Most everything that happens between my Bellevue visits is preparation for, or unwanted distraction from, my work there. I continue to follow my exercise regimen with a soldier’s discipline and prepare questions for Beth and the surgeons in advance of appointments so I can efficiently milk them for information during our limited time together. I never arrive late for an appointment, and replay each one in great detail to family and the small number of friends who know about the accident, reinforcing what I’ve learned and making my progress feel more real by speaking of it to others.
Jen was the first friend I called about the accident, and she calls me every single day for weeks afterward. My best friend since college, she shoulders heavy emotional burdens in her family life and her work as a federal defense attorney, and faces them with courage, resourcefulness, and optimism. Still, she has time and empathy to spare for others, and day after day she listens patiently to whatever I need to talk about, and cheers the minute achievements that crown my struggles, like managing, with my left hand, to crimp the stiff-jointed fingers of my right hand another quarter of an inch toward its palm, or finding an illustration online that helps me understand how nerves work.
Most other friends and colleagues learn about my accident only as they call me about plans we’d made before it happened or when others tell them. It isn’t that I don’t want them to know; I just don’t want to call them because it feels intensely awkward to broadcast the story, and talking on the phone saps my limited energy.
Testifying to the efficiency of the New York grapevine (or the power of an urban myth in the making), flowers, cards, and calls arrive steadily nonetheless. Don’t lose your spirit! wrote one member of the work team I’d just joined, echoing the sentiments of many well-wishers. Apparently, my spirit, alternately called passion, joie de vivre, or forgiving attitude, is a big part of what people value in me. They don’t want this trauma to “break” me, not only because they care for me but also, I suspect, because they need me to prove that trauma is survivable, that experiencing some terrible event themselves, they’d battle through it.
In quiet moments, I, too, fear the trauma might break me. So I keep the note from a better-known colleague on my bedside table, alongside the jumble of essential pill bottles: You are a tough girl, you will get through it! The vote of confidence means a lot coming from a woman who immigrated to the US alone at the age of twenty, speaking not a word of English, then went on to earn a master’s degree and a job at a Fortune 100 company.
Neighbors I’ve never met slide notes under my door, offering all manner of help. To a few who say they’ve lost sleep worrying about me, I scrawl left-handed notes assuring them of my good spirits and improving health. My sister-in-law, Wendy, guides my young niece and nephew in making me a Valentine’s Day care package filled with homemade cards (hop you feal beter, aunty beca!), chocolate, fancy lotions and soaps, and deliciously trashy magazines. Unpacking the beautifully wrapped contents, strewn with hand-cut, construction-paper hearts, I laugh with delight and wish yet again that my brother, Charles, and his family didn’t live so far away.
Charles rarely calls himself, instead sending his good wishes through Wendy, and Erica doesn’t visit. A former colleague-turned-friend, whose work I and others covered for months while she tended her child through a serious illness, never gets in touch.
Such radio silence hurts when I occasionally reflect on it, though I don’t doubt these people care about me as much as I do them. I am just learning that there is no one way, or right way, to deal with trauma. Many people avoid those in troubling circumstances out of worry that they don’t know the “right” thing to do or say. Others, overwhelmed by the sadness of a situation and/or pressing demands in their own lives, keep away in order to conserve their emotional fortitude for themselves. I realize I have done this myself, having semi-intentionally drifted from my parents during their divorce, and from a friend whose depressions I could not ease and which hit too close to home. I can hardly blame others for taking such self-protective measures now.
Some people are surprised that I don’t ask, “Why me?” and attribute my can-do attitude to some kind of super-honorable stoicism. But I’m not stoic in the face of all hardship or disappointment. For one thing, I am perfectly capable of a good moan over the personal costs (imagined and real) of my cherished independence. Other people try to reassure me, and presumably themselves, that my accident must have happened for a reason. But I don’t believe that.
