“Whatever you say.” Keith followed instructions. It was pretty interesting because Shane came at it from a way that was unexpected—nothing anybody had ever done before. It was certainly educational because, by the time Keith was listening and following through on the instructions, he could see what Shane was pointing out.
“When you are lying down, it’s a whole different thing than the way you would be standing,” Shane explained. “Straighten out your legs, and pull your legs together,” Shane said. Then he took several photos, muttering to himself as he wrote down notes.
“Are you telling me that, even laying down, it’s not even normal?” Keith joked.
“Nope, not really,” he said. “That’s why we’re starting this on the floor. And then we’ll get you standing upright. We’ll have you walk, and we’ll have you stand against a wall, while I take more measurements and more pictures.”
At that, Keith relaxed because Shane really wouldn’t put him to work today. But minutes later, Keith was eating his words because just doing what Shane was asking him to do was hard. But Shane didn’t appear to be too bothered.
“I know I asked you to stand on one leg, and you’re not used to it, but you can do it,” he said. “So do it for me. Lean against that wall upright, heels to the back, and lift your left leg. Just balance.”
But of course he couldn’t keep balancing.
Finally Shane gave him a crutch and said, “Use this to help hold yourself up.” And, with that, they went over it again and then again.
“What is it you’re hoping to sort out?” Keith asked, gasping when he finally brought his leg back down again, feeling his back being pulled.
“Muscles that are avoiding working,” he said. “You need your structural integrity solid. Otherwise, over time, you start to lean and to list to one side, and some muscles go weak, while others take on too much of the strain. As you age, these injuries become a bigger problem. We want to make sure that you start off healing correctly and get you solid with the best alignment you can have. Then we’ll build up from there, so that—in twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years—you’re not a basket case and back in a wheelchair.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun at all,” he muttered. But, when Shane asked him to bend over and touch his toes, Keith just looked at him in shock.
“Go down as low as you can get and stretch as far as you can,” Shane said.
But he could barely even get his hands to his knees.
Once again Shane was there, poking at the muscles in his back, taking photos and measurements. By the time they were done with the session, Keith was panting and wishing that he was already sitting down in his wheelchair.
Finally Shane let him sit down. “I don’t know what any of that tells you,” Keith said, “but we’ve done nothing except test yet again, and I’m exhausted.”
“That’s because I asked you to put some of the muscles under a spotlight,” Shane said quietly, as he finished marking notes down on his tablet. “This is a big help,” he said. “It gives me a really good idea where we need to start.” At that, he motioned at the door and said, “We’ve been at it for an hour and a half, so I’ll let you head back to your room. You’ve got some doctor appointments this afternoon, and I’ll go set up your PT program. We’ll start first thing in the morning at nine o’clock, so be ready.”
“Where do I meet you?” Keith asked.
“Right here,” he said. “We’ll start on the floor again, but it will be a very different scenario tomorrow.” And, with that dire warning, Shane was gone.
Back in his wheelchair, after crawling all the way across the floor and pulling himself into the chair, he was miffed that Shane had left him in that shape. But Keith had been on his feet for a lot of that time, so it’s not like he was completely crippled.
He slowly moved back to his room and to his tablet to check on his next meeting. He wasn’t even sure who it was, but it was some doctor something or other. Weren’t they all doctors here?
As he wheeled into his room, he found a tall, angular midfifties woman, working on her tablet in a chair beside his bed. She looked up when he entered. “Keith?”
He nodded.
“Good,” she said, reaching out a hand. “Don’t get comfortable. We’ll head back to my office.” And, with that, she came around behind him, grabbed the wheelchair, and headed out into the hallway.
“Where is your office?” he asked, figuring out what doctor this was.
“This one here,” she said, and she pushed him down a short hallway on the right. She wheeled him inside an open door on the left, parked him in front of her desk. Then she walked around to her side and, dropping the tablet, sat down in her chair. “So tell me,” she said, “where are you at mentally with all this?”
Now he knew what kind of doctor she was. His heart sank. “I think I’m fine mentally,” he said slowly, his mind immediately searching for the answers that would get her off his back.
She smiled. “You don’t even know what I’m looking for, so no sense in digging around, trying to say the right thing to get rid of me.”
He stared at her with a frown. “How did you know I was doing that?”
“Because you’re in a chair across from me,” she said with a quiet snicker. “Everybody tries to do exactly the same thing.”
“That’s not a very good way to make friends, you know?” he said.
“If I was on that side of the desk with you,” she said, “I would be trying to make friends with you. But I’m on this side of the desk, and my job is to assess your mental health.”
He frowned at that.
She nodded. “You have a very morose frame of mind. Your file says that you refused antidepressants and that you experience general downward-spiraling moods. We have a lot of clinical terms for this,” she said, “but basically it means you’re always on the edge of being depressed.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “But, if I’m on the edge of being depressed, then I’m also on the edge of being happy,” he said. “If it’s a knife’s edge, it can cut both ways.”
She laughed at that. “Good,” she said. “I like to see your brain snappy like that. It shows that someone is still in there and that somebody hasn’t given up.”
He stared at her in surprise. “Does being depressed mean I’ve given up?”
“No, not necessarily,” she said. “But it often goes hand in hand. Sometimes people can’t see their way out of a situation, so they get depressed, and it’s a downward spiral after that.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve wondered how much of my moods could be part of the constant medical cocktail I’ve been served.”
“Interesting take,” she said, taking notes. “And one I certainly won’t argue with because, with the number of surgeries you’ve had, undoubtedly a variety of chemicals still circulate through your blood. When did you finish your last antibiotics?”
“Before I got here,” he said absentmindedly. “But I’m still taking a couple pills.”