The Running Dream (8 page)

“Look, you need to get out of there. We’re on half day today, so get ready, ’cause I’m coming over after school. I don’t care what you say, you’re getting in my car and we’re going out for lunch. I’ll take you to Angelo’s.”

“I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m a mess.”

“Yeah, you’re a mess, and we’re gonna fix that. Expect me. I’ll be there at around one.”

“No, I mean—”

She hangs up and I’m left staring at the phone.

How can she possibly expect me to go out?

How can she expect me to deal with … with any of it?

First Kaylee and now Fiona?

Why don’t they
get
it?

Besides, I couldn’t go out even if I wanted to. I haven’t had a real shower since the morning of the wreck. They tried once in the hospital, but that was more awkward than effective. And now that I’m home, I’ve been getting by with haphazard sponge baths, but my hair has only been washed once.

The only part of me that gets daily attention is my stump.

Massage, desensitize, clean, dry, dress.

Twice a day.

Every day.

The rest of me feels matted and mangy and … gross.

Yesterday Mom offered to wash my hair in the sink again, but I told her, “Maybe tomorrow.” And besides the obvious slipping hazards of a one-legged shower, there doesn’t happen to be a shower downstairs. Just a half bathroom—a toilet and a sink.

Fiona knows all this, so how can she expect me to go out? I know she means well, but she obviously doesn’t understand what I’m going through.

So I’m a little mad. A little in a state of disbelief. And between Kaylee’s snippy comments and Fiona’s insisting I go to Angelo’s, I get agitated and start hopping around.

I hop out of my wide-open room.

Hop over to the kitchen.

Hop all over the place.

It’s as close to pacing as I can come.

Finally I find myself at the base of the stairs.

I stare up the long flight of steps.

I count the treads.

Fourteen, including the top landing.

Fourteen hard hops up.

I’m not sure I can do it. I’m not sure I should even try. It seems an ominous stretch, and I’m already tired from all my senseless hopping around.

But up those ominous fourteen steps is a shower.

A hot, massaging shower.

I think about getting a crutch, but I’d have to hop clear back to the family room for that, so I grab the handrail with both hands instead.

One hop.

Two hops.

Three.

I rest, looking up at eleven more steps, then take a deep breath.

Four hops.

Five hops.

Six.

My arms are doing a lot of the work, pulling me up as I hop. I’m panting, so I take a minute to rest, telling myself I’m almost halfway. Then I press on.

Seven steps.

Eight.

My good leg is shaking, and I feel a little dizzy, so I turn around and sit.

I’m past halfway
, I tell myself.
Almost there
.

And then I discover something wonderful. By sitting down I’ve gained two steps! My foot is on step eight, but I’m sitting on step ten!

I put my hands down on the tread behind me, raise my foot to step nine, and push myself up backward.

I’m sitting on eleven!

I push up to twelve.

To thirteen!

My right thigh is burning from holding up my stump as I push one more time. Then I grab the handrail, hoist myself up, and take a final hop.

I look down at the run of stairs and feel an overwhelming sense of triumph.

I’m upstairs.

O
UR SHOWER’S A COMBINATION
shower-bathtub with sliding glass doors, so I can’t just push aside a door and hop in. I have to get myself over the side of the tub.

I know from my experience in the hospital that it helps to have some sort of seat when I shower, so I take a little collapsible step stool that’s stored behind the bathroom door and place it inside the tub, opened up. It’s got rubber feet and rubber-coated steps, so it seems like it’ll be secure enough, and even though the rest of the step stool is metal, I don’t think Mom will mind me exposing it to rusting hazards.

After it’s in place, I get everything ready. Then I stand outside the shower and put my hands here, there, all over the place.

I can’t figure out how to get over this hurdle, and it makes me mad. The opening’s not wide enough for me to sit on the curb and swing in.… I can’t step over or hop over.…

How can this be so hard?

I find myself thinking, Why couldn’t I have lost an arm instead?

If I’d lost an arm, this wouldn’t be a problem—I could step right over this curb!

If I’d lost an arm, I could run circles in the shower.

I could run up and down stairs.

I could
run
.

It’s useless to think this, though, so finally I grab the overhead door brace with my hands facing each other, one beside the other.

I swing my stump over the side of the tub and stand straddling the curb, trying to figure out the next step of this obstacle course.

After a few false starts, I finally use my arms to help me hop up onto the curb. The door guide is sharp against my foot, but I manage to pivot on it, then hop down into the tub.

I sit on the step stool, feeling a mixture of triumph and frustration, but when the water rains down on me, I’m washed all over with relief.

It feels so nice to just sit here.

I could sit like this all day.

Eventually I pick up the soap, and as I’m sudsing the washcloth, it crosses my mind that it would be hard to soap up with just one hand.

