Left Neglected (9 page)

There are forty beds in the neuro unit at Baldwin Rehabilitation Center. I know this because only two of the forty beds are in private rooms, and insurance doesn’t cover these. You have to pay out of pocket for privacy.

Bob made sure I got one of the “singles” with a window to the right of the bed. We both thought that a view of life outside the confines of my room would be good for my morale. We didn’t realize that this simple request needed to be more specific.

On this sunny day, I’m staring out the window at a prison. My view is of nothing but brick and steel bars. The irony of this is not lost on me. Apparently, on the other side of the neuro unit, the patients have a view of the Leonard Zakim Bridge, a work of stunning architectural achievement by day and a breathtaking, illuminated masterpiece by night. Of course, all of those rooms are “doubles.” Everything’s a trade-off. Be careful what you ask for. I’m a brain-injured cliché.

Whatever I have to do here, I’m ready for it. Work hard, do my homework, get an A, get back home to Bob and the kids, and back to work. Back to normal. I’m determined to recover 100 percent. One hundred percent has always been my goal in everything, unless extra credit is involved, and then I shoot higher. Thank God I’m a competitive, type A perfectionist. I’m convinced I’m going to be the best traumatic brain injury patient Baldwin has ever seen. But they won’t be seeing me for very long because I also plan to recover faster than anyone here would predict. I wonder what the record is.

But every time I try to get a concrete sense for how long it might take for someone with Left Neglect to fully recover, I get a vague and dissatisfying answer.

“It’s highly variable,” said Dr. Kwon.

“What’s the average time?” I asked.

“We don’t really know.”

“Huh. Okay, well, what’s the range?”

“Some recover spontaneously within a couple of weeks, some respond to strategies and retraining by six months, some longer.”

“So what predicts who will get better in the two weeks versus longer?”

“Nothing we know of.”

I continue to be astounded by how little the medical profession knows about my condition. I guess that’s why they call it the
practice
of medicine.

It’s now 9:15 a.m., and I’m watching Regis and some woman. It used to be Regis and some other woman. I can’t remember her name. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched morning television. Martha, my physical therapist, has just come in and introduced herself. She has streaky blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail and four diamond stud earrings crowded onto her earlobe. She’s built like a rugby player. She looks no-nonsense, tough. Good. Bring it on.

“So when do you think I’ll be able to go back to work?” I ask while she reads my chart.

“What do you do?”

“I’m the vice president of human resources at a strategy consulting firm.”

She laughs with her mouth closed and shakes her head.

“Let’s concentrate on getting you to walk and use the bathroom.”

“Do you think two weeks?” I ask.

She laughs and shakes her head again. She looks long and hard at my bald head.

“I don’t think you fully understand what’s happened to you,” she says.

I look long and hard at her ear.

“I do actually. I understand exactly what’s
already
happened. What I don’t understand is what is
going
to happen.”

“Today, we’re going to try sitting and walking.”

For the love of God, can we please talk big picture? My goals are more expansive than watching Regis and going for a stroll to the bathroom.

“Okay, but when do you think I’ll be back to normal?”

She grabs the remote, clicks off the TV, and fixes me with a stern look before she answers, like the kind I give Charlie when I really need him to hear me.

“Maybe never.”

I do not like this woman.

M
Y MOTHER HAS FIGURED OUT
my little Stand to My Left trick and has perched herself on the visitor’s chair to my right like a nervous hen on a nest of precious eggs. Even though I don’t have a medical excuse now, I’m still trying to pretend she’s not here. But she’s sitting smack in the middle of my field of vision, so she’s unavoidable. And every time I look at her, she’s got this anxious expression carved onto her face that makes me want to scream. I suppose it’s the sort of worried expression that would naturally form on anyone forced to sit next to me or the motorcycle accident guy next door with the mangled face and no legs or the young woman down the hall who had a postpartum stroke and can’t say her new baby’s name. It’s the kind of concerned, mixed-with-a-spoonful-of-horror-and-adollop-of-dread look that anyone might have if forced to sit next to any patient in the neuro unit. It can’t be that she’s actually worried about me. She hasn’t worried about me in thirty years. So, although it bugs me, I get her expression. What I don’t get is who’s forcing her to sit here.

Martha comes in and places a stainless steel basin on my tray.

“Helen, will you go sit on Sarah’s other side?” she asks.

My mother pops up and disappears. Maybe I judged Martha too quickly.

“Okay, Sarah, lie back, here we go. Ready?” she asks.

