Every Breath

Meanwhile, she stared at him as though she was seeing him for the first time.

“Oh my God,” she said. “That’s…one of the most terrible things I’ve ever heard. How did you survive?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you really dead?”

“That’s what I was told. I called the nurse at the vaccination clinic about a year after the accident, and she swore that I had no vitals at all. She said that when I coughed, half of the patients in the room screamed. It made me laugh at the time.”

“You’re trying to be funny, but there’s nothing funny about any of that.”

“No,” he agreed. “There wasn’t.” He touched his temple, where his hair had turned white. “I had a traumatic brain injury. Some pieces of my skull were driven into my brain, and for a long time, the wiring was all messed up. After I finally woke, I would talk to Andrew or the doctors, thinking that I was saying one thing, but actually I was saying something entirely different. I’d think I was saying, ‘Good morning,’ and what the doctors would hear was ‘Plums cry on boats.’ It was incredibly frustrating, and because my right arm was so smashed up, I couldn’t write, either. Eventually, some of the wiring started to get straightened out. It was slow going, but even when I could speak and made sense, there were ridiculous gaps in my memory. I’d forget words, usually the simple things. I’d have to say ‘that thing you use to eat, the pokey silver thing you hold in your hand,’ instead of ‘fork.’ While that was occurring, the doctors also weren’t sure whether my paralysis was temporary or permanent. There was a lot of lingering swelling in my spine because of the broken vertebrae, and even after they put in rods, it took a long time for the swelling to go down.”

“Oh, Tru…I wish I would have known,” she said, her voice beginning to crack.

“There was nothing you could have done,” he pointed out.

“Still,” she said, drawing her knees up under the blanket. “That’s when I was trying to find you. I never thought to check the hospitals.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“I wish I could have been there for you.”

“I wasn’t alone,” he said. “Andrew would come to visit whenever he had the chance. Kim visited from time to time as well. And Romy somehow learned what had happened. It took him five days on a bus to reach the rehabilitation center, but he stayed for a week. All their visits were hard for me, though. Especially during the first year. I was in a lot of pain, I couldn’t really communicate, and I knew they were as frightened as I was. I knew they had the same questions I did: Would I ever walk again? Would I be able to speak normally? Would I ever be able to live on my own? It was hard enough already, without feeling their worries, too.”

“How long was it until you started getting better?”

“The double vision improved within a month, but everything was still miserably out of focus for maybe six months after that. I was able to sit up in bed after three or four months. Movement in my toes came next, but some of the bones in my legs hadn’t been set properly, so they had to re-break and reset them. Then there were the brain surgeries, and the spinal surgery, and…it was an experience I’d rather not repeat.”

“When did you realize that you’d be able to walk again?”

“Moving my toes was a good start, but it seemed to take forever to be able to move my feet. And walking was out of the question, at least in the beginning. I had to learn how to stand again, but the muscles in my legs had atrophied and my nerves still weren’t firing correctly. I’d experience intense, shooting pains all the way down the sciatic nerve. Sometimes I’d take a supported step—with bars on either side of me—but then I suddenly wouldn’t be able to move my rear leg at all. Like the connection between my brain and my legs had suddenly been severed. Sometime around the year mark, I was finally able to cross the room with support. It was only ten feet or so and my left foot dragged a bit…but I actually wept. It was the first time I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that if I kept working at it, I might one day be able to leave the clinic.”

“That must have been nightmarish for you.”

“Actually, I have trouble remembering all of it. It feels so distant now…those days and weeks and months and years sort of run together.”

She studied him. “I would never have known any of this unless you told me. You seem…the same as you were back then. I noticed the limp, but it’s so slight…”

“I have to stay active, which means I keep to a rather stringent exercise routine. I walk a lot. That helps with the pain.”

“Is there a lot of pain anymore?”

“Some, but the exercise makes a big difference.”

“It must have been really hard for Andrew to see you like that.”

“It’s still hard for him to talk about how I looked when he saw me in the hospital in Botswana. Or how worried he’d been on the flight, and while waiting for me to wake at the hospital in South Africa. He remained by my side for the duration of my stay at the hospital. I will say that he and Kim kept their wits about them. Had they not made arrangements for a medical flight, I doubt I would have survived. But once I was in the rehabilitation facility, Andrew was always more optimistic than I was whenever he saw me. Because he only saw me once every two or three months, my improvement, to him, was proceeding in leaps and bounds. To me, obviously, it felt altogether different.”

“And you said you were there for three years?”

“In the last year, I no longer lived on-site. I still had hours of therapy every day, but it felt as if I’d been released from jail. I’d gone outside only rarely in the first two years. If I never see another fluorescent tube again in my life, it’ll still be too soon.”

“I feel so bad for you.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I’m doing well now. And believe it or not, I met some wonderful people. The physical therapist, the speech therapist, my doctors and nurses. They were outstanding. But it’s a strange period to remember, because it sometimes feels as if I took a three-year pause on actually living my life. Which in a way I did, I suppose.”

She inhaled slowly, as though absorbing the warmth of the fire. Then: “You’re a lot stronger than I probably would have been about the whole thing.”

“Not really. Don’t think for a second that I was unfazed. I was on antidepressants for almost a year.”

“I think that’s understandable,” she said. “You were traumatized in every way.”

For a while they both stared into the fire, Hope’s feet snuggled close to his legs under the blanket. He had the feeling that she was still trying to make sense of the things he’d told her and how close they’d come to losing each other forever. Here and now, the idea felt incomprehensible to him, a near miss too harrowing to grasp, but then again, everything about today was unfathomable. That they were sitting beside each other on the couch right now felt both surreal and wildly romantic until Tru’s stomach gave an audible growl.

Hope laughed. “You must be starving.” She threw off the blanket. “I’m getting hungry, too. Are you up for some chicken salad? Over some greens? If you’d rather, I also have salmon or shrimp.”

“A salad sounds perfect,” he said.

She stood. “I’ll get it started.”

“Can I help?” Tru asked, stretching.

“I really don’t need much help, but I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Hope draped the blanket on the couch and they carried their wineglasses into the kitchen. As Hope opened the refrigerator, he leaned against the counter, watching her. She pulled out romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and sliced peppers of various colors, and he reflected on what she’d told him that afternoon. The disappointments she’d experienced hadn’t hardened into either anger or bitterness, but rather acceptance that life seldom turns out the way that one imagines it will.

She seemed to sense what he was thinking because she smiled. Reaching into the drawer, she pulled out a small knife, then a cutting board.