I
recently started working as an Aide in a physical therapy clinic. The job is not rocket science. It consists of making and
un-making a lot of beds, wiping countless surfaces with disinfecting wipes, and
explaining the same exercises dozens of times a day, hundreds of times a week,
thousands of times…ok, you get the picture. It’s a humbling job, but it’s also a very rewarding
job. Working in an environment
like this, we get a chance to see people at their most vulnerable. It’s almost like working with kids
because they are so willing to keep an open-mind and put their trust in us, no
matter how foolish they might feel doing an exercise, especially barely being
able to walk in same cases. On rare occasions, they can be obstinate and impatient,
but most of the time they are kind and cooperative because they see