Educational Experience

Part III--Chapter 15

Our boy is struggling his way back. The long convalescence has taken its toll, physically and emotionally. So this is a less kind and gentle Colt than you may be used to. But the old one's still healing. And that takes time and patience, as Aisha learns. The song lyric that says, "Still, I wonder why it is, I don't argue like this, with anyone but you..." seemed appropriate, to be sure...

I kicked the table over and just dropped down on the floor. Like a little kid having a tantrum. Or rather, I was having a tantrum. When I first started physical therapy, I was like a 2-year-old some days. I totally admit that.

I mean, it sucks not to be able to control your body right all of a sudden. And you know how I like to be in control of my world. So being too weak to even stand up messed with my head big time. I hated myself. I really did.

But Glenna, my incredibly patient physical therapist, didn't bat an eye.

She actually smiled. And said, "Well, that's a good sign. Takes some muscle to kick like that."

And of course, I felt like a dick immediately. She was so nice to me. I guess they're taught to be but I think she was just a really sweet person. And she's nice looking, too. Which normally would've made me behave.

But I didn't take her seriously at first. I'm not proud of it, but I remember thinking, when I first saw her, that she was too young and too "college girl" pretty to handle the job. She belonged on the cover of Seventeen or something. And I didn't want a cover girl grinning at me all the time. I wanted someone who could get me back on my feet, fast.

But she had wicked skills. The smile was just the sugar coating that tricked you into doing what she knew you needed to do. Because she understood what I was dealing with. See, her brother was paralyzed from the waist down. Took a bad hit playing football.

She vowed to become a therapist after watching him struggle for years to just stand up again on his own out of sheer stubbornness, she said. Especially after he finally killed himself with a whole bottle of pills.

So my little tantrums were no biggie to her. But I was ashamed of myself. It wasn't her problem, it was my problem. Or maybe it wasn't anyone's problem. It just was what it was. Or maybe, like Aisha'd said, I needed to be humbled.

We never discussed that idea, after that time she first said it. But I was starting to prepare myself for the possibility that I might never make it all the way back.

I hadn't told anyone because I knew they'd argue. But a part of me felt like maybe the jig was up like the say in the old movies. Maybe this way payback for getting away that night when everybody else burned up. Maybe I'd gotten too full of myself, you know? With the modeling and designing and whatnot. That's how I felt.

See, I watched all these little bitty kids everyday who were never going to get to be anything but sick, ever, in the little bit of a life they would have. And that didn't just make me feel like a jerk for being so into my own body and all, when I was well. It also made me mad at God. Or the big Whoever that did this stuff.

I mean, why do you bring a baby here and then give it cancer before it even walks or talks or anything? And make it have to have a hundred surgeries and lose an eye or something, on top of everything else?

One little bitty one got some kind of allergy from the meds they gave her, and the allergy made her look like she'd been burnt in a fire or something. I saw her parents when they were trying to explain why she'd coded all of a sudden. They were losing their minds, because her skin looked like she'd been dipped in boiling water or something.