I don’t ask why the accident happened because I know the answer: Life is a crapshoot. I don’t smoke, do drugs, sleep with strangers, ride motorcycles, jump out of planes, or neglect to buckle my seat belt, even in taxis—but my hand was still blown halfway off by an exploding toilet. With strength and prudence, we can ward off tragedy and trauma . . . until we can’t. That knowledge doesn’t depress me, it liberates me, finally disabusing me of a fallacy that has burdened me as long as I can remember: that if I work hard enough and make all the right moves, I can live a dreamy, sorrow-free life.
While I feel certain my accident didn’t happen for a reason, I fervently hope it will come to mean something; that if I have to be physically and emotionally scarred, I will also be changed for the better in some unforeseeable way. I can’t stomach the possibility of fighting through the ordeal just to return to life exactly as it was. I work obsessively at OT, then, believing the effort to be both meaningful in itself and the only possible route to the longed-for, larger meaning.
The satisfaction of coaxing my right-hand joints to limber up, or improving my left-handed penmanship, also motivates me, as does my newfound fascination with medical science, and the respect and encouragement of my medical team and many well-wishers. It’s easier to run, and harder to quit, a race when a big crowd has shown up to cheer you on. Easier, but not easy.
By the third week after the accident, I routinely find myself lying in bed at night, hand burning like a tiki torch, waiting for the most recent dose of hydrocodone to kick in. I’ve begun to think of my hand as a crying newborn and plead aloud with it in the dark like a madwoman. “Shhhhh. Oh, baby, you’re killin’ me,” I chide affectionately. “Please, you have got to quiet down!” Now that I know the burning sensation characterizes healing tissue, I can’t be too angry at my hand for keeping me awake. Unfortunately, however, the price of insomnia is greater than mere fatigue, as anxious thoughts take advantage of the absence of daytime’s distractions to camp out in my mind and taunt my hopefulness.
Mostly I brood about work. Given my rate of recovery, there’s no chance I’ll have the stamina, concentration, or hand functionality needed to do my job by the date I’ve committed to returning to work. My concern about telling my boss (who has been nothing but supportive) that I need more time off mingles with the insidious notion that my mind might be as broken as my body, and I will return to work to discover I no longer excel at it. I also worry that work-induced stress and fatigue will compromise my physical recovery.
Finally, this tangle of anxieties snowballs into existential distress as I realize I don’t even care about work anymore and can’t imagine ever caring again. I have many interests and don’t define myself entirely by my job. But professional challenge and accomplishment have always been important to me. How could that have changed, and so suddenly? Who will I be after all this is over? What will I do? Eventually, mercifully, I fall asleep.
In daylight hours a more practical question rears its ugly head: that of how I will care for myself once Mom leaves the following week to nurse her husband, Charlie, after his urgent hip surgery. I’ve figured out how to perform many self-care tasks myself, like dressing and bathing, but each one requires an inordinate amount of time, patience, energy, and even strategy. For instance, one-handed execution of the formerly simple process of opening a pill bottle, shaking a couple of pills out, and swallowing them with water now requires twenty-seven individual movements (of course I counted), starting with my sitting on the floor and wedging the bottle between the rubber soles of my sneakers so I can concurrently push and turn the childproof cap with my left hand. Multiplied by six medications taken throughout the day, the task would claim a material portion of my waking hours if I didn’t apportion the day’s doses in advance, leaving piebald piles of drugs on my bedside table that I send skittering to the floor while groping for my water glass at night with my unpracticed left hand. The thought of trying to manage grocery shopping, meal preparation, and house cleaning on top of such mission-critical activities utterly deflates me.
It also upsets me that Charlie has the greater claim on my mother’s assistance despite my equal need—or perhaps greater need, as I see it, considering the traumatic nature of my accident—and the fact that his grown children live minutes away from him. In clearheaded moments I understand that his children have children and jobs of their own to manage, also that Charlie will do best with Mom’s consistent and reassuring care. But mostly, I struggle to accept the lonely reality that I bear sole responsibility for my recovery. I feel like Tarzan swinging through the jungle: strong arms and plenty of vines to ride, but not a single one to carry me the whole distance. And each moment of transition—when I have to drop one vine, hang in the air unsupported, and lunge for the next—frightens me. Erica was the first vine, Mom the second; I need to find the third.