But before I can give my consent to whatever it is we’re about to do, she places her strong hand on the side of my face and turns my head. And there’s my mother again. Damn this woman.

“Here’s a washcloth. Go up and down her arm with it, rub her hand, all her fingers.”

“Should I wash her other arm, too?”

“No, we’re not giving her a bath. We’re trying to remind her brain that she has a left arm through the texture of the cloth, the temperature of the water, and her looking at her arm while this is happening. Her head is going to want to drift back over here. Just turn it back to the left like I did. Good?”

My mother nods.

“Good,” Martha says and leaves us in a hurry.

My mother wrings the cloth out over the basin and starts wiping my arm. I feel it. The cloth is coarse and the water is lukewarm. I see my forearm, my wrist, my hand as she touches each body part. And yet, although I feel it happening to me, it’s almost as if I’m watching my mother wash someone else’s arm. It’s as if the cloth against my skin is telling my brain,
Feel that? That’s your left shoulder. Feel that? That’s your left elbow.
But another part of my brain, haughty and determined to get in the last word, keeps retorting,
Ignore this foolishness! You don’t have a left anything! There is no left!

“How does this feel?” asks my mother after several minutes.

“It’s a bit cold.”

“Sorry, okay, hold on, don’t move.”

She springs up and scurries into the bathroom. I stare at the prison and daydream. I wonder if she’d be fetching warm water for me if I were over there. Without warning, her hand is on my face, and she turns my head. She starts rubbing my arm again. The water’s too hot.

“You know,” I say. “Bob really needs to get to work on time. He shouldn’t be driving you in here in the morning.”

“I drove myself.”

Baldwin sits in the eye of a colossal mass transit tornado, a difficult destination to reach for even the bravest and most seasoned Boston drivers. Add rush hour. And my mother.

“You did?”

“I typed the address into that map computer, and I did exactly what the lady told me to do.”

“You drove Bob’s car?”

“It has all the car seats.”

I feel like I missed a meeting.

“You drove the kids to school?”

“So Bob could get to work on time. We’ve switched cars.”

“Oh.”

“I’m here to help you.”

I’m still catching up to the fact that she drove my kids to school and day care and then into Boston by herself from Welmont during rush hour, and now I have to wrap my brain around this doozy. I try to remember the last time she helped me with anything. I think she poured me a glass of milk in 1984.

She’s holding my left hand in hers, our fingers interlaced, and her hand feels familiar, even after all this time. I’m three, and my hand is in hers when she helps me climb stairs, when we sing “Ring Around the Rosy,” when I have a splinter. Her hands are available, playful, and skilled. After Nate died, at first she held my hand a little tighter. I’m seven, and my hand is in hers when we cross the street, when she leads me through a crowded parking lot, when she paints my nails. Her hands are confident and safe. And then I’m eight, and my hand must be too awkward to hold along with all that grief, so she just lets go. Now I’m thirty-seven, and my hand is in hers.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I say.

“Let me get Martha.”

“I’m fine. I can do it.”

Now, since the accident, I have yet to get up and use the bathroom on my own, so I don’t know why I suddenly feel like I’m perfectly capable of this. Maybe it’s because I feel normal, and I have to pee. I don’t feel like I’m paying attention to only half of me or half of my mother or half of the bathroom. I don’t feel like anything’s missing. Until I take that first left step.

I’m not sure where the bottom of my left foot is relative to the ground, and I can’t tell if my knee is straight or bent, and then I think it might be hyperextended, and after a shocking and herky-jerky second, I step forward with my right foot. But my center of gravity is wildly off, and the next thing I know, I go crashing to the floor.

“Sarah!”

“I’m okay.”

I taste blood. I must’ve cut my lip.

“Oh my God, don’t move, I’ll go get Martha!”

“Just help me up.”

But she’s already out the door.

I’m lying on the cold floor, trying to imagine how to get myself up, licking my wounded lip, and thinking that it might take longer than two weeks to get back to work. I wonder who’s handling the Harvard recruiting for me. I hope it’s not Carson. And I wonder who’s overseeing annual evaluations. That’s a huge project. I should be tackling that right now. My shoulder’s throbbing. I wonder what’s taking my mother so long.

Since giving birth to Linus, it’s become embarrassingly difficult for me to contain a full bladder. Much to Bob’s annoyance, I can no longer “hold it until we get there,” and I have to beg him to pull over at least once whenever we’re in the car for more than an hour. I drink twenty ounces of coffee at a time at work, which means I often spend the last ten minutes of any hour-long meeting tapping my feet under the table like I’m an Irish step dancer, consumed with a desperate plan to sprint to the nearest bathroom the second it ends.

