Every Note Played(25)
The phone rings on speaker.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Beverly, this is Bill Swain, your neighbor Richard Evans’s home health aide.”
“Oh, hi there. Is everything okay?”
“Yup, everything is fine here. He’s going to go for a walk this morning. Are you going to be home to let him back in the building?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll be here. I can do that.”
“Okay, great. Thank you, Beverly. Bye now.”
Bill returns to the blender and peels a banana. “I still don’t like it. If I didn’t have my next client right after you, I’d go with you. You sure you can’t wait until Melanie?”
“I’m sick of being in here. I can still walk. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re wearing your brace.”
“Okay.”
Bill makes four smoothies without singing, a sure sign that he’s uncomfortable with this plan. Worried that conversation might lead Bill into verbalizing his concerns, and that might in turn convince him to change his mind, Richard keeps quiet. Bill plops a straw into each drink and then leaves the kitchen.
Richard steps up to the counter, bends his head to the straw of the first glass, and sucks the smoothie steadily down. He was so hungry. And while these drinks are thick and filling, they’re far from satisfying. What he wouldn’t give to chew on a steak. Or even a piece of toast.
Bill returns with the foot brace and a winter coat, hat, and mittens and squats down in front of Richard. Familiar with this drill, Richard lifts his right foot without direction. While holding Richard’s leg to stabilize him, Bill removes the shoe, fits the ankle foot orthotic over Richard’s sock, and returns the shoe to his foot. Bill then threads Richard into his coat, pulls the iPhone out so it lies on top of the zipper, clips the Bluetooth connector to the coat collar, fits his hat on his head, and works his lifeless hands into the mittens.
“I’m putting a key to your building in your right coat pocket in case Beverly doesn’t answer. You’ll ask someone to open the door for you, okay?”
Richard nods, knowing this won’t be necessary.
“Okay, my friend.” Bill dons his own coat. “You’re all set. I’m still not a fan of this idea. You sure I can’t set you up with something on Netflix?”
“No. I want to get out of here. I know you have to get going. Let me just drink one more.”
He finishes a second smoothie while Bill slips on his hat and gloves.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Bill opens the door, and they leave without shutting it behind them. Richard takes each step down the stairs consciously and carefully, wanting to prove to Bill, who is walking backward in front of him and most certainly assessing the competence of every step, that he’s perfectly capable of walking alone. They pass through the grand foyer, Bill opens the front door, and they walk outside.
The air is face-pinking cold, but it’s clean and breezy and instantly feels far more vital than the confined air Richard has been stewing in for too long inside. He takes a deep breath and sighs out the exhale. He takes in the passing traffic, the people walking on the sidewalk and in the park, a baby stroller, a bicyclist, a dog, a squirrel. He smiles. He’s among the living again.
Bill pats him on the back. “You’ll be okay. See you in the morning, Ricardo.”
“Thank you, William.”
Before he sets off on his own, Richard watches Bill hurry down the street, an angel on his way to the next bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen, to someone with MS or cancer or Alzheimer’s, washing hair and teeth and genitals, massaging and dressing and feeding, singing show tunes to all as he does, and, for some, giving them the freedom to do as much as they can while they still can.
God bless Bill.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Three blocks from home, Richard walks through the gate of the Public Garden and is already exhausted. When he’s simply standing still or walking from his bedroom to the living room, his legs feel sturdy beneath him, still capable and responsive, normal. At home, he can convince himself that ALS might only ever affect him from the waist up. Maybe he’ll return that hideous $27,000 wheelchair that wasn’t covered by insurance. But in his fourteen-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom condo, he’s not asking much of his quads and hamstrings and calves.
Three blocks from the front step where Bill left him, he’s completely sapped. His legs have become sandbags, his bones filled with rocks, impossibly heavy, and he lacks the energy to move them. Even standing still is shaky. He needs to sit down. Around the bend past the statue of George Washington on his horse, Richard spots the nearest bench and tries to estimate how many steps away he is. He guesses about thirty and seriously wonders if he can make it.
This is not normal. It’s not normal for a three-block walk to wear out a forty-five-year-old man, potentially defeating him thirty steps shy of his destination. There’s no denying it. ALS has crawled its way into the motor neurons that feed the muscles of his legs, and walking three blocks is the pathetic molehill large enough to unmask its sinister invasion. He imagines his body’s resistance to this attack, the molecular war in the fight against ALS at every neuromuscular junction, an invisible army, outnumbered and outgunned, deployed to fight this insidious enemy for as long as it can. The army holds its ground in Richard’s legs when he is home, but when it has to divert half its soldiers to the mission of walking to the Public Garden, the resistance becomes compromised, ALS advances, and the enemy is poised to take control. His army calls back the troops. Every soldier is needed in the trenches. No more walking!