Fallen: A Trauma, a Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music (25 page)

It is a difficult night. Back in his shared room with Danny, who has returned from
VGH
, thinner and paler but mostly recovered from his infection, Simon and I survive some of the worst moments by telling each other that he is getting better. He
is
getting better, making improvements every day, but what we mean is
all
better. That somehow, by the time he is discharged, he will be well. It is still inconceivable to both of us that Simon won’t make a full recovery. But in the Livingroom it is impossible not to confront the reality that certain aspects of Si’s injuries are permanent.

“I feel like a beached whale,” he says. It is difficult for him to get out of his clothes in the new bed because it is bigger and, unlike his hospital bed, has a grab bar on only one side. The new room is less stuffy than Simon’s, and this slight shift in temperature makes his hips ache and spark with neuropathic pain, waking him at regular intervals throughout the long night.

In the morning, we attempt a shower. Simon transfers onto the shower bench, while I mirror the way I have seen Sean support these transfers by steadying the wheelchair and helping with a little extra butt lift. The first transfer goes well, but it is a dry transfer, downhill and to the left, meaning that Simon uses his strong right arm to push off. The transfer back to his chair post-shower is an entirely different matter. Wet, uphill, and to the right, it goes badly. On our first attempt, Simon makes it halfway between the shower bench and chair, but without enough power to complete the transition, we have to retreat. We try again, and this time the chair slides away and Si almost falls. I hold him with my knees bent in a graceless squat, one foot jammed against the slippery wall of the shower, the other against the wheelchair, stuck midway. If I could reach the red emergency buzzer, I would call for help, but if I let go, he’ll fall. Somehow, using Hulk strength, I lift Simon into the chair.

“Impressive work, Stan,” Simon says. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” I say, but I am badly shaken by this near-spill. Simon appears relatively untroubled, but I can’t shake the sense of imminent disaster that now haunts my day. I recount the gory details to Sean during Si’s physio session, but he too is unconcerned.

“If you don’t fall a few times—” Sean says.

“—you’re not working hard enough,” Simon finishes.

“Yeah, well, let’s replace the bone flap,” I say, “before we embrace falling.” My back is sore and I am peevish. I pop Robaxacet and ibuprofen like PEZ candy all afternoon. My head is filled with images I can’t shake, of hips cracking and skulls fracturing on hard bathroom tile. I call my mother and tell her I’m afraid I’m starting to think like her.

“Of course, you’ll worry. That’s natural. But you’re doing fine, honey,” she says. “You’re doing fine.”

AS A RESULT
of all of Simon’s hard work in physio, he eventually transitions out of his electrical chair into a manual one, propelling himself with only the strength of his arms. This is exhausting and challenging work; Simon’s shoulders, especially the left, hunch up to his ears with effort. It is almost impossible for him to wheel straight forward; the greater strength of the right arm causes the chair to veer left with every push. In the afternoons Simon returns to the physio gym, angles the left wheel of the chair parallel to one of the bright red lines painted on the gym floor, and practices, over and over again, rolling in a straight line.

After daily care from Richard, the sore on the back of Simon’s head finally heals. The heparin is out of his system. The date for his skull replacement surgery is set for the Thursday before Thanksgiving weekend.

OCTOBER 10

We’re at
VGH
. “Unsettling” is much too kind a word to describe the experience of walking down the
ICU
hallway again. Of waiting hours past the expected time for you to come out of surgery. Of the yellow antiseptic staining the side of your face. Of head bandages and distant eyes and the thick, flat sound of your voice after anesthetic and intubation. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

But Dr. Griesdale’s big
if
has been answered. They have replaced the bone flap. You have survived. This, of course, is the main point, the weight that keeps me grounded. Because it is easy to fall apart here. Because there are always surprises, complications, a sudden turn of events: the discovery you are carrying the superbug
MRSA
, which increases your risk of serious postsurgical infection; the news that your surgery didn’t just involve the bone flap but included an incision under the dura to remove a small clot. Dried blood, Dr. Haw said yesterday. Dried blood accumulated in the left frontal lobe. What that means to your overall health and recovery, exactly, I don’t know. Pointless question to ask, though, as I suspect that nobody really knows.

Looks like the Cooper Road house might be ours soon. At the hospital today I am somehow going to have to arrange faxing the paperwork of a counteroffer back to the coast. And secure a room at the Park Inn for Eli and me tonight. It’s not even 9:00 a.m. and I am daunted by the prospect of the day.

