Love from A to Z(37)

Afraid of what else was to come.

Zahid left but came back with a tall glass of water. “Drink this—maybe it is the heat. You need some hydration maybe.”

I took some sips, wondering how you tell a stranger that you don’t want to be left alone.

? ? ?

Zahid helped me up the stairs to my room, where I paid him for the ride. He wouldn’t take the enormous tip I offered.

“You hurt me to give me a tip for being as I should be.” He jotted down his number in case I ever needed his taxi again, then left.

I slept and slept. Whenever I woke, my eyes would fly open to check if it was gone, the thing covering my eyes, whether the pain had gone, but it was still the same, so finally, after the fifth time, I pulled the cover right over my head and slept more.

At one point I heard Dad opening my bedroom door, heard Hanna say, “Why is he sleeping now? It’s seven o’clock.”

“Shh, let him sleep. He’s been working in the room downstairs, painting, so he must be tired.”

“Are we still ordering pizza? I want—” The door closed.

I slept until the dark became light outside my window, until it was a new day. I listened for sounds to make sure Dad and Hanna had left for school.

Then I got up.

And fell.

My legs weren’t legs. They were noodles.





ADAM


WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13


ODDITY: SECRETS


MY LEGS USELESS, I LAY crying on the floor of my room.

Not from pain, though that was still there, still boring into the back of my eyes whenever I moved them.

And I think maybe I hit my hip hard on the floor. It felt sore, bruised.

But I mostly cried because it didn’t make sense.

What had just happened didn’t make sense.

I cried because I couldn’t see.

I didn’t mean just literally, that my vision was affected, I meant I couldn’t see what was next.

It felt like the way forward, what to do, was as clouded as my vision.

I cried for so long, I was sure hours had passed.

Then I thought of Dad and Hanna opening the door to my bedroom again.

I thought about Dad’s bent head crying at prayer the other day.

Of Hanna’s octopus hair bounding away with mischief.

About Stillwater, Hanna’s panda, who’d become another presence in the house for her when Mom left us.

I thought about the photo of Mom swinging in our backyard in Ottawa, when we’d returned home for a few months. Taken a year after her MS had gotten worse, a year after Hanna had been born.

She’d been smiling wide, her light brown hair flying behind her.

She’d been happy.

? ? ?

My arms worked, so I pulled myself forward and forward until I got to the chair by my desk. I rested my head on it, trying to figure out how to get to help.

Get myself to the hospital.

My phone.

Zahid’s number for his taxi.

They were both on the desk, but I couldn’t haul myself up.

But I could reach.

I looked at the blurry items around me. Was that my empty guitar case? Right under the bed?

I shifted myself forward until I could grasp it. And then I dragged it along with me as I inched back to the desk.

Lifting the guitar case, I banged it and swept it clumsily along the top of the desk, saying a prayer while doing so, as the case sent pencils and pens and other random things raining down.

The phone fell onto the bed, almost at the edge, and the piece of paper with Zahid’s number fluttered beside me. A miracle, alhamdulillah.

He had written his number so big and clear I could make it out. I closed my eyes in gratitude at this, wondering if the tears prickling them again would ever wash away whatever was blurring my vision.

I held the paper tightly in my hand as I dragged myself back to the bed to get the phone.

What if it’s out of battery?

Please, God, no. Please, please, no.

I spoke Zahid’s number in for voice command to activate.

Another miracle: The phone wasn’t out of juice.

The last miracle, the best one, happened when he picked up.

I lay there waiting for Zahid.

The kindness of a stranger.

? ? ?

By the time he got to me, some of the feeling in my legs had returned. I knew by the soreness in a part of my left thigh that it had hit something, maybe the leg of the desk chair, or even the floor—a soreness that I started to slowly become aware of, until the throbbing told me I could try standing up, maybe make my way back to bed.

I used the chair again and half dragged, half pulled myself to bed. It did feel like some feeling had come back into my legs, but I wasn’t sure I could trust it.

I’d never forget that fall from the bed. It was like somebody had pulled the plug on the connection between my legs and me.

The sound of keys being fitted in at the front door was as sweet as music.

Zahid appeared in the doorway with one of our compound security guys, Felipe.

“What happened, man?” Felipe said, advancing to help me from the bed. Before he squatted, he fixed stray hairs back into the bun at the back of his head. “You have some kind of fall?”

“Yeah.” It was true.

Between him and Zahid, I was half carried down the stairs.

“Next time buzz me. I’d have gotten the ambulance,” Felipe said as we made our way out. “You’re lucky I hadn’t left yet. I was just about to go home. Samir is not here to take the shift after mine, so I’ve just been waiting.”