I’ve abandoned any delusions I had of getting up on my own and am now devoting 100 percent of my energy and focus on not peeing right here on the floor. Thank God my bladder or whatever part of me I’m concentrating on is in the center of me and not somewhere on the left. I pray I don’t sneeze.

My mother finally rushes in with Martha behind her. My mother looks frantic and pale. Martha sizes me up with her hands on her hips.

“Well, that was impulsive,” she says.

I can think of a few choice things I could do or say right now that would be truly impulsive, but this woman is in charge of my care, and I need to get to the bathroom before I pee, and I need to get back to work before I lose my job, so I bite my bloody lip.

“I should’ve helped her,” says my mother.

“No, that’s not your job. That’s my job. Next time, press the call button. Let me be the therapist, and you be the mother.”

“Okay,” says my mother, like she’s just taken an oath.

Be the mother. Like she has any idea what that means. Be the mother. All at once, those three words irk me and amuse me and pinch a delicate part of me. But most of all, they distract me, and I pee all over the floor.

It’s early in the morning, before breakfast, before any of the therapists have started working on me, probably even before the kids have gotten dressed at home. And Bob is here.

“Can you see me now?” asks Bob.

I see the prison, the window, the visitor’s chair, the TV.

“No,” I say.

“Turn your head.”

I turn my head. I see the prison.

“No, the other way.”

“There is no other way.”

“Yes, there is. Turn your head to the left. I’m standing over here.”

I close my eyes and imagine Bob standing. In my mind’s eye, he’s wearing a black, long-sleeve, crewneck tee and jeans, even though he never wears jeans to work. He’s got his arms folded, and he hasn’t shaved. I open my eyes and turn my head. I see the prison.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. It’s simple.”

“It’s not.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t just turn your head.”

“I did.”

“To the left.”

“There is no left.”

I hear him sigh in frustration.

“Honey, tell me everything you see in here,” I say.

“You, the bed, the window, the chair, the table, the flowers, the cards, the pictures of me and the kids, the bathroom, the door, the television.”

“Is that everything?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay, now what if I told you that everything you see is only half of everything that’s really here? What if I told you to turn your head and look at the other half ? Where would you look?”

He doesn’t say anything. I wait. I imagine Bob standing in his tee-shirt and jeans, searching.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Exactly.”

E
LLEN IS DANCING TO THE
Black Eyed Peas. She’s hysterical. Much better than Regis and what’s her name. I wish I could get up and boogie with her, but I’ve learned my lesson after yesterday’s misadventure to the bathroom.

Bob left for work over an hour ago, and now my mother is here, hovering next to me in “her” chair. She’s wearing a lavender fleece sweatsuit and white New Balance sneakers. She looks like she’s ready for a jog or an aerobics class at a gym. I doubt she’s ever done either. I catch her watching me instead of Ellen, and I feel like I just made eye contact with a cornered sparrow. She looks down and inspects her sneakers, shifts in her chair, turns to see what’s going on outside the window, shifts in her chair, throws me a skittish glance, darts her focus to the TV, and fusses with her hair. She needs some sort of project.

“Mom, will you go get me a hat?”

“Which one?”

I have only one non-ski hat that I can think of, a huge straw sunhat, but I’m clearly not on a tropical vacation or sitting poolside. I own plenty of bandanas and scarves and could use one of those to cover my head, but I don’t want to look like a cancer patient. I want to look normal, like someone who could theoretically go back to work in two weeks. And I don’t want to scare the kids.

“Can you go buy me one?”

“Where?”

“The Prudential Mall.”

She blinks a few times. I know she wants a way out of this proposed field trip.
I don’t know where that is, I don’t know what kind you want, I don’t want to lose my seat.

“I need an address,” she says.

“Eight hundred Boylston Street.”

“Are you sure that’s right?”

“Yes, I work there.”

“I thought you worked at some business company.”

She says this like she’s busted me in a big lie, like I really work at the Gap, just as she’s suspected all along.

“Berkley’s in the mall.”

“Oh.”

I wish I could go myself. I’d pick out something hip and pretty at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue, and then I’d swing into work, check in with Jessica and Richard, find out what’s going on with staff evaluations, correct any misguided decisions Carson is making about our next generation of consultants, and maybe sit in on a meeting or two before coming back.