I bounce my ideas off Mom—hire a housekeeper or home health aide, ask the church down the street if they can send visitors—but her anxiety about the situation gets the better of her, and she finds imperfections in each option. I know a solution hides somewhere along the lines considered, but I lack the energy to convince her of this, or to research the options without her help. I suggest instead that I should return with her to Nashville, just long enough to catch up on my sleep and figure out a home care plan. Mom’s expression turns instantly from dour to delighted. “That’s a great idea! That’ll work. Charlie will be so happy we’re coming home. I’ll call the airline. I bet we can get you back on frequent flier miles.” And just like that, she’s a parent again, taking charge of what I cannot.
The next day I call Dr. Vargas for permission to execute the plan. Guarded by vigilant gatekeepers, Bellevue physicians can only be reached through their academic offices, so I call the NYU Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery to leave him a message. He always returns my calls (which I am careful to specify as nonemergencies) within a day, but often during my frequent naps. “You’re not an easy person to reach,” he said during one game of voicemail tag. Somewhere in the recesses of my cotton-filled brain, I resented that comment.
This time, I’m awake when he returns my call. I explain the unsustainable situation in Brooklyn and ask his opinion of the plan to go to Nashville. My esteem for him and his commitment has grown as I’ve seen more of the human tragedy that surrounds him at Bellevue, and I dislike revealing my vulnerability by asking if I can “run home to Mommy.” But his response reflects no disrespect, only his characteristic clinical rigor.
“Yes, you can do that,” he says, “if you find a board-certified hand surgeon there who will read your file before you go and agree to see you immediately if you have a tendon rupture or any other complications. And I don’t want you away from Bellevue for longer than two weeks.”
“Great, thanks—we’ll find someone at Vanderbilt,” I say, relieved to have bought a couple more weeks with family to figure out my subsequent self-care plan.
“You should be aware, though, that my team and I will be rotating off your case at the end of the month,” Dr. Vargas continues. “The next chief will be fully apprised of your situation, and you’ll receive excellent care. But if you stay in Nashville a whole two weeks, you won’t see us again.”
“Oh . . .” My heart sinks. Just when I think I’ve worked it all out, everything falls apart. What will I give up? I need it all: rest, the comforts of home, Mom’s care, and the team of surgeons I trust—the only people who have been with me since the beginning, who truly understand what I’m going through. “Um . . . OK, that’s good to know,” I say, trying to disguise my worry, trailing off as I weigh the decision. Snapping to, I thank Dr. Vargas and hang up the phone, having just decided.
Visits to Nashville while my parents were together used to knock me down. Their unhappy marriage and depressions made our family life a minefield of anger, resentment, and despair, confusingly punctuated by moments of genuine harmony and wrenching détente that I learned early to distrust. Now that my parents are both happily married to other people, however, Nashville offers respite.
Built in the 1920s, Mom and Charlie’s home is a soothing cocoon of big-windowed, high-ceilinged rooms designed to be cool in the Southern heat; soft carpets and elegant but comfortable furniture; and everywhere the eye rests, colorful objects and artwork collected by Mom and Charlie on their travels, which sing together without melting into homogeneity.
Whenever I visit, I feel as though I’m staying in a little boutique hotel, and only the distant sounds of a baseball game wafting up from the kitchen TV—calming white noise I remember from childhood—dispel this pleasing illusion. Combined with the warmth with which Mom, Charlie, and Charlie’s family always receive me, their home makes Nashville an oasis to which I willingly retreat once a year . . . though I usually bolt after a few days, pining for New York City’s manic pace, and keen to avoid regressing into adolescent irritability.
My visit following the accident is good for both me and Mom. With pleasure and cheer, she makes sure Charlie and I eat well, sleep comfortably, and have plenty of upbeat books and DVDs for non-taxing entertainment. Charlie and I compare battle scars and therapy regimens, and the three of us often enjoy just sitting and talking together at the end of a day.
