"You Want To Take Who What Now???"
or: "Your BP's Are Through The Roof
Go Home. Until 5 p.m."
Ch. 51
I shook my head like a wet labradoodle. I think my ears flapped, too. Lori had just taken K's blood pressure, then mine, and told me to "Take him home."
If it had been anyone but Lori...
"I beg your pardon?" I said, when I finally found my voice. Lori, looking serene as usual, said, "You heard me. Take him home. For the day. Watch a movie. Listen to the cicadas. Smell the grass. Play with the cat."
(She'd met Echo the one time I'd brought her to see K; it was not the subject of a full chapter because Echo mostly hid in the corner of the room, under the other bed, and was only sitting on K's chest when NO one else was there. As soon as someone came in, poof, under that other bed she'd streak, so I didn't torture her anymore by bringing her in.)
Lori stood right in front of me, slender and compassionate. But I was thinking I was back at the hospital, perhaps having an hallucination, or smallpox, because she couldn't be saying... "Take him home." That was nuts! I'd... I'd...
I'd never taken that idea into any part of the future equation.
She wanted me to take him home. Home. Our home. I shook my head. "But, I came over in the Mitsubishi, the sports car (not really, just very low). He won't fit."
She said, "Sam, you could have come here on a lawnmower, he'd still hop on it and go home with you. Go. Now." She smiled. "I'll get a wheelchair, you tell him the news and I'll meet you at the entrance." She turned away, waving a hand and saying, “Go tell him, and when you get back we'll recheck your blood pressures.”
She disappeared around a corner. I went back into K's room. This time... I was a little hesitant, but mostly... jubilant? Yeah, that works.
K, however, looked petrified. I kissed him and said, "No worries. Lori said I can take you home for the day."
Wow, he moved fast! Before I knew it, Lori had stuffed his 6'4" body into the passenger side of the Mits, and we were on our way: Home.
He put the window down, and as we went over the Wabash, he inhaled deeply. "That smells... like the outside. Like... not that place."
I got that. The freshness, the wind, the "outness". There was a smell to the Asylum. I don't have to spell it out, but it was a smell. A definite, not nice smell.
My little Mitsubishi purred us along, and Kimit looked like bliss personified. (Chas v'chalilah, had to write it, you know I did.)
We pulled into the driveway, and K reached up with his left hand to hit the clicker, to open the garage door. I slapped his hand away.
He, not surprisingly, was surprised. "Use your right hand," I said, "Or we turn around now and I take you back."
It was an effort but he did it. He had to force his right arm across his chest, and reach up to my side to get to the opener.
With a great deal of “hurnphing” and “shplurt!” noises, he got it. The door went up.
Two things happened then, almost simultaneously: we realized we had to leave the car in the driveway for him to get out: we had another car, a Taurus, in the garage and he wouldn't have been able to squidge out.
The second thing: while we pried him out of the passenger side of the Mits, the neighborhood erupted in a major "Huzzah!" A Sunday morning, and we had a wonderfully full street of empty houses. We smiled and waved and I shouted "Thank You!" and he shouted "You guys rock!"
Several of the neighbors came forward to shake hands and hug and one of them, Casey, was the face of true compassion: he was 15, and he was more of a help to me during this time than almost anyone else. He helped me with the groceries, he fixed a flat, he mowed our lawns (HUGE tracts of land, front and back), and he was just a tall, young saint.
The other face was my neighbor, Tanya, to whom I had given our garage lock code and keys to the house and car. She was smiling to beat the band. I hugged her until her back cracked.
(Her husband, who has the personality of Rasputin, on a bad day, stayed on his steps and glared at us. And no, I have absolutely NO idea what we did to HIM to make his loathing so obvious [AND he also helped Casey mow our lawns! I would thank them both whenever I saw them, so the animosity from the guy was a puzzle. But, whoo doggy, there's a great story when he came over to mow once. Later. Chapter 53?)
After the outpouring of good wishes and cheers (I'm from LA, we barely cheer the Dodgers), I helped him up the front walkway to our door (he was still using a folding walker) and there it was: our first hurdle- the two, railless concrete steps up to the front door. I went up and opened the door, and propping the other door (we lived in snow country, everyone has an inner outer door. That makes no sense. Does it?
