How to Walk Away Read online

  “Dad?” I asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where is Chip?” Now she kind of had me worried.

  My dad just chuckled. “I’m sure he’s just sleeping it off, sweetheart. We could all use some rest. This’ll be your first quiet night’s sleep in ages.” Then he noticed me frowning and patted my hand. He knew what I was asking. “Sometimes, when you really need your man to be big and strong for you the most—that’s when we go to pieces.”

  “I’ve never seen you go to pieces,” I said to him.

  He gave my mother a sideways glance. “I’m saving it all up for later.”

  Okay, I thought, after they left. Okay. A good night’s sleep. I can make that happen. That was something to look forward to, at least, if nothing else. Rest. Recuperation. A restful sleep in a quiet, dark room.

  * * *

  EASIER FANTASIZED THAN done. Nurses were still in and out quite a bit, checking monitors, emptying catheter bags, and turning me over. I was not wearing a brace—surgeon’s orders—so I was extra laborious to turn. I had just fallen asleep when I got a visit from the surgeon, checking in, and had just dozed off again when a hospital social worker woke me to see how I was feeling.

  “Fine. Good,” I said.

  “Any depression?”

  “Depression?” I wasn’t fully awake.

  “Depression’s pretty common for situations like yours. It’s nothing to be afraid of. And there’s medication, if you need it.”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Suicidal thoughts?”

  “Um,” I said, like I was thinking. “Not yet.”

  I did keep wondering where Chip was, though.

  In truth, I wasn’t feeling anything yet—at least, when my mother wasn’t around. It was like my emotions had gone offline. It was like I wasn’t fully there. Things were happening around and to me, and there was pain, discomfort, exhaustion, but it was like I was witnessing it rather than experiencing it. I was across the room, watching somebody else’s life unfold, and not even fully paying attention. Even if I’d tried, I suspected, I couldn’t make sense of the pieces and how they fit together. There was no story of what was happening. I took each moment as separate from the others and did not try to piece together what those moments meant or where they were headed.

  This was probably some kind of feature of emotional shock. I’m sure it had a protective quality: my brain just refusing to grasp what it knew it couldn’t handle. But as the pieces of my situation came together, I received them all with detached interest. Like, “Oh? My face is burned? Huh.” And, “I can’t use my legs right now? Okay.” And, “My mother is going to town on my hospital room like Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment? It is actually kind of nicer now.”

  No understanding at all that my life would never quite be the same.

  Until I fell asleep.

  The worst thing about sleeping, after something terrible happens, is that sleeping makes you forget. Which is fine, until you wake up. That night, I had my first nightmare about the crash, and in the dream, I was the pilot—in a wedding dress with a veil—and I steered us straight for the ground at full speed, sure to kill us both, as Chip shouted, “Pull up! Pull up!” But the controls were stuck. I woke just before we hit, breathing hard, tears from nowhere all over my face, thinking, Thank God, thank God. We didn’t crash.

  But we did crash.

  The dream receded and I was left alone in the dark with real life—which was worse, by far—my heart pounding with panic, my eyes wide. I stared at the ceiling and tried to take deep breaths—but they were great, heaving, scraping ones instead of anything close to calming. I hadn’t died, I kept telling myself.

  But what if this was worse?

  Now I tried to put the pieces together—but I couldn’t. My life as I knew it was over, and that was more than enough to keep me awake all night. I didn’t know what was left, or what to expect, or what it might be possible to hope for. I lay there in the dark, breathing deep, terrified breaths for endless hours. I thought about calling the nurse, but what could she do? I needed to talk to someone, but who could I even talk to? My brain raced and spun and searched for avenues of comfort—but there were none. And, for several endless, black hours, through the deepest part of that night, I fought to keep from drowning as comprehension breached the hull of my consciousness and filled it to the top.

  Five

  I WAS STILL awake at 6:00 A.M. when Nina the nurse and a tech came to turn me.

  I was so immobile at that point that I still ran the risk of bedsores. They flipped on all the lights and talked to me about the traffic and the weather as if nothing had changed in the world. They gave me pain meds, and changed the bandage on my donor sites, and smeared the burns with Silvadene ointment using a spatula. They were almost aggressively cheerful and jocular with each other and with me. Nina liked to call me “lady”—like, “Hey, lady, how’d you sleep?”

  I didn’t know how to begin.

  “You start OT and PT today,” she went on. “In the rehab gym.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  She was fussing with my chart on the computer. “OT is like working on day-to-day tasks, and PT is like strength training.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You’ve got Priya for OT, and—uh-oh.”

  That got my attention. “What?”

  “There’s a mistake here.”

  “What mistake?”

  “They gave you the wrong PT. I’ll talk to them.”

  I started to ask “What’s the wrong PT?” but before I could, the door pushed open and Chip stumbled in.

  We all stared. His blond hair looked greasy. His face was covered in stubble. His polo shirt had a brown stain—Soy sauce? Worcestershire? Blood?—all down the front, and his pants were ripped. One of his shoes was untied.

  He made straight for me and shoved his face down on top of mine in a slobbery kiss that tasted like beer. And dirt. And sleep deprivation.

