Crutches

This is a piece I wrote a few years back. I post it now in honor of some friends who currently are in healing mode.

“You’ve been hurt,” she said.

“You’ve been unconscious for some time and now you’re coming back to yourself. There may be some pain,” she whispered, gently squeezing his hand.

He rolled his head one quarter turn trying to focus his eyes on the voice.Sun through a window silhouetted her head, leaving her face in shadow.

“Let’s just be with whatever happens next, shall we?” She asked.

He moaned softly, startled by the sound his own voice made after a silence the duration of which he did not know.

How long had he been out, voiceless, helpless without agency to do anything for himself? He tried to move his left foot and felt waves of nausea from the pain of that small effort.

“Gonna be a long haul,” he thought.

Mercifully sleep came upon him again and he dreamed a dream of feathers and flapping angels in silhouette; muffled voices murmuring at the miracle of his aliveness. Was he going to make it after all?

“Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends, oooh, gonna try with a little help from my friends, oh, I get high with a little help from my friends…” was playing in his head the next time he came back around.

She was still here or here again - talking to him in that reassuring sing-songy voice.

“We are all wounded,” she said, “some of us physically; some of us in other ways. Life knocks us silly sometimes,” she said, “up one side and down the other.”

She paused. With difficulty he opened his eyes again. The sun had shifted. It was golden. He could see part of her left cheek and the side of her nose. She was glistening. Tears? Sweat? His own body had no temperature that he could feel. He was pretty numb and at the same time filled with ribbons of exquisitely electrifying pain.

“Yep,” she continued, fluffing his pillow, “up one side, down the other; life slaps us to a peak and s-a-laps the peak off.” She giggled and swung her hand like she was swatting a fly.

He winced.

“That’s what my grandma used to tell us kids. Said she’d ‘s-a-lap the peak off’ if we didn’t behave…. She never did though. Guess she knew life would do it to us soon enough.”

“But, ya know…crutches come in all shapes and sizes.” She said. “Some look like whisky bottles or wine bottles, others like cigarettes, pills or plates full of food.”

She fussed over some of the pipes and wires dripping fluids into his body.

“That morphine should kick in within five minutes.” She looked at her watch and at the clock on the wall behind her.

“Some crutches sound like prayers, feel like prayer beads worn smooth from over-use… or… or like a hand holding ours.”

She held his hand. He tried to squeeze her hand back and then to squeeze back tears as some of her words hit their target. Jumbled and jarring images of rain on a windshield, red light reflected off the pavement. Shattering glass. His foot braced as if on a brake pedal – right there in his hospital bed. His heart swelled like an airbag with so much emotion he doubted it was big enough to hold it all.

She touched his chest, as softly as a kitten’s paw where it burned and felt raw. Then she moved to the foot of the bed cradling each of his heels in her warm hands. After a few minutes the stiffness in his aching legs began to let up.

“That’s it,” she said, “You’re remembering that good right stomp. It saved you from hitting the light pole any harder! Gooood right foot! You’ll cycle through that brace/relax sequence lots of times in your healing process. See if you can find some place that feels sort of OK – even while some parts hurt a lot. It will help you to be aware of both the pain and the ease. Take out some of that fight, flight stuff that makes you so stiff.”

The morphine seemed maroon colored inside him and brought a metallic taste to his mouth. Cotton batting was filling his ears.

“With crutches…” she went on, “whatever gets us up and going again is fair game. We got to lean into the best crutch we got until we find our legs again. We got to stand as tall as we can in gratitude for life.”

She stayed at his feet for some time. He dozed again. Then she moved to his side, smoothing the hair from his forehead and putting a cool cloth there.

“ ‘course the cost of some crutches is more dear than others… cigarettes bite somethin’ fierce if you use them too much. My daddy died of ciggy lungs. Anything we use too much’ll probably kill us. But we got to accept each other’s crutches and know that all of ‘em are fair game – some time… just to keep us up and moving.”

His throat hurt from holding back tears. Jaw tight. His right foot braced again on some invisible brake. His hands were fists by his sides, arms rigid. The cool washcloth was warm already but the pressure of it felt pretty good. His throat eased a little.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, now. Give it all time to heal. Your body’s smart. You’re gonna be alright.  Some one’s at the house right now to watch your kids. Someone else is bringing soup. Your people are in the waiting room. I’ll be back later.”

He heard the sound of rustling feathers.

“We are all the walking wounded,” he thought.  “We are all inflictors of wounds.”

He cried in earnest when she left… grateful for the sweetness of a stranger. Grateful to be alive. Grateful for the flow of healing salt water. He stuck out his tongue and caught some tears at the side of his mouth and liked the taste. His dreams were of crutches and gawky flapping angel wings.

Melinda Maxwell-Smith

May 23, 2008