THE NEURO STEP-DOWN
ward is a grim place filled with shrunken old men, one of whom constantly shouts barely intelligible obscenities from his post in the hallway outside his room. There are twisted limbs, useless feet, drool, and ominous pink crinkly balloons tied to bedposts. The walls are covered with posters that chart recovery periods for head injuries and strokes. Small changes might occur in the year following an accident, these charts tell us, but the bulk of healing is done in the first few months.

“God, this chart is so pessimistic,” Lorna says. “I can’t stand it.” We are in the hallway waiting out the nurses’ shift change. After the past few busy weeks, it is an uncomfortable déjà vu to be stuck outside Simon’s room, anxious and rattled. Marc and Lorna are leaving the next day, and so Lorna is extra rattled. Extra anxious. “What if...,” she asks. “What if he is never able to return to a meaningful life?”

I shrug. I am weary and I have no assurances or answers.

“It’s so hard...” She stops, overcome. It is desperately difficult for her to leave Simon, and she worries about more than just his health. She worries about his heart. “He’s lost so much. I don’t think he could stand to lose you.” The head injury guidebook contains alarming statistics about the post-injury failure of marriages, and this, in particular, troubles her as she prepares to leave. “Wives come and go, Kara,” she says. “But mothers are forever.”

For a brief moment I consider being outraged at this statement, but, with consideration, I take no offense. Although we sometimes disagree, over this shared hospital time I have come to depend on Lorna’s raw honesty, her courage, and her fierceness. None of us are ready yet to list the positive lessons that have arisen out of Simon’s accident, but it is clear that the renewal and deepening of all our family connections is an unqualified good thing. A gift. I know that what Lorna is trying to convey is complicated. She is afraid for Simon, for all he has lost and all he might lose, and acknowledges that there is a possibility—an understandable possibility, in her mind—that I might not accept this new life of ours. And she is telling me, most importantly, that as Simon’s mother, she will always be there, willing and able to care for him. She says this not to insult me or question my constancy and commitment, but because these are the preoccupations of a mother, driven to the extremes of worry over her child. Simon is a grown man, but he will always be her child.

The next morning, Thanksgiving Sunday, Simon’s face is mightily swollen as if he has smashed into a beehive. The nurses say that it is nothing to worry about, but Marc and Lorna, en route to the airport, worry.

“It feels like a full circle being back here,” Marc says. “You guys call anytime, day or night, if you need anything.”

“Anytime,” Lorna says. “Don’t wait.”

After Marc and Lorna leave, Simon transfers into his wheelchair, his manual one now, and he and Eli and I go for a roll around the hospital. It turns out to be a morbid tour, revisiting Sassafras and the waiting rooms we haunted in those previous worst of times. Eli is upset and Simon gets a chill. By the time we return to the neuro ward, he is running a mild temperature. Perhaps, we reason, it is the exertion of being up.

Simon returns to bed, and Eli and I make a trip to Capers to score takeout Thanksgiving dinner. We buy too much: pies, soup, cold roasted turkey, glazed brussels sprouts. When we return, Simon’s fever is another degree higher, and despite assurances from the nurses, I am destroyed by worry. It is that quick. I hit a wall of despair and fear and exhaustion. Simon is worried too, scared by the threat of infection. I lie and say I know everything is fine. I lie again and say I am going to find a doctor to consult. Instead I escape to the neuro family waiting room and close the door, wishing I could scream, smash, stomp, wail. I sit for ten minutes, holding my head in my hands, and breathe out toxic fumes of panic and frustration before I return to the neuro ward and insist the nurse call a doctor. The doctor looks at Simon’s white blood count and says not to worry. I am not much calmer, but the nurse gives Simon a Tylenol, and, as the hospital staff predicted, the fever resolves itself.

It is okay. But I am not okay. I experience the same unadulterated trauma of Simon’s first stay at
VGH
. It sings in my blood. It is not post-traumatic stress. It is not post-anything. It is all still happening.

But—deep breath—there is good news too. My counteroffer on the house is accepted. We now have our very own home to go to.