Though I feel no less a solitary stranger in my new, post-accident life than I had in the days just after the event, ensconced in familiar comforts with Mom and Charlie I feel less disoriented. Mercifully, I begin to sleep six to eight hours at a stretch, thanks to my psychiatrist Dr. Berg, who prescribed a mild sleep medication and an over-the-counter antihistamine to keep me knocked out for a few early-morning hours after my pain medication predictably wears off. Dr. Vargas had deemed it unwise to prescribe any more or stronger pain medication, and was impressed by Dr. Berg’s solution to my pain-induced sleeplessness. Dr. Berg was impressed that my surgeon respected the contribution of a shrink.
I have lots of space to myself at Mom’s, which I appreciate after weeks of sharing small New York apartments; and I have plenty of time, too, since I am skipping several hospital visits. So in addition to faithful continuation of my daily two-hour OT regimen, I begin squandering a bit of my increasing energy on pleasurable activities like reading escapist novels (Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, European travelogues), and surfing the internet for new rugs and bedding to replace those that had been discarded due to accident mayhem.
Having found the iconic Gray’s Anatomy medical text online, I also study hand anatomy and function. I make color prints of the relevant pages, then pore over the tangle of red and black lines and letters in search of the words Beth and Dr. Vargas use—flexor tendon, median nerve, musculotendinous juncture—painstakingly jotting down questions with my left hand to ask when I return to New York.
My voracious appetite for this knowledge surprises me because I’ve never been particularly drawn to the sciences, and the learning both calms and thrills me. Like an explorer with her frontier map, I keep the illustrations within arm’s reach and consult them regularly. They show my destination—the functionality my surgical repair and OT have been designed to recapture to the fullest extent possible—and will enable me to appreciate my progress toward it.
On a couple of occasions I venture out with Mom and Charlie for an early dinner at a nearby restaurant. The overly rich Southern fare does nothing to stimulate my appetite, but the taste of a social life hits the spot, and for the first time since the accident I can envision wanting to be among people again, if not anytime soon.
Gadi, a dear friend from business school, offers another opportunity to step out when he drives the five-hour round trip from his home in Huntsville, Alabama—after working a full day and flying on business thirty times in the prior thirty days—just to take me to dinner one night. When he calls to tell me of his intent to visit, including the fact that he’ll have to return home the same night to make a meeting the next morning, I protest that so short a trip will be too tiring for him. He shouldn’t come, I’ll see him the next time he’s in New York. “If all I have time to do is give you a hug and leave,” he responds, “then that’s what I’ll do. I won’t believe you’re OK until I see you myself.”
He arrives at the front door with a chocolate cake bearing the frosted inscription Get Well, Becca, gives me the promised hug, and takes me out for a burger (of which I manage to eat half—record consumption, given my antibiotic-suppressed appetite) before heading home in an explosive thunderstorm. Standing at Mom’s front door as he pulls his rented maroon Ford Escort out of the driveway, I watch until his blue-blinking Bluetooth earpiece disappears behind a curtain of rain.
Several days after arriving in Nashville I notice that Maggie, my best friend from high school, has left a message on my cell phone. On paper, Maggie and I have little in common. A devout Christian from an old Nashville family, she was presented at a society debutante ball during college, participates in a 5:00 a.m. weekly Bible-study group, and has been raising a young daughter by herself since her marriage ended.
I am . . . none of those things: spiritual but not religious (as the online dating sites prompt people like me to describe ourselves), an ever-single, child-free Yankee who’d never quite felt at home in Nashville and hightailed it back north right after high school.
But what Maggie and I have in common—curiosity about everything, a love of human diversity, pleasure in goodwill given or received, and a keen sense of responsibility for the quality of our own and others’ lives—is much more fundamental to the way we live than our differences, and has always transcended them. I’d called Maggie my first day in town, craving her uniquely optimistic yet pragmatic brand of encouragement, and am delighted to hear her return message.
“HeEYYyyyyy!” she drawls in her signature greeting, which I’ve marveled at for close to thirty years. Like a fire-engine siren, it starts somewhere in the middle of her vocal range, abruptly scoops upward, then floats slowly down to the bottom, fading out completely just before she gathers her breath to do it all over again: “How’re YEWwwwww?! I tried to reach you earlier to see if it was OK with your mom if I stopped by around six,” she rattles on in the message, “but you didn’t pick up. So, Ceci ’n’ I are coming over because it’s the only window I have to see you, and your mom will just have to deal!”
