I’m hard again right now, just thinking about it.
After all this time, she still consumes my thoughts. My mind, my body.
How could that be one way?
How could she forget it?
There must be something left in there that will remind her of me.
I absentmindedly reach for the ball, my hand instinctively trying to curl around it. But my fingers freeze; stiff and sore.
“Fuck!” I yell, throwing the ball across the room. My elbow cracks from the sudden movement but I barely feel it as I watch the ball collide with a vase on the window sill and it all comes tumbling down, crashing onto the ground.
“Jez.” A voice by the door startles me.
“Oh. Doc.”
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is my hands and my arm are fucking useless.” I hold them up as evidence. “You said I’d be okay. You said you would set it so it would heal and go back to normal. Two fucking surgeries, Doc. Were they for nothing?”
He comes over to the side of the bed. “Jez, I told you, that you would have a high chance of a complete recovery. Your left arm broke in two places and your wrist was fractured and two of your fingers were shattered. Your right arm splintered at the elbow. These are serious physical injuries, not to mention your lung and ribs. You have to be patient. It is going to take time.”
“How much bloody time? It’s been almost three months! And I can’t even squeeze a bloody toy without feeling like I’m being pulled on the rack.”
He doesn’t reply and takes my left arm in his hands. They’re cool as he feels along my joints.
“Look, we took x-rays after we took the casts off this morning, and all I can say is, you have to be patient. And work hard at your recovery. Don’t let the frustration get the better of you. Find something to get your mind off it.”
“I’m going stir crazy, Doc.”
He chuckles a little. “I get it, I hear you aren’t that good at sitting still for very long. But you’re going to need to find an outlet other than vase demolition. Okay?” He taps on the bed with his hand and then I’m alone again.
I look down at my hands, my arms, pale and weak, thin from the lack of movement and sunlight. Useless fucking limbs.
If I can’t play the cello, what the hell am I?
If I can’t play the cello, what the hell else matters?
Two hours later when I finally fall asleep, I still don’t have an answer.
***
The next morning, I don’t feel much better. My arms ache more now, like they’re not sure how to feel after being freed from their restraints. Don’t know whether to stay up or flop by my sides. My right wrist screams with pain every time I rotate it to the right and my elbow feels so stiff, my arms move like I’m a zombie, either straight out in front of me or pointed directly at the ground.
My first hour with the physio therapist ends in tears. Hers, not mine. And I’m sent back to my room like a kid in detention for being mean to the substitute teacher and with a stern warning from my doctor to step up my attitude.
By lunchtime, I don’t want to see anyone. I tell the nurse to close my door and that I don’t want any visitors. I hear the commotion outside my door when the guys come but it stays closed, and I don’t move until I know they’re gone.
“Honey,” Toni says, coming in to bring me the food they left behind. “Have some lunch.”
“Just leave it on the table,” I tell her, my eyes not leaving the TV screen.
“You need to eat something.”
“I will. Just leave it.”
“Can I get you-…”
“No. Close the door on the way out.”
“Okay. I’ll check on you in a bit.”
“I’m fine, go take care of your other patients.”
The next day is the same. I spend an hour at a useless physiotherapy session with a new physio-therapist where I do nothing but lift my arms up and down, flapping like damn wounded baby bird. I yell to the nurses I don’t want to be disturbed before hiding out in my room.
My friends knock on the door this time, yelling my name, calling me out.
But I ignore them.
At this rate, I’m not going anywhere, it’s better they don’t waste their time coming to visit.
I make sure the door is open by the mid-afternoon, though and I sit, waiting. Waiting for the music. But it doesn’t come.
What a waste. She can play like that, and she doesn’t.
What a waste, I think to myself, cradling my wrist.
What a fucking waste.
***
The next morning is the same old shit.
“Rotate it to the left now,” Brian, the PT tells me.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it fucking hurts,” I tell him. And he looks like he couldn’t care less.
“It’s not going to get any better if you don’t exercise it,” he says for the third time that day.
“Is it going to get better if I do?”
“There’s a better chance of it healing fully, yes.”
“You promise?” I snicker, knowing full well he can’t.
“No. You know better than to believe a promise like that, Jez. Now, please rotate your wrist anti-clockwise.”
I do. Just to because I thinks he think I won’t. I do it out of spite. And then hiss from the pain.
“Is that what you want? See me in pain?”
“If that’s what helps you through it, then you can think what you want.” He shrugs.
“Go to hell.” I say, and grab one of the elastic bands and fling it toward the window and storm back to my room.
“See you tomorrow, Jez,” he calls after me.
“See you in hell,” I mutter under my breath.
“No visitors, Toni!” I yell across the hall to the nurses’ station when I get back to my floor and pull the door shut behind me, wincing from the pain in my elbow. I settle in my bed, cradling my wrist against my stomach. Laying back, feeling the dull thump thump of my pulse in my arm, sore after an hour of exercises.
The door slides open and Toni comes in.
“They’re not going to like it, honey.”
“Mister Petrescu,” I correct her, knowing just how much of a douche I sound.
Her eyebrows shoot up, but she looks amused instead of offended.