Anyway, I propped that second door open with a pot of Alyssum, and turned around and grabbed his walker, and said, “I have no idea what I'm doing, but we're doing it anyway. Okay?” He nodded. He was the colour of a frightened beet, but we were going to get him up those steps.
“Good up first,” I reminded him; that's how they told us to treat stairs back at the Asylum PT Gym- "Good up first, bad down first.”
He tried to pick up the good leg, the left leg, but that left him standing on the bad leg, and at this point I was trying very hard not to panic, and he looked like a badly designed stork.
So, we switched feet. Bad up first. He was grabbing the walker, me, the door, doing the hokey pokey, and suddenly, we were in.
We were in our house. He paused for breath, and then looked at the seven steps down to our den/laundry room/office area. (We live in a bi-level, have I mentioned that?) And he took those steps as if he'd been walking on a numb leg his entire life.
We went to the den, and sat down on his half of the sofa, which reclined. The breath he breathed was about a ton of anxiety floating out and being snatched out our open windows to be visited upon some other poor soul who was in a similar situation.
We turned on the TV, and he watched the news. I told him I was going to go upstairs and make some lunch, bring it back down and we'd watch “Madagascar” (one of several movies that I watched over and over while he was in the Asylum, all of which helped keep me sane).
I made some sandwiches and some iced tea and we sat, and ate, and watched the movie. I thought he'd nod off (it was about 2 p.m.) but he suddenly said, “I want to see the Willow.”
K had planted the Weeping Willow the year we moved into this house. And, because I am a botanist, he'd planted it correctly (I'll tell you later), and now it had gone from an eight foot sapling into a 35 footer with a trunk about a foot around. And, ha ha, guess what? It didn't weep. It went UP. It was labeled a “weeping willow” but it was actually an enormous willow with nothing to weep about.
To see the willow, K had to walk back up the seven steps to the landing, then another six steps up to the first floor. Which we did; up was much easier, and we had railings all over the place. He clomped his way into the kitchen, and looked through our sliding glass windows at the willow.
He stood there, for a long time. Even one of the the rabbits made an appearance. He popped out from under the shed, hopped to the middle of the lawn, under the willow, and sat, chewing dandelions with obvious relish.
Kimit and I sat in the kitchen for a while, watching the bunny. Then, he toured the rest of the upstairs, found Echo (who was hiding behind the china hutch, or in Baden Baden; cats have the ability to vanish into alternate dimensions, as well) and then, it was time to go back. I walked down the six steps to the landing. K stood at the top of that flight of steps. I had his walker, folded, next to me.
He looked this close to hysterical. “I can't do this,” he said, with a pinch of whine in his voice. “These steps are too wide, I can't do this!”
I looked up at him, and I thought, “He really can't do this. We're in big trouble! This flight of steps is MUCH wider than the one at the Asylum Gym!”
But what I said was “You don't have a choice. You have to come down.” It wasn't an order, it wasn't a plea, it wasn't anything but the actual fact: he HAD to come down.
And I couldn't help him. I said, “They're six steps. Grab the railing, move slowly and get down here.”
And he did. Step by step by step, times three, he made it.
I breathed again. He hugged me, and whispered “Thanks for not panicking.” I hugged him back, and whispered, “You're welcome. Unfortunately, I am panicking now because you can't go out the front door. There is no railing, and the steps are concrete.”
Oops. But, he buckled down, and said, “Okay. I'll go downstairs, through the office and into the garage, and up... how many steps are in there?”
There were five, and there were two railings. He was right; he'd conquered the first floor flight, and already done the flight to the lower floor. So we went down the steps to the lower floor, and went through the office, to the garage door (bi-levels have some weird floor plans, I know) and he went up the garage steps. The garage door was open, and we clomped past the big hole where the Mits lived, and I got him back into the car.
He reached for the clicker, with his left hand, but this time, he didn't need me to smack it.
He stopped himself, and reached over with his right hand, hit the clicker and closed the garage.
When we got back to the Asylum, Lori greeted us, got him out of the car, and I parked.
When I got to his room, she was finishing taking his blood pressure. She wrote something down. Then, she took MY blood pressure. And she wrote it down.
“This morning,” she said, “You were both off the charts in the BP department. Now? You're both 120 over 80. See you tomorrow.”
Lori knew he needed to go home, to go away from this place, to know that he could survive outside of it. And she needed me to know it.
We did. I think Lori is Goddess. I really do.
51