When we kids were growing up, Mom didn’t like our family time, or perhaps whatever fragile peace we might have been enjoying, to be interrupted unexpectedly. So I had usually asked permission to invite Maggie over, though she lived just around the corner. These days, I don’t think Mom will mind a good-natured surprise visitor. Living in a home without volatility, she no longer needs to be the anxious nurturer of stability. And she has always been fond of Maggie, too. I call Maggie back to say her timing is perfect.
Thirty minutes later she shows up at the front door, tall, slim, and unnaturally but attractively platinum blond, grasping her six-year-old’s hand with one hand, clutching a video cassette and Bible to her ample breast with the other. Flashing her dazzling Princess Diana smile, which earned her all kinds of attention in the 1980s, she momentarily drops her daughter’s hand to tap at the glass window in the front door. Prominent crow’s-feet flare out from her large blue eyes like a ballerina’s trompe l’oeil eyelashes. She’s always had them—the result of fair skin and frequent smiling, rather than age.
“I’m so glad this worked out,” she trills. Leaning down to her daughter, she says quietly, “Ceci, can you say hello to Miss Becca?”
Ceci, who hasn’t seen me in a couple of years, huddles to her mom’s leg and whispers the prompted greeting. Sensing her mother’s excitement, though, she smiles broadly in anticipation of some unknown pleasure to be revealed during their visit, and unabashedly scans the room behind me for clues as to its nature.
I squat down to greet her eye to eye. “Hey, Ceci—thanks for coming over! Would you like to go upstairs and see my old dollhouse?” She nods vigorously, and Maggie winks conspiratorially at me. We’ve just won at least fifteen minutes of uninterrupted talk time.
In the refinished attic that serves as a playroom for Charlie’s grandchildren, Maggie and I show Ceci the dollhouse, turn on a kiddie TV channel, then settle ourselves on the couch in front of the TV. Turning to face me, Maggie speaks in a low, urgent tone.
“Thank God you’re OK. I was so worried about you, and I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you doing well. I mean,” she qualifies, appraising my splint and thin, wan face, “looks like you’ve been through all heck, but I can see you’re pulling through. Talk to me now . . . what happened?”
She listens, eyes crinkled in sympathy, as I recount the story. Inwardly, I wonder why I never tire of telling it, and in such great detail. Because I want the people I care most about to understand my experience? Yes, but telling the story can’t accomplish that, because even I don’t understand it—what exactly happened, what had caused it to happen, what its impact has been and will be. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem possible that it could have happened.
Maybe those are all the reasons why I want to tell the story over and over again: it’s the catechism I recite to explore and fix in memory the facts of the accident, to proclaim its veracity, and to justify to myself and others the magnitude, if not the precise nature, of its impact. Yet even my most detailed account of events conveys little of my experience that night. I come closer to the truth in telling Maggie I’ve never felt an emotion as powerful and consuming as the terror that coursed through me as I awaited the ambulance.
Maggie is holding my left hand by this point. “I am so sorry. I’ve been praying for you, and just thank Jesus you’re so strong, and that you have lots of people to help you.” Though I don’t share Maggie’s unwavering faith, I have always liked having it on my side.
Ceci has grown tired of the dollhouse, so we steer her to a vintage Barbie doll and shoebox packed with bubblegum-pink, acid-green, and smiley-face yellow Barbie clothes. When she gets bored again in another fifteen minutes, we’ll pop in the videotape of Maggie dancing and winning last year’s Hotlanta Dance Challenge in the American Smooth category.
On weekends in high school, while the cheerleaders, athletes, and student council representatives drank and flirted at parties, Maggie and I enjoyed tame nights in at one of our homes, making chocolate chip cookies and watching videos of old musicals or of our respective performances in school plays and dance recitals. But for the happy addition of Ceci, tonight feels like old times.