SIMON ONCE AGAIN
rides the transfer van from
VGH
to
GF
Strong. The first day back at rehab is hard. I am overwhelmed, preoccupied, and emotionally unavailable as I struggle to figure out all the logistics of making the purchase of the house run smoothly. Simon has five mishaps with his condom catheter during the day; each time he requires a change of bedding and clothing. He calls his father in the evening to tell him about the difficult day, and together they weep on the phone. It is a good release for Simon, and I wish I could join in.

The final condom catheter accident happens in the evening as Simon and I prepare to spend another night together in the Livingroom. I leave to get new, dry sheets for the bed and end up locking myself out of the room, and locking Simon in. Security has to be called to unlock the door so that I can get back in and help Simon out of his wet clothes and bedding. It is a difficult day that ends in a difficult, painfully restless night for both of us. My tears come, late, in the deepest part of the night, when Simon finally falls asleep—hot angry tears that bring little relief.

The next day is better.

“Well, you won’t need a Halloween costume next week,” Sean says when he sees Simon’s impressive skull-spanning incision complete with black, puckered Frankenstein stitches. “You’re scary enough as is.”

I leave the two of them laughing to visit the bank and sort out our house-buying finances, and while I am gone, Sean—the maniac—takes Simon for an exhilarating ride backward down a flight of stairs in his wheelchair. Sean tells us he was saving that particular physio session for a day when I wasn’t around, knowing that I would be a nervous wreck. Next, Simon has music, then occupational therapy and pulleys. Simon has so much energy that he does a second workout with Sean in the afternoon. Then, instead of his usual late-afternoon nap, Simon visits the Paraplegic Association office to chat with one of the peer mentors, Brad.

Although he still needs a great deal of sleep, Simon’s overall energy improves dramatically after his skull is replaced, and his social, extroverted nature reasserts itself. There is a shift in his ability to navigate the world: he still wants me close by, but he no longer needs me in quite the same way he did even a week or two before. A new pattern emerges for our weeks: Tuesdays we spend together in the Livingroom, continuing to figure out what is required of us to care for Simon’s injured body; Thursdays and Fridays I spend on the coast with Eli, packing and looking for interim housing; Saturdays, Eli is in Vancouver; the rest of the week, while Eli stays with friends, I am at
GF
Strong during the days and in the artist’s garret in the evening. Alone, I luxuriate in the clawfoot bathtub that sits on a platform in the open living-room area before crawling into bed in the small slant-ceilinged attic. There is a novel on the bedside table—Iris Murdoch’s hypnotic
The Sea, The Sea
—which I read before I fall asleep. The story is a oceanic swirl of illusion and self-delusion, spirituality and cheap theatrics; I do not retain much of what I read, but while I read, it weaves its magic and for a few brief hours I am insulated from the new fear growing in me.

A DATE HAS
been set for Simon’s discharge from
GF
Strong: November 26. It is what he has been working so hard for. It is what we want more than anything. But it is impossible, as it was when he left both the
ICU
and
VGH
, to believe that we are ready for what comes next. Simon isn’t ready. I’m not ready.

“Our new house needs extensive renos and I haven’t found interim housing,” I tell Dr. Yao. “Maybe we should push the discharge date back a few weeks? Maybe a month?”

“Hmm,” she says. It is clear by the calm look of assessment she turns on me that I am not the first person she has encountered who is terrified to make the transition back home. “Let’s leave the date as is. If you haven’t found housing before then, we’ll discuss options.”

OCTOBER 24

I leave you just after breakfast to return to the coast, worried to the point of nausea with the anxiety of leaving. What do I think will happen while I am away? Nothing. Everything. Anything. I don’t know. You call just as I reach the Remax office in Sechelt, pen already in hand, ready to sign the stack of paperwork. Your voice is ragged, full of wind and rain. Mom has sent us a care package and in it are pictures from Montreal. It got you thinking about the time you packed up the remnants of the Walker Street apartment solo while Eli and I were in England visiting Mom. It was so lonely, you say. You hate the thought of me packing up Redroofs without you. I’m sorry, you say, I wish I was there to help. Hearing the anguish in your voice I feel my skin flush with tears, the ones that are always so close to the surface, but I fight them back. I don’t want to cry in the Remax office, surrounded, as I am, by well-dressed real estate agents. It is tiresome, wearing such a thin skin out into the world. I know it’s good, really, necessary and healthy for you to go through the process of feeling this sadness but, God, how I hate to hear you in pain. To hear you in pain
and b
e so far away. This, I guess, was exactly what I was afraid of when I left.