Page 58 of Brain Damage

“You have your right hand on the rim,” she observes. “But not your left. Put your left hand on the rim.”

I hate my left arm. I hate it when people ask me to do things with it that I can’t do. I hate it when it gets in the way. I almost agree with Valerie that I’d sort of like to cut it off. Then at least people would stop nagging me about trying to use it when I can’t.

Because I know I’m not going to be able to do it the normal way, I pick up my left hand with my right, and attempt to place it on the left rim of the chair. This is not very easy for a number of reasons. First, I can’t see the left rim—it’s in that endless chasm that makes up the left side of the universe. It’s also sort of hard to see my left arm. When I touch it with my right hand, I can’t really feel it, not in a normal way, and it often feels very stiff and hard to move.

Right now, I get my hand on my left arm, and it will not budge. Not only that, it seems to be pulling away from me, which it doesn’t usually do. I wonder if that’s a good sign.

“Charly!” Natalie exclaims. “What are you doing?”

“Putting my left arm on the rim of the chair,” I say.

“That’s my arm!”

Oh. That explains a lot.

Natalie sighs and steps away from me, studying me for inspiration. Finally, she says, “You’re not going to be able to push this chair with your left arm.”

Yeah, I could’ve told her that.

Natalie kneels down and removes the right footrest from my chair. She then instructs me to push with my right hand and use my right foot to help guide the chair. I keep my left arm safely tucked in my lap and my left leg in the foot rest. It actually works fairly well, and I find myself moving further than I have gone in a long time under my own power.

“You’re doing great!” Natalie tells me.

I go faster and faster. I want to make it down the entire stretch of hallway. I want to go faster. I want to feel wind running through my hair, even though I don’t have hair anymore, and what little hair I have is covered by a helmet. I’m almost there, almost at the finish line, when all of a sudden…

The wheelchair stops short.

For no reason whatsoever. I get thrown forward, and the wind is knocked out of me. I probably would’ve fallen to the floor if I didn’t have a belt across my lap.

“What happened?” I ask, baffled.

“You ran into a wall on the left,” Natalie says. She smiles and rubs my shoulder. “You don’t have to go so fast, Charly. And watch out for obstacles on the left. This isn’t a race.”

A race.

Something in Natalie’s words jogs my memory. I close my eyes for a second and remember a photo hung up in my room. A photo of myself, my short blond hair tied back in a ponytail, my skin wet with sweat, the number 237 pasted on my tank top.

“I used to run marathons,” I say.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “Your mother told me.”

I can feel myself running, my feet pounding against the pavement, my helmet-less hair flapping in the wind. I used to love it.

“Do you think I’ll be able to run marathons again?” I ask.

“Sure,” Natalie says. “Even if you can’t run, there are people who could push you the length of the marathon in your wheelchair. So you can definitely be a part of it.”

That really isn’t the same thing at all. But that’s okay. I don’t think I wanted to hear the real answer to my question anyway.

40

BEFORE

Back in the old days, a woman might discover her husband was cheating by finding lipstick on his collar while doing his laundry. Or maybe she’d smell an unfamiliar perfume on his clothing. Or she’d overhear him talking flirtatiously on the phone.

But this is the twenty-first century and I first start to suspect Clark of cheating because of a text message.

Usually, I wake up at six in the morning and am out the door by seven, but yesterday, our morning clinic was pushed back due to some sort of carpet cleaning adventure, so I decided to sleep in until a luxurious eight o’clock. I woke up feeling deliciously well-rested, and only slightly resentful of a still-snoring Clark lying next to me in bed.