I try it, and it is.

It’s very … awkward.

I start paying attention to all my movements. How one arm complements the other. And I start thinking about everything I do with two hands. Driving. Golfing. Keyboarding. Even writing really takes two hands. The pen’s held in one; the paper’s anchored with the other.

My mind wanders all over everyday things.

Opening a water bottle.

Getting dressed.

Making a sandwich.

Washing dishes.

I imagine life with only one hand and realize that it would be hard. In a different way, but still hard.

I squeeze shampoo into my left hand, then put down the bottle with my right.

I rub my hands together, spreading out the soap.

And as I massage both sides of my head, I’m thankful for my hands.

Thankful to have both of them.

M
OM FREAKS OUT
when she comes home.

I don’t know this, because I’m rinsing my hair thinking about arms and legs and if I had a
choice
about which limb I had to give up what I would choose.

“Jessica!” she gasps when she finds me. I turn off the water as she rushes over to the tub. She’s got a phone with her and says “She’s in the shower” into it, then clicks off. “Did Fiona help you?” she asks.

I do a mock look-around. “Do you see Fiona anywhere?”

“You should not have come up here by yourself!” She’s looking very stern. “What if you had—”

“I’m fine,” I tell her, and stretch way out to snag the towel. “And clean.” I give her a smile, and I feel absurdly proud of myself.

After I tousle my hair with the towel, I dry the rest of me and stand, wrapping the towel snuggly around me. Then I grab the top brace of the doorframe and shoo my mother back.

The door guide hurts again as I hop onto the tub wall, but I’m showing off now so I act like it’s no big deal.

“Wow,” she says when I’m standing on the other side.

She’s blinking at me.

It’s like she’s just discovered her daughter is Wonder Woman, and for a moment I feel like I am.

“How did you get upstairs?” she asks.

I tell her about my little adventure and assure her that it was safe and that I was never in danger of tumbling to my death. And I’m convincing her that my little sit-and-scoot method will be even easier going downstairs than it was coming up when I realize that my dresser’s in the family room and I have no clean clothes with me.

Scooting downstairs in nothing but a towel seems like a very bad idea!

“I’ll get them!” Mom offers in an overly hyper way, and she’s already speed-dialing my dad as she exits the bathroom.

“Hey!” I call, hopping over and leaning out into the hallway. “No sweats, okay? I’m going out to lunch with Fiona.”

“What?” She stops in her tracks and whispers to my dad, “She’s going out to lunch with Fiona!”

I smile and hop back into the bathroom wondering when I decided that, and how in the world I can be feeling this good.

F
IONA SHOWS UP
a little before one o’clock. Mom’s anxious because I want to take the crutches, not the wheelchair.

“What if you fall?” she asks.

Her lack of confidence annoys me. “I know how to fall, Mom. They taught me, remember?”

“But what if you
really
fall? What if—”

“Stop it! I’ll be fine.”

She bites back her worry and watches from the family-room window as I hop, swing, and hobble out to the curb and into Fiona’s hand-me-down Subaru Outback.

“Phew,” I say when I’m situated inside.

Fiona puts the key in the ignition but doesn’t start the car. “We’re really going out to lunch,” she says, smiling at me like she can’t quite believe I’m finally back in her passenger seat. “And you look great! What did you do to your hair? It’s so shiny!”

I laugh. “I washed it.”

She laughs too, and turns the key. “That’s all?”

“Yup. I guess it’s happy with me, huh?”

She pulls away from the curb. “More like ecstatic.”

I roll down the window and wave at my mom, who’s still watching from inside. She waves back, but even from the curb I can feel her worry, and I suddenly realize that it has nothing to do with the wheelchair or with me falling.

The last time Fiona drove me away in her Subaru, it took me more than a week to come home.

And not all of me made it.

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask Fiona.

Mine was a casualty of the wreck.

She hands it over, and I dial the house.

“I’m fine,” I tell my mother when she picks up. “Don’t worry, okay? You keep telling me I should get up and out, and now I am, so you should be happy.”

“I am,” she says, but her voice is choked.

“Mom,” I say softly, “you want me to do this.”

“I know I do,” she says, and she’s trying hard not to, but I can tell she’s crying.

“I’ll call you from Angelo’s, okay?”

“Thanks,” she says, then gives me a cheery “Have fun, all right?”

“I don’t know about
that
, but I do plan to eat a lot of lasagna.”

She laughs and we hang up, and after I’ve closed Fiona’s phone, I stare at it and try to sort through what I’m feeling.

Mom’s been so strong through all this.

So positive.

I, on the other hand, have been stormy and dark and defeated.

And now suddenly she’s falling apart, and
I’m
telling
her
everything’s okay.