“But you have therapy in a few minutes,” she says.

“You can miss it.”

“I need to see what they do so I can help you.”

“I really need a hat before the kids get here. I don’t want them to see me like this, and there might be traffic. You can sit in on therapy tomorrow.”

Or the next day. Or the day after that.

“You sure?” she asks.

“Yes, really.”

“Eight hundred Boylston Street,” she says.

“You got it.”

“And you’ll tell me what happened in therapy when I get back.”

“I’ll fill you in on everything.”

Or at least half of everything.

My mother writes the address down on a receipt she finds in her pocketbook, I reassure her that she has the exact address two more times, and she finally leaves. I relax and return to watching Ellen. She’s smiling and chatting with someone named Jim. He sounds like Jim Carrey. After a couple of minutes, it occurs to me that I should be able to see Jim Carrey. But I can’t. I try. But I still can’t. I can only see Ellen. What if I can’t ever see who Ellen’s talking to? What if rehabilitation doesn’t work? What if this never goes away? What if I can’t ever go back to work? I can’t live like this.

I don’t want to watch Ellen anymore. I look out the window. It’s a clear, sunny day, and in the glary reflection, I see my hideous bald head. I don’t want to look at me anymore, but it’s either Ellen, my hideous bald head, or the prison. Ellen’s guest, whoever he is, says something that cracks her up, and Ellen laughs as I close my eyes and cry.

———

“M
ORNING,
S
ARAH
.”

The chair is empty. The TV is off. The voice sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.

“Hello?” I ask.

“I’m over here.”

I turn my head. I see the prison.

“Okay, we’ll work on it,” says the woman’s voice.

The woman then materializes in my mother’s chair, and it’s Heidi, Ben’s mom. That’s a bit odd. I wouldn’t expect her to take time out of her day to visit me. Maybe she has something to tell me about Charlie and school. God, I hope he’s not in trouble.

“So, you don’t get enough of me at Before the Bell?” she asks, smiling.

I return the smile, but I don’t understand what we’re happy about.

“Heidi, thanks so much for coming to see me.”

“No need to thank me. I’m just doing what the board says. You’re my eleven o’clock.”

Huh?

“I’m your OT.”

Again, huh?

“Your occupational therapist. This is what I do.”

“Oh!”

The scrubs, the purple Crocs, the photo ID hung on the end of the lanyard around her neck. I always assumed she was some kind of nurse but never asked what she did or where she worked.

“How’re you doing?” she asks.

“Good.”

She stares at me, waiting, like I’m a troubled teen denying that the drugs are mine. I have a traumatic brain injury, my head is shaved, I can’t walk because I have no idea where my left leg is, and she’s here because she’s my occupational therapist, and I’m her 11:00. “Good” isn’t even close to a real answer.

“Actually, not so good. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to have this condition. I just want to go home.”

“Hey, I don’t want you here either. As much as I like having the chance to finally get to know you better, I’d rather do that in my living room over a bottle of wine.”

I smile, appreciating Heidi’s kindness, but only for the slightest moment because now I’m too busy expanding on how “not so good” I am.

“I’ve missed so much work, so many important deadlines. I have to get back to work. And my kids. Charlie’s struggling in school, and I miss tucking Lucy into bed, and Linus. I really have to get back home.”

My voice starts to crack when I say Lucy’s name, and it splits wide open when I get to Linus. Tears are rolling down my face, and I don’t even try to stop them. Heidi hands me a tissue.

“I want my life back.”

“We’ll get you back. You gotta stay positive. I saw Charlie and Lucy yesterday before school, and they’re doing fine. Have they seen you yet?”

“They’re coming today for the first time.”

It’s been two and a half weeks since the accident, and Bob said that Charlie and Lucy have started asking, “When is Mommy coming home from work?” I wish I knew. I also wish they didn’t have to see me here, like this, bald and disabled in a rehabilitation hospital, but I can’t wait any longer to see them.

“Good. And I just met your mom. She’s so sweet. She wanted to know where she could go buy you a hat.”

Of course she did.

“Where did you tell her?”

“I sent her to the Pru.”

“Did she ask for the address?”

“Yup, she’s all set.”

She’s something.

“So, we’re going to retrain you to pay attention to the left. Ready to get to work?”

“Yes.”

I blow out a deep breath.

“Can you tell me what time it is?” she asks.

“Eleven o’clock.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because you told me I’m your eleven o’clock.”

She laughs.

