Read Online Fallen: A Trauma, a Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music by Kara Stanley - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kara Stanley
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summer evening, similar to so many before. Still, the world outside the hospital is changed, sliding by on a different temporal tract; everything is out of sync. Disjointed daylight, the sun’s rays splinter the air, fractal and weird and gleaming but drained of any real warmth or sparkle. Outside, life has sped up, and I have slowed down. Guido gave me clear directions, but it is only when I enter the lobby of the Park Inn that I am convinced I will be able to navigate the distance from hospital to hotel room.
Eli and I lie on the king-size bed facing one another, giving each other foot rubs while we talk. He wants to leave Vancouver and return home to the coast. He doesn’t think he can spend long days at the hospital, waiting. He could go home and get a job. Do something useful. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to leave. What if he leaves and Simon dies before he can return and say good-bye? I want him beside me. Is that selfish? I don’t understand how he can leave.
“I can’t
do
anything here,” Eli says.
He is like his father. It would drive Simon crazy to sit around waiting. Simon would understand and support this need of Eli’s to not sit idly by. So I make a few phone calls, and a plan is quickly put in place. Eli’s soccer coach, John, and his wife, Colleen, will take both Eli and the dog, Paloma. Eli will travel back to the coast tomorrow and return to Vancouver every few days to visit. I ask if he has any questions.
“If Simon... If he, I mean, will he have to be in a—a
wheelchair?
”
I hear in the rasp of his voice that this is the worst possible thing he can imagine. And so I tell him, with an assurance I’m not sure I believe, that a wheelchair is not the worst thing.
“Think about it,” I say. “Simon likes
watching
sports. He doesn’t like
playing
sports. He plays guitar, and he can do that just fine in a wheelchair.” As I speak the words, I become more confident. “And he has the kind of personal resources, the kind of strength, that, as long as he could play music, he could deal with a chair. Right?”
“Yeah,” Eli says. A reluctant agreement.
“I know we’re not religious,” I say, “but somehow we have to find a way to pray for his head. And his hands. If he has his head and his hands, well, then a wheelchair? We can work with that.”
“If he stays there, in that bed, for a long time,” Eli asks, “will he get a bedsore?”
It is a question that robs me of all my breath, a question so intimate, so raw and visceral, that I am almost certain my heart will shatter in my chest. A question that belies my sense that perhaps Eli is too young still to get it. He gets it. He is afraid, but he is still able to reckon with this, the hardest of human truths: that the body, despite all our grand schemes, is so utterly fragile. Vulnerable beyond our own believing.
“A bedsore?” I say. “I don’t know, love, I don’t know.”
ELI TURNS THE TV on low and we lie together. While the TV is on, I drift in and out of consciousness—more in a state of troubled exhaustion than of sleep—but as soon as he turns the light off I lie wide awake. Adrenaline and a pure, basic fear form a clenched fist in my gut. I tell myself to breathe. And I do—I breathe in and out, lying still in a parody of sleep, until about two o’clock, when I leave the hotel and return to the hospital. Emily has retired to the reclining chair in the ICU waiting room, and I take my place beside Simon, beginning a pattern: Emily and I split the night into two shifts; she is there from ten in the evening to two, and I am there from two to morning.
Each time I enter this room there is a transitional period when I have to reckon with all the mechanical sounds and flashing red lights and high-pitched beeps before I can reach Simon, the human body beneath all the machinery. My breath pattern alters to match the slightly faster pattern of the ventilator, the airy inhale, the
whoosh
of the
Eli and I lie on the king-size bed facing one another, giving each other foot rubs while we talk. He wants to leave Vancouver and return home to the coast. He doesn’t think he can spend long days at the hospital, waiting. He could go home and get a job. Do something useful. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to leave. What if he leaves and Simon dies before he can return and say good-bye? I want him beside me. Is that selfish? I don’t understand how he can leave.
“I can’t
do
anything here,” Eli says.
He is like his father. It would drive Simon crazy to sit around waiting. Simon would understand and support this need of Eli’s to not sit idly by. So I make a few phone calls, and a plan is quickly put in place. Eli’s soccer coach, John, and his wife, Colleen, will take both Eli and the dog, Paloma. Eli will travel back to the coast tomorrow and return to Vancouver every few days to visit. I ask if he has any questions.
“If Simon... If he, I mean, will he have to be in a—a
wheelchair?
”
I hear in the rasp of his voice that this is the worst possible thing he can imagine. And so I tell him, with an assurance I’m not sure I believe, that a wheelchair is not the worst thing.
“Think about it,” I say. “Simon likes
watching
sports. He doesn’t like
playing
sports. He plays guitar, and he can do that just fine in a wheelchair.” As I speak the words, I become more confident. “And he has the kind of personal resources, the kind of strength, that, as long as he could play music, he could deal with a chair. Right?”
“Yeah,” Eli says. A reluctant agreement.
“I know we’re not religious,” I say, “but somehow we have to find a way to pray for his head. And his hands. If he has his head and his hands, well, then a wheelchair? We can work with that.”
“If he stays there, in that bed, for a long time,” Eli asks, “will he get a bedsore?”
It is a question that robs me of all my breath, a question so intimate, so raw and visceral, that I am almost certain my heart will shatter in my chest. A question that belies my sense that perhaps Eli is too young still to get it. He gets it. He is afraid, but he is still able to reckon with this, the hardest of human truths: that the body, despite all our grand schemes, is so utterly fragile. Vulnerable beyond our own believing.
“A bedsore?” I say. “I don’t know, love, I don’t know.”
ELI TURNS THE TV on low and we lie together. While the TV is on, I drift in and out of consciousness—more in a state of troubled exhaustion than of sleep—but as soon as he turns the light off I lie wide awake. Adrenaline and a pure, basic fear form a clenched fist in my gut. I tell myself to breathe. And I do—I breathe in and out, lying still in a parody of sleep, until about two o’clock, when I leave the hotel and return to the hospital. Emily has retired to the reclining chair in the ICU waiting room, and I take my place beside Simon, beginning a pattern: Emily and I split the night into two shifts; she is there from ten in the evening to two, and I am there from two to morning.
Each time I enter this room there is a transitional period when I have to reckon with all the mechanical sounds and flashing red lights and high-pitched beeps before I can reach Simon, the human body beneath all the machinery. My breath pattern alters to match the slightly faster pattern of the ventilator, the airy inhale, the
whoosh
of the
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