Back on the couch again, Maggie tells me of her own accident and rehabilitative challenge—a shattered wrist sustained in a fall while dancing two years ago. The bones had thrust through the skin, her companions had panicked, and so despite excruciating pain, she’d had to organize her own transfer to the hospital. Worse, despite intense pain and confinement to a cast, she’d had to show up to work the very next day, having expended her limited sick days nursing Ceci through a few recalcitrant bugs.
Maggie’s story upsets me on many levels. She’d had no time off work for recovery. She’d had no one at home to help her through the crisis, whereas I’ve had constant family support for several weeks. And I, absorbed with my big-city life, hadn’t even known she’d been hurt. But her tone is devoid of self-pity; she tells her story only to encourage me.
“I have to show you this,” Maggie says, opening her Bible to a bookmarked page and laying her long, well-manicured fingers down on it. “The first day I had to dress Ceci for school with my wrist in a cast, I was beside myself. Everything I pulled out of the drawer had all these buttons and bows,” she says, throwing her hands up, laughing. I laugh, too, able to appreciate how absurdly ambitious the most mundane task becomes when attempted one-handed. “I was so frustrated and scared, thinking how the heck am I gonna take care of us for a whole six weeks like this?! And I’m trying not to cry in front of her, but of course she keeps saying, ‘What’s the matter, Mama?’ ” Maggie shakes her head recollecting this episode, much like those that make up my every day.
“I’m sorry,” I say, empathizing too little, too late. “I didn’t know about all that. I wish I’d been checking in with you more, and that you’d had help.”
“Oh, that’s OK! Honestly, you couldn’t have done anything. I’m only telling you all this because I did get through it, and I want you to know that you will, too.” She turns the Bible on her lap to face me. “Anyway, somehow I get Ceci dressed and out the door, and I say, ‘Lord, I can’t do this alone, you’re going to have to help me.’ And I pick up my Bible, open it up to a random page, and see this.” She points to Psalm 51:8: Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. “Isn’t that amazing?!”
“That is cool,” I concur. Despite my agnosticism, I’m always willing to appreciate coincidences that augur well for me and my loved ones.
“Whenever I got overwhelmed after that, I just read that verse and remembered that God was with me and I had everything I needed to get through that awful time. And you do, too, Becca. Think of all the hard things you’ve done and been through in your life, and you’ve always landed on your feet. You aren’t alone, and you’ll do it.”
Though Mom and Charlie cheer me on daily, I relish Maggie’s pep talk. I hoard everyone’s encouraging words, to replay them in moments when my rehabilitative fervor needs stirring. Rereading the Bible verse, I contemplate writing it down, then decide not to. Maggie’s words inspire me more.
“But,” she continues, “you’re going to have to work hard. It’s easy to blow off the therapy, but you can’t, because there’s just a short window where you can improve, and once it closes, you’re stuck wherever you stopped. See this?” She presses her thumb and fingertips down on the coffee table in front of us, her palm cupped as though trapping an insect. “I can’t flatten my hand out completely. That’s because I only gave therapy a B-plus effort. I thought that was pretty darn good, considering I was holding down a job, taking care of Ceci, and all that. Now I wish I’d given it an A-plus effort, because I could have, and it’s a real pain not being able to flatten it out. Trust me, you don’t know all the things you need to be able to do until you can’t do ’em. So, you work your butt off!”
I take Maggie’s warning to heart, because the OT is already feeling burdensome, and it’s only going to get more intense once my tendons have healed. And if she, always a straight-A student who gave every endeavor maximum effort, had been tempted to slack off on therapy, I will surely be more so. But I don’t want to suffer the regret she does. I vow again to take full advantage of my small window for improvement, and thank Maggie for a lesson only she could teach me.
Finally, we watch the video of her winning dance performance. Though Maggie and I haven’t seen each other regularly in years, my first thought seeing her perform is How did she get so good without my knowing? Light and fluid, her steps seem perpetually to anticipate, but never arrive at, a resting place; and the evident but G-rated chemistry between her and her partner is so engaging as to make all the competitive couples disappear. Her gown, at first glance just another shimmering chiffon number, is cut much more modestly than her competitors’, though every bit as flattering and sexy. As always, I admire how confidently and nonjudgmentally Maggie integrates her deep faith into a thoroughly modern life.
