started up. He closed his eyes against the loud banging noise. The weird brightness came back. It seemed as if there were a few areas of it, all seeming to spin around his head. It was a more intense sensation than before. It made him dizzy.
He opened his eyes to make the sensation go away, but it did not. He could still sense the spinning...whatever just beyond the plastic housing around him.
‘Wait....He must have been somehow sensing the moving parts in the scanner spinning around him. Brains could do weird things to compensate for missing senses, he knew. Was his brain somehow translating sound into...light?
“Almost done,” Not-Robert’s voice said through a speaker.
The sensation of light—which still was not the right word—did not change with that, and no new brightness came from anywhere else. So not sound, he decided. Movement? Was his brain actually trying to translate movement into some kind of visual image? That made no sense. How would something like that even be possible?
But he could not deny that he could think of no other explanation. As he focused, he realized whatever it was seemed to get clearer, as if he could make out the shape of the spinning parts.
Then the sound changed and the movement slowed as the machine whirred to a stop. The glow dimmed as the machine slowed. He lay there, stunned. He might have held his breath if he could.
He closed his eyes, envisioning himself shaking his head bewilderedly, knowing it was not actually moving. In that moment pretending it was helped bring some shred of normality.
The orderlies returned to the room with their rolling gurney, and he was aware of the sensation of their motion before he realized what it was.
“Everything okay, Steven?” Robert asked him with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. Um, a little dizzy is all.” It was the best explanation he could think to offer.
“Huh,” Non-Robert remarked with a shrug.
“It’ll pass,” Robert reassured him.
He left his eyes closed, too curious and confused about what was going on with his brain to risk opening his eyes and somehow dispelling it. He could sense the glow that could only indicate his own movement as they shifted him back to the gurney. Then light for himself and the gurney and the two men pushing it as they approached the door, which was subtly brighter on one end than the other as it opened.
Another glow appeared and fell in with the procession: the cop.
Swinging arms and legs seemed brighter than the rest of the people. Because they were moving faster, he realized. It was all too weird.
He reasoned that the wheels’ spinning should seem faster then, but when he concentrated enough and directed his attention to where those wheels were he could sense them individually, but they did not seem any different than the rest of the rather uniform gurney. “Huh,” he said out loud without intending to. None of the men with him said anything.
He realized he could sense movement all around him. People passed in the opposite direction. He could make out who was taller or shorter, fatter or skinnier—as long as they were moving. Their relative speed difference to him did not seem to make them brighter than he or the trio with him. There was no Doppler shift as they passed. Anyone who stopped moving stopped existing to the bizarre motion sense.
He was beyond amazement, beyond confusion, observing which directions doors swung—or slid for the elevator. The elevator itself, once it moved, became a box of white surrounding him. While the elevator was moving he could sense himself and the people and gurney moving. He had no idea what to make of it all, it was just too weird.
After the elevator ride, on his floor, there was a commotion of some kind, and a group of objects suddenly fell. They were just a glimmer, yet some were brighter than others. He knew they should all fall at the same speed—that was simple physics. So why would some of them be brighter than others? So speed was part of it, he decided, but not all of it. They all went dark and invisible again once they’d bounced and clattered to a stop on the floor.
Physics, he thought. What else did he know about objects in motion? They stayed at rest or in motion unless acted on. There was the equal and opposite reaction thing. Force was mass times acceleration. Wait....A heavier object might not fall faster, but it’d fall harder. That was momentum, right? Was he sensing momentum? It was beyond explanation, but it was the best he had.
The rest of that day and the next several continued pretty much the same way. Nurses came to check readings or change IV bags. Orderlies came in to feed him and move his arms and legs around. He got a bath each morning and was changed a couple times each day. They offered him little conversation, and what they did was half-hearted at best. He was wheeled down for another scan. At one point the doctor, Pierce, came to frown at him. He chewed his lip for a moment, but left after a minute or so without saying anything.
He no longer cared about the TV in the least. All his attention into this alien new sense of his. He could sense the drops dripping at the bottom of the IV. He sensed people walking past his room, even when intervening walls meant he had no other way to verify their existence. Several times he wrote it all off as his imagination, or some kind of neurological white noise that his brain was trying to make sense of by matching it up to something else.
Some of it was things he could verify though. He could sense people approaching his room, and the opening of his door, and then the people entering.
He could sense movement in other rooms around him, and even on floors above and below him. He could gauge what was faster and what was heavier. It was delightfully fascinating.
After about a week he could expand or contract this new sense. He could focus on specific directions, and even narrow to specific objects once he’d noticed them. He could “see” things get brighter as they fell—as they accelerated.
When he really focused, he could sense some of the tiniest movements. He could sense the motion of his heart. That discovery would have taken his breath away, and he did swear out loud in the moment. When he focused hard enough, he could track the blood moving through his body, although that was very faint unless he looked at specific areas and really focused. It let him sense where his limbs were, though.
He could do the same thing with the other people that came into his room, and then the people outside. The levels of detail he could make out astounded him. When he paid enough attention, the top and bottom of a pen moved at different speeds. He could catch the movements of eyelids when people blinked, their lips and tongue when they talked. Buttons moved when pressed. Suddenly there were so many things around him in motion.
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