“I’m gonna have to be on my toes with you. I’m actually running a little behind today. Can you tell me how late I am?”

“I don’t see a clock in here.”

“Well, you’re wearing a beautiful watch.”

“Oh yeah.”

My Cartier watch. Platinum, crown set with round-cut diamonds, and Roman numerals on the face.

“Can you tell me what it says?”

“I can’t find it.”

“Can you feel it on your wrist?”

“No.”

“How did you put it on?”

“My mother did it for me.”

“Okay, let’s find your watch.”

She gets up and appears to leave the room, but I don’t hear the open-and-close of the door. I wait for her to say something. She doesn’t.

“You smell like coffee,” I say.

“Good, you knew I was still here.”

“I’d kill for a coffee right now.”

“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts in the lobby. You tell me what time it is, and I’ll go get you one.”

I inhale her coffee smell again, and my heart pumps a little faster in anticipation as I imagine the weight of the extra-large Styrofoam cup, warm in my hand, filled to the top with heavenly vanilla latte. Where the heck is my watch?

“I’m sitting on your left. Can you see me?”

“No.”

“Follow my voice. Keep going, past the TV.”

“I can’t.”

There isn’t anything past the TV.

“Mmm, that coffee was sooo good,” she says, teasing me with her breath on my face.

I try to visualize the coffee aroma emanating out from Heidi as a visible vapor trail. I’m a cartoon mouse sniffing out a huge piece of Swiss.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Follow my voice. Come on, look to the left.”

“I feel like I’m looking at everything that’s in the room. But I know you’re in the room, so I can’t be, but that’s what it feels like.”

What I perceive and what I understand to be true are at war inside my head, fighting to the death, giving me a colossal headache. Or maybe I just need a colossal coffee.

“Okay, let’s try some stimulation. Do you feel this?”

“Yes.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Tapping.”

“Good. What am I tapping?”

“The back of my hand.”

“The back of which hand?”

I look down at my right hand.

“My left?”

“Good. Now try to look at where I’m tapping.”

I look down. My stomach bulges embarrassingly far onto my lap. I was hoping that since I apparently eat only half of the food on my plate, I might at least shed some pounds while I’m here. Even on the weirdest diet ever, I don’t seem to be losing any weight.

“Sarah, you still with me? Look at what I’m tapping.”

“I don’t feel it anymore.”

“Okay, let’s change it up. How about now?”

I see something moving at the edge of the room, but it’s too blurry and impermanent to make out what it is. Then suddenly, it snaps into focus.

“I see your hand!”

“Look again.”

“I see your hand moving up and down.”

“Notice any details about the hand?”

Details about the hand. Let’s see. It was hard enough just locating and identifying it, and now she wants details. I strain as hard as I can to keep her moving hand within my field of vision, stretching my concentration so uncomfortably far into the periphery that it feels like I’m trying to describe something on the back of my own head. I’m just about to give up when I notice that the hand is wearing an emerald-cut diamond ring and Cartier watch.

“Oh my God, that’s
my
hand!”

“Good job, Sarah.”

“I see my left hand!”

I sound like Lucy announcing to everyone that she tied her shoes all by herself.

“Good. Now what time does your watch say?”

Oh yeah. The goal. I’m so close to getting that coffee now, I can taste it. Read the watch. But while I was busy congratulating myself for seeing my left hand and getting excited about my imminent reward, something awful happened. My left hand is gone. I try doing whatever it is I did before to see it again, but I hadn’t followed some prescribed set of methodical steps to find it, and I can’t seem to replicate the experience. It just sort of magically appeared. And then disappeared.

“I lost my hand.”

“Oh no, that’s okay. That happens. Your brain is gonna have a hard time sustaining attention on the left side. We’ll help you to stretch it out.”

“I guess I should start wearing my watch on my right wrist.”

“Okay, and how will you put it on?”

I stare at my right wrist and realize the impossibility of accomplishing that.

“My mother?”

“I think you should keep it on your left. This’ll be a good exercise for us to use. And I know your mom is here to help you, and that’s okay for now, but having her do it for you isn’t a good long-term solution.”

I couldn’t agree more.

“But it would be nice to know the time,” I say.

“How about using your cell phone?” she suggests.

I would love to use my cell phone, but I haven’t used my cell phone since the crash because Bob won’t give it to me. I keep begging him to bring it in for me. My calendar and email are in my phone. And all of my contacts. The same information was stored in my laptop as well, but my laptop was totaled in the accident along with the Acura. So I really need my phone.