Page 37 of I Promise You
“Look, I know why you guys are here, and I’m telling you, I’m not ready right now. I won’t walk; I just had surgery a week ago,” she complains, crossing her hands over her chest.
I frown at her refusal. I have to get her to walk out of this bed. The longer she sits for hours, the more she’s prone to blood clots.
“Ms. Salem, this is Mr. Cameron, our amazing physical therapist. We have to get you to walk, at least for five minutes, and then we’ll leave you alone, I promise,” I request with an encouraging smile.
Mr. Cameron’s shoulders sag. He usually wants them to walk more than just five minutes, but this was my best attempt to help her.
“We shouldn’t push her so much. Let’s start with baby steps,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice low.
“No. I’m not ready.” Ms. Salem fusses, protesting, unbothered. She shakes her head violently, her black hair jittering.
Mr. Cameron sighs, frustrated with impatience, crossing his arms disapprovingly.
Before we walked in, he informed me she had been fighting her required therapy every time he tried to help her.
I clear my throat, my vision piercing him for his attention, demanding it. I place my hand in front of him, motioning for him to stop, mouthing the words,I’ve got this.
“What are you watching?” I ask, walking toward her.
I have to help her, but in ways that don’t seem unemotional or cold or treat her as if she’s just another patient.
This poor woman needs to be treated with understanding and fortitude. If I were in her place with no family or friends to help me get through surgery or to learn how to walk again, I’d want at least one person tounderstand me.
I know this young woman hasn’t had any visitors since she checked into the hospital with a broken ankle severed so severely she needed emergency surgery to fix it, or she would have had an amputation.
She looks at me with overwhelming disgust before rolling her eyes and returning to the television.
“It’s a movie…a sad one.”
“Oh…what’s it about?” I grab a chair and sit beside her bed. Mr. Cameron watches us, disgruntled.
“It’s about a girl…” She coughs to conceal her voice breaking. “It’s just a movie.” She doesn’t want to talk, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. She’s closed off; it reminds me of the new version of myself.
“Tell me. I’ve never seen this one,” I tell her. The actress in the movie is crying on a tombstone, and I’m already intrigued.She’s kneeling on the floor, bawling, clutching her chest, struggling to breathe.
“It’s…about a sister who lost her older brother in a car crash,” she deadpans, still not bothering to look at me. But then I noticed the ache pricking at her throat when she said ‘crash’. “It’s my favorite movie now…now that I lost my older brother earlier this year the same way.” She stares at her fingers, massaging them nervously. “He was my best friend. I don’t have a lot of family that cared for me, buthe did. He was like a second dad to me.” She whispers to the point where I almost can’t hear her.
The monitor beeps louder, and the grief contorts on her face. She’s breathing slowly but harder—her heart rate spikes, signaling a panic attack. I’m an expert at detecting those these days and a complete failure at dissolving my own.
Paul was everything to my mother and I. He was the foundation that kept our family together.
“I know what that kind of pain feels like,” I concede as I look at the girl who continues to cry for her brother in the movie.
“Don’t pretend to know what pain looks like,” Ms. Salem snaps at me, her voice rising. “Don’t pretend to act like you can relate to me. You’re a pretty girl, probably a successful nurse in her twenties.” Her eyes scan me up and down like she’s reading me. “I’m sure you have a hot boyfriend obsessed with you. I know girls like you. You probably have a sheltered life with possibilities handed to you. You don’t know what struggle is like. You don’t know what losing your brother in a crash is like. So please…stop pretending.” She spits her words, full of hatred.
She doesn’t know that my brother is dead and that I grieved for my baby soon after, and that’s okay.
I’m pretending to be all right.
I’m pretending to be fine when I’m not.
I have to because that’s what I need to do.
I swallow the sorrow that fills my stomach when the thoughts of grief seep into me. I swear I can feel my baby kick inside me as the anguish slithers in my chest again, constricting my lungs.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes tight for a split second, regaining stability.
“I lost my brother too…not long ago,” I confess. “I looked up to him my entire life, and then…” I sigh. “Then he was gone in a split second. It was like he was here and then—” I bite my lip as I lose myself further. “He was…gone.”