  I held my breath until he finished, and as I did, I realized what this moment was: a simple, clear, all-purpose answer to that question I kept asking.

  Where was Chip? At a bar.

  I pushed him off. “Are you drunk?”

  Chip blinked at the question. “I think so. Probably.”

  “It’s six in the morning.”

  But he was studying my face. “You used to be so beautiful—and now you look like a pizza.” He made himself laugh with that one, and Nina and I stared as he doubled over for a second and hung from his waist, his shoulder shaking with chuckles. Then he stood up. “But I just kissed you anyway! Because you”—here, he held up an imaginary glass for a toast—“are the love of my life.”

  I looked over at Nina, who lifted her eyebrows to see if she needed to stay.

  I waved, like, No big deal. “I’ve got it.” Whatever he was about to say, I certainly didn’t want her hearing it. I didn’t even want to hear it myself.

  Nina set the nurse buzzer next to my hand before going. “Call if you need me.”

  I turned back to Chip. “Where have you been, Chip? I’ve been waiting for you.”

  I hated the way my voice sounded. I’d learned many boyfriends back that desperation never works. You can’t ask someone to love you or be there for you or do the right thing—and you certainly can’t guilt them into it. Either they will or they won’t. I’d have sworn that Chip was a guy who would—up until the crash, at least.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Do you know I escaped that crash without a scratch?” Chip said then. “The plane is totaled. You”—he let out a bitter honk of a laugh—“are totaled. But me? Nothing. I didn’t even get a Band-Aid.”

  “Chip, what are you doing?”

  At the question, he crumpled down beside the bed—literally fell to his knees on the hospital floor, his hands in fists around the bedrails—and he broke into sobs.

  It was a shocking sight. I’d never seen him—or any guy—cry like that. My father nev
er cried. He got wet eyes at funerals sometimes, but always quietly, stoically—nothing like this. This was shoulder-shaking, full-body sobbing. I poked my hand through the bars and stroked Chip’s hair.

  “Hey,” I said, after a while, as he started to quiet. “Maybe you should go home and get some sleep.”

  “I can’t sleep,” he insisted. “I don’t sleep anymore.”

  I made my voice tender. “I bet you could, if you tried.”

  He broke away—pushed off from the bed and paced to the far wall. “Don’t be so nice to me.”

  “You’re overwhelmed. You need some rest.”

  Now he was mad. “Don’t tell me what I need!”

  “Chip,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  But that just made him madder. He stared straight at me. “I ruined your life.”

  “You didn’t. It was the weather! It was the wind!”

  “You’re blaming the wind?”

  But who else could I blame?

  “You’re better at self-delusion than I thought. Have you seen yourself? Have you seen your face?”

  I hadn’t, actually. My mother had covered the mirror in the bathroom with a pillowcase. Not that I could have stood up to see into it anyway.

  “You’re like something out of a horror movie! Because of me! I did that.”

  Wow. Okay. “The doctor said there’d be minimal scarring.”

  “Not on your neck. Those are third-degree burns. They’re never going to heal right. They will look like Silly Putty until your dying day. You’ve got me to thank for that—me and my ego and my insecurities—” He shoved his hand into his hair. He looked a little green, like the alcohol was catching up with him.

  “It was an accident,” I insisted.

  He looked up—right at me. “I broke your back. You understand that, right? They told you? You didn’t want to go up in that plane with me. It was the last thing on earth you wanted to do, but I fucking forced you. You trusted me. And now—because of me—you will never, ever—”

  Maybe for the first time ever with Chip, I didn’t see his next words coming:

  “—walk again.”

  For a second, I thought I’d maybe heard him wrong.

  Then, just like that, I knew I hadn’t.

  It was like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. My lungs seemed to flatten. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t make it work. All I could manage was tiny little flutters.

  Chip sobered, reading my face, and peered in closer. “They haven’t told you yet?”

  I felt dizzy, I still couldn’t catch my breath, and then I got that salty tingle you get in your mouth right before you throw up.

  Chip took a step back. “Oh, my God! They didn’t tell you you’re paralyzed!”

  Didn’t see “paralyzed” coming, either.

  Next? I threw up. All over the floor, and the bedrail, and my hospital gown, though my mother’s nine-patch quilt from home was miraculously spared.

  Right then, as if on cue, the door pushed open and my father walked in, carrying a box of French pastries over his head like a waiter’s tray and announcing, “We’ve got—” But he stopped short when he saw us, and then finished under his breath, “Croissants.”

  Chip rounded on him. “Nobody’s told her?”

  My dad shifted into action, leaning back out into the hallway—“Can we get some help in here?”—then tossing the pastry box on the side chair and leaning over the bed to check on me. I stayed draped over the railing in case I puked again. Plus, now I was afraid to move my back. Had leaning over hurt it? Had the heaving made things worse? Could I have accidentally just made myself more paralyzed?

  My father grabbed a towel and reached around to wipe my face off.

  Chip’s outrage seemed to exempt him from caretaking duties. He stayed safely across the room. “She’s paralyzed—and nobody told her?” Chip demanded of my dad again, slurring a little.