Ceci’s bedtime looms, so we herd her downstairs, where she dares to blow me a goodbye kiss. Maggie and I hug tightly, knowing it may be years before we speak again, but that when we do, we’ll pick up right where we left off.
Each day in Nashville, favorite people from all corners of my life call to check on me. Still fighting fatigue and sensory overload, I keep my cell phone off and return at most two calls a day, though each one compensates for the energy it consumes by yielding critical encouragement and advice. Dad calls most days, his consistency a great feat of focus given he lives with bipolar disease, and therefore all the more appreciated. He remembers and asks about my progress toward various therapeutic goals, commends me on my hard work at recovery, then gently cautions me against trying to do too much, too soon—a mistake he knows I often make.
To Linda, a former boss, I confide my fever pitch of anxiety about returning to my new job at the company where we’ve both worked for a number of years. She assures me there is no need to rush back (“The work will wait, and in six months no one will even remember you were gone”) and reminds me to rely on my “core”—the colleagues with whom I’ve become close over the years—for support while I readjust to the work world and settle into my new role.
A couple of friends suggest I structure my reentry as they did theirs following maternity leave, working part-time for two weeks, then gradually adding days until a full week feels manageable. A Brooklyn neighbor recommends someone who can clean my apartment every two weeks, beginning as soon as I return to it. Each conversation strikes a few more lines off my list of worries and leaves me flush with gratitude.
In the end, Dr. Berg and Jen solve the dilemma of how I will care for myself at home alone. Dr. Berg suggests I ask my friends to take turns visiting me, so that every few evenings (my chosen interval, as more frequent visits would exhaust me) I can look forward to some company, as well as help cooking, tidying, grocery shopping, and other chores that try my physical and mental capacity.
Jen offers to put together the visiting schedule, and I give her contact information for around twenty friends and acquaintances I think may be willing to help. She emails them immediately, and cheerfully reports back a few days later that the response has been so strong she can’t accommodate everyone. The scruples I’d expressed about inconveniencing our enlistees vanishes with this news; Jen has been right again. “Would you hesitate to help any of these people if they needed you? Of course you wouldn’t,” she had said, answering her own question before I could. “Then how could you possibly think they wouldn’t want to help you?” She gives herself and her family—husband Cody, gorgeous little boy Jake—the first slot. “Cody wants to make you a cassoulet for dinner. Is it OK if we stay the whole day so he can make it there?”
The morning I leave Nashville for New York—the day before my last appointment with Dr. Vargas and his team—I am well rested and prepared with plans to cope with my most immediate challenges. In recent nights, dreams of unforeseen opportunities and rewarded leaps of faith have replaced nightmares of asphyxiation, rebuffed tenderness, and lost or doubted talents. I board the plane ready, excited.
I arrive at my apartment close to midnight. In my absence, the heavy, sixteen-foot-long replacement rug and several boxes of new bed linens I’d ordered have been delivered and stacked high in front of my door. I am barricaded out of my home. All my confidence and determination, tenuously maintained during the grueling seven-hour journey home, instantly dissolve. I clap my left hand to my mouth to muffle a wail of despair; tears stream over my hand while I try to focus my mind on a solution. I can’t move the packages, can’t wake the neighbors begging for help again, can’t face the people who’d last seen me in a blood-soaked negligee, can’t stay in the hall all night. What am I going to do . . . what am I going to do . . . what am I going to do?
Finally, judging another midnight drama with the neighbors the greatest evil, I set to the ill-advised task of shoving the rug and boxes aside with my shoulders and hips, lifting some of the lighter boxes between my elbows. The exertion-induced rush of blood into my splinted forearm feels dangerous, but I don’t stop. I clear the door and, after dropping the keys several times in attempting to unlock it with my unpracticed left hand, heave myself inside. Leaving everything outside, I close the door behind me, then sob nonstop while I put myself to bed.