I slide out of bed, and Kyle follows behind me, his paws padding on the hardwood floor.
Quickly, I let Kyle outside to go potty while I grab a room-temp Alani—the only way I drink them—and crack it open, the fizzing sound like music to my tired ears.
After Kyle is done investigating every corner of the yard, he comes back inside and occupies himself with a bone while I hop in the shower, desperate to wash away the anxiety already building in my chest.
But that’s not abnormal compared to any other day. If anything, my anxiety is the biggest constant in my life. Un-fucking-fortunately.
The warm water encases me like a hug, instantly reminding me that I haven’t gotten a good mom hug in a little while. I need to pay my parents and my shit-head little brother a visit. But sometimes, the simplest task feels overwhelming to complete, never mind driving the hour out of the city to their house.
The last ten times we’ve gotten together, they’ve come here. But I need to stop isolating myself from the world … eventually.
Or never.
After soaking my hair, I wring the water out and look over at the shampoo bottle staring into my soul. Everything that used to be so easy and thoughtless requires so much goddamn effort; it’s exhausting.
Every aspect of my life changed after that accident. In the blink of an eye. All because of a skate blade that had somehow slipped just right between my mask and my shoulder padding.
The doctors said it was a miracle I hadn’t bled out on the ice. It was a miracle that the blade hadn’t cut my carotid artery. It’d missed it by two millimeters. That was the difference between life and death that day … two millimeters.
Even though the blade didn’t cut my artery, it did plenty of damage. It completely severed my brachial plexus—the network of nerves that control my arm—destroying a few muscles along the way.
The surgeons who operated on me and repaired the nerves performed miracles. My outcome would be different if it wasn’t for them. Unfortunately, even with their flawless work, my body can only recover so much.
Nerves are the slowest-healing part of the human body, and injuries as damaging as mine are even harder to repair. For the first few weeks after my surgeries, my arm stayed in a sling, and I barely moved from my bed.
Then the physical therapy started—never-ending appointments to keep my muscles from atrophying. Five months after the surgeries, I hit my first milestone—my muscles and nerves responding to mental commands.
I was in tears, bawling my eyes out with my parents when that first big twitch happened. It gave us hope again that my arm would become functional.
But the progress felt torturous, and no matter how much capability I regained, it was different … in every way. It's as if my reactions became extremely delayed, like a weak internetconnection that buffered before finally loading. To go from having lightning reflexes to … this … is so goddamn challenging to accept.
Near constant physical therapy, along with mental health therapy, has brought me to today, where I can use my arm, hand, and fingers.
But they’re still weak, still slow, still aggravating … still painful. The mornings and nights are the worst when it comes to the achiness and bursts of lightning in my arm.
The first thing I do after waking up and the last thing I do before going to bed is my PT exercise. I warm my hand up, touching the pad of each finger to my thumb repeatedly. The mornings are worse though, pins and needles slicing through my arm with every rep. They eventually fade, but continue throughout the day, triggered randomly whether I’m using my limb or not. It’s unpredictable.
The doctors say that time may be the only cure for the pains that persist, that in injuries like mine, it’s an unexplainable side effect of repairing the severed nerves.
Taking a shaky, gradual breath, I rub my chest with my right hand, trying to calm the erratic thump of my heart, as I reach out with my left hand and grab my shampoo, getting a good grip and lifting it off the shower shelf. My fingers close around it, and a beat of pride blooms inside me. I nailed it. Popping the cap, I open my right palm and focus on squeezing the bottle and pouring shampoo into my right hand. Grabbing stuff is one thing, but that squeezing motion is so much harder to do successfully.
“Gentle now,” I whisper to myself, staring intensely at the bottle. “Nice and easy.”
My shoulder twitches, and my grip loosens ever so slightly.
“No, no, no. Come on. You’ve got this,” I say, encouraging myself, securing my grip on the bottle.
I know it would be so much easier to switch hands for this task, but that wouldn’t help my left hand and arm get stronger and better.
A drop of shampoo falls onto my open palm, and a smile breaks the stern line of my lips.
“Just a little more.” I beg my nerves to cooperate. But they always have other plans.
All of a sudden, my arm spasms. I lose my grip on the bottle, and it crashes to the ground, right along with my heart and stomach. I jump back carefully so my poor toes don’t get smashed. My shoulders sag from disappointment.
It’s fine. It’s fine.
My breathing shortens, and my eyes slam shut.