  “Sounds like you just did,” my father said, tucking my hair back behind my ear.

  “She has a right to know, doesn’t she?”

  “Of course,” my dad said, his voice tightening, turning to face him. “But not like this. We were waiting for the right moment.”

  “Like when?” Chip demanded. “Over Thanksgiving turkey? On Christmas morning?”

  “You self-righteous little clown—”

  My dad was a big, bearlike guy—a former marine—and Chip was more in the “wiry” category. Everyone knew my dad could crush Chip if he wanted to—and I suddenly understood that maybe that was exactly what Chip wanted.

  “Dad!” I called. “He’s drunk. He’s been out all night drinking. Just take him home.”

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine to me, sweetheart.”

  “Just get him out of here, Daddy.” I hadn’t called him “Daddy” in years. “Please.”

  My dad let out a long sigh, and as he did, Nina bustled in with a fresh gown and new sheets. An orderly followed her with a mop cart and spray bleach for the floor.

  I let Nina fuss over me, and get me changed, and reposition me in the bed. I watched the orderly mop, wondering if he’d notice the far splat in the corner. The room seemed to fill with a wispy, numbing fog. It was like the real world was too much, and so my brain was going to blur it out. There were noises, there was talking—I heard my dad and Chip muttering and hissing at each other—and the door opened and closed and opened and closed, but the moment seemed to break into puzzle pieces scattered across a table.

  For a long time after Nina got me settled, I tried to hold very still, afraid to move and make things worse. When I finally lifted my head to look around, the only person still left—still stuck—in the room was me.

  * * *

  THAT FOG LASTED for a good while.

  Never walk again. What did that even mean? How did they know? How could they be certain? Who were they to make predictions about the rest of my life? Wasn’t the human body full of mysteries and miracles? Could they just announce something like that about me and then leave me to live with it?

  Of course they could. I’d broken my back, apparently. That was what happened to people who broke their backs. They spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. I’d watched a documentary about it last year—a team of invincible teenage boys who’d crashed their cars or their motorcycles or dived into shallow water only to spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. But now they’d formed a championship wheelchair basketball team. Which might have been inspiring to think about, except that I’d always sucked at basketball.

  Paralyzed. Trying to work that idea into my brain was like trying to suck a bowling ball up through a drinking straw.

  Impossible.

  Not possible.

  And yet Chip accepted it. My dad hadn’t argued with him. It was apparently already an established fact about my life—one everybody knew but me. On some level, of course, I wasn’t surprised. I’d been contending with my dead, pendulous legs for more than a week now. But things heal. Things always heal. I’d never had any injury—and I’d had plenty—that didn’t mend itself eventually. Paralyzed. I couldn’t fathom it. How would I drive a car? How would I cook dinner? How would I take a shower? Go to the bathroom? Buy groceries? Go out with friends? Have a job? Be the boss of whatever I was supposed to be the boss of? My brain was short-circuiting. I could feel it throwing sparks and smoking.

  I tried for calming breaths, but I accidentally hyperventilated instead.

  That’s when the physical therapist arrived—while I was basically doing self-Lamaze.

  He wore pale blue scrubs and sneakers, and he had short, clean-cut hair that spiked up some in the front. He walked in and said, “I’m Ian Moffat. Your physical therapist.”

  Except it didn’t sound like words to me. Just a bunch of syllables.

  He swiped his badge in the computer and looked at my chart a second, before he said, “So. You’re Margaret.”
/>   But again. Just syllables.

  When I didn’t answer, he waved a little and said, “Hello?”

  That I understood.

  “It’s time for your physical therapy,” he said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “What what?”

  “I can’t understand you,” I said, shaking my head a little, as if to shake water out of my ears.

  “Nobody can understand me. I’m Scottish.”

  Wow. That explained it. Yes, he certainly was. I thought my brain had shut down—but it wasn’t me, it was him. He was super Scottish. So Scottish he sounded like he was talking through a mouth full of pretzels.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Ready to go?”

  I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to go. I shook my head.

  “Not ready to go?” He held that last o with his lips, and I was forced to notice his lower teeth were a little crooked, but in a good way.

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?” he asked, with no t on the end.

  My drunk fiancé just told me I’ll never walk again. “It’s been a tough morning.”

  “Lots of mornings are tough. We still have to do this.”

  “No.”

  “No what?” Later, I would decide that it wasn’t just the consonants that were exaggerated—it was the vowels, too.

  “No,” I explained, “I can’t do this right now.”

  “Look,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and narrowing his eyes. “Every day—every hour—that you lie in that bed, your muscles are atrophying. Nothing will make you sicker than lying motionless all day. You have to get out. Whether you feel like it or not. You have to come with me to the physical therapy gym every day, always—not because you want to, or because you feel inspired, but because not going will put your health in genuine peril.”

  I had to work to mold all those syllables into meaning. His words seemed to sit on top of each other, stacked in columns instead of laid out properly in sentences. And for a grand finale, he clacked his r on “peril.” I wondered if an American could pull off a word like that in conversation. But I got his gist.

  “Thank you for the inspiring pep talk,” I said. Then: “No.”