Chapter 13
The therapist showed up at ten with a clipboard and a folding mat and no sympathy in her voice. She knocked once, then came straight into the bedroom like she owned the place. I was in the chair. The bed had been stripped back to the fitted sheet, white linens folded over the dark headboard out of the way, the glass of water moved to the dresser. Daylight made the room look smaller.
"I'm Dana," she said. "You must be James." She looked at me, not the chair. "We're going to move you from bed to chair and back until you're bored of me."
She turned to my aide. She stood by the window in the light blue uniform, cap still on, hands clasped. Dana didn't ask if she should stay. She said, "You're going to learn this too. If you do it wrong, you both get hurt."
My name is James. I was thirty-four and I had not transferred myself in three months.
Dana locked my chair and pushed it tight against the bed, armrest off on that side. She sat on the edge of the mattress and patted it.
"Park here. Feet flat. Hands here and here," she said. She showed the hand placement, one palm flat on the bed by my hip, the other on the chair seat. "Nose over toes. Push, don't pull."
I stared at the eight inches between bed and chair. It looked like a gap in a sidewalk.
"When you need the pill?" Dana asked.
"Four hours ago," I said.
"Good. That means you can feel what you're doing. Pain tells you when you're shifting wrong."
My aide stepped closer. Dana waved her in. "Stand in front, block his knees with yours. Hands at his hips, not under his arms. You're a guide, not a crane."
She demonstrated on me. Her hands found my hip bones through the black pajamas, firm, flat. Not grabbing. I tensed.
"Don't help yet," Dana told her. "Let him try."
I put my hands where Dana told me. The piping on my sleeves pulled tight. I leaned forward, nose over my toes the way she said, and pushed.
My arms shook. My shoulders had nothing behind them. I got my weight half off the sheet and then my left hand slipped on the cotton and I dropped back hard on the bed. Pain shot up my lower back, clean and hot.
"Okay," Dana said, calm. "Again. Hand flatter. Like you're pushing the bed away."
I tried again. Same lean, same push. This time I cleared the sheet but my feet weren't set and the chair shifted an inch even locked. My aide's knees came in against mine automatically, holding. Her hands stayed light on my hips, not lifting.
"You moved it," Dana said. "You did that. Not her."
Sweat was already on my forehead. I breathed through it. The room was warm even with daylight, that same low winter light that had been there that first night with the pill between her fingers.
Third try I made it. Hands planted, lean, push, drag. My hips scraped the edge of the mattress and then I was on the chair seat, crooked, breathing hard. I had done maybe eighteen inches of movement. My arms trembled like I'd carried something heavy.
My aide didn't clap. She just adjusted the footrests with a practiced kick and stepped back.
"Good," Dana said. "Rest thirty seconds. Then back to the bed. That's the one that matters at two a.m."
The transfer back was worse. Going from chair to bed I had to lift more, push higher. Dana stood behind me, not touching, narrating the whole time. "Hands set. Lean. Push."
Halfway across I stalled. My right arm gave. I sagged between surfaces, weight on my wrists, my legs dead and in the way. I made a noise I didn't mean to make.
"Hold there," Dana said. She looked at my aide. "Now. Light assist. Hands on hips, help him level."
My aide stepped in. I felt her hands, one on each hip, fingers spread, not under my arms the way people always wanted to grab. She pushed up and forward just enough to even me out.
"Don't lift," Dana told her. "Guide."
I pushed the rest. My shoulders burned. When my hips hit the mattress I fell back on my hands, chest heaving. The white sheet was damp where I'd been.
Dana checked her watch. "That one was seventy percent you. Next week we want ninety."
She showed my aide how to check hand placement again, palm on the bony part of the hip, thumb forward. "If you feel him pull on your neck, you're too high. If his knees slide, you're too far."
My aide nodded. She practiced the grip in the air, then on me once, light. "Like this?"
"Yes," Dana said. "You learn to do less."
Dana packed the mat. She left a printed sheet on the dresser, transfers with arrows. She said to do three reps morning and night, pill or no pill.
"It won't replace medication," she said to me, direct. "It gives the medication less work to do. Movement and medicine together, not either alone."
After she left, the room was quiet again, just the chair and the bed and the glass of water on the dresser where my aide had moved it. I sat on the edge of the bed, feet still on the floor, hands flat on the sheet on either side of me. My aide stood in front of me, not touching now.
"You want to go back to the chair?" she asked.
I nodded. I set my hands. She stepped in, knees to knees, hands hovering near my hips but not on them. I leaned, pushed, and made the short crossing to the chair without her help. It was ugly and slow and my arms shook the whole time, but I landed square in the seat.
I sat there, exhausted, forehead damp, and looked at the bed. The white linens were creased where I'd pushed off. The chair was where it should be. For the first time I had moved between them because I decided to, not because someone moved me.
May you like
"Good," she said quietly.
I didn't answer. I was too tired to speak, and the ache in my back was still there, but different now, the ache of work instead of the ache of waiting for the next dose.
