Page 32 of How to Walk Away

“It’s Margaret,” I said. When he didn’t respond, I said, “I go by Margaret.”

“You don’t look like a Margaret,” he said. He was dead serious.

“That’s not really your call, though, is it?”

“Okay, Maggie. Whatever you say.”

He grabbed the transfer board and lowered the bed, as well as the chair arm, and then he arranged the board as a little bridge between the two.

Then he turned and walked toward the door.

Wait—what?Where was he going? Had I made him mad with the Maggie thing? Was he really a time bomb? Was he about to self-destruct right now? “Aren’t you going to help me?”

He paused but didn’t turn. “Nope. Press the call button when you’re ready.”

Then I was alone—just me, a board, and a chair. Oh, and a catheter bag strapped to my thigh.

It was a problem to solve, I’ll give it that.

I found the control for the bed and maneuvered it into a sitting position. Then I edged my butt closer to the transfer board. My yoga pants had a bit of a bell-bottom, and one cuff got caught in the bedrail, but I worked it out. Perched at the edge, about to shift myself onto the board where there’d be nothing below me but stone-hard hospital floor, I felt frightened for the first time since the crash. In fact, I feltsomethingfor the first time since the crash. I paused, out of breath, and wondered why my first feeling couldn’t have been laughter. Or joy.

I edged a little closer, putting all my weight on my palms. The muscles in my trunk were atrophied, yes, but still functioning, which helped—but the dead weight of my legs threw me off balance. I wobbled a little, then hunched down until I was steady again. The chair was maybe twelve inches away, but it might as well have been a football field. I eyed the distance, ooched another inch, lost my balance, hunched down. Then again, and again. After a bit, I noticed that the fabric of my pants had two wet blotches on the thighs, and that’s when I realized that I thought I’d just beenconcentrating—but instead, I’d been crying. Possibly for some time.

I decided to take a break, halfway across the board.

That’s when Ian walked back in. “God, are you not finished yet? I had a cup of coffee and read the paper.”

If he’d been someone else, it might have been okay. If we’d been friends, if I’d known he was on my side, if we’d built up a rapport—he might have been teasing me in a fun way. As it was, he was just a mean stranger.

I looked up, and when he saw my face—no doubt puffy and slick with tears—I saw the hardness on his falter, just for a second, before he came gruffly over and steadied my shoulders.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “Keep after it.”

With Ian there, it went much faster—and before I knew it, I was trailing along after him as I rolled myself down the hall toward the therapy gym. I tried to think of another time I’d been with another person and felt so alone at the same time. He didn’t speak. He didn’t look at me. You’d think he was out for a stroll all by himself.

He paused at a door to hold it open, which I thought was a nice gesture until he started speaking. “No,” he said, as I rolled past him. “Your technique’s all wrong.”

He sounded irritated, like we’d been over this a thousand times.

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t know therewasa technique, and this is my first time to ever do this, so—”

“Nobody’s shown you how to use the chair?”

I shook my head.

“That’s OT 101.”

“I guess we’re still doing prerequisites.” Another sad little attempt at a joke.

He didn’t smile. Instead, he bent forward to look into my eyes and then squeezed my biceps. Then, in a voice that sounded like he was about to impart vital, deeply insightful information, he said, “Arms are not legs.”

I gave him a look, like,Really?

“What I mean is,” he went on, unamused, “they can’t handle the same amount of work as legs. You have to be careful not to strain them with overuse.”

“I don’t see that I have much choice about that.”

“Not in the big picture, no,” he conceded. “But in the details. Hence: chair technique.” He put his hand over mine—it was warmer than mine was, I noticed—and placed it on the rim of the wheel. “Instead of ten little pushes,” he said, “you want to do one strong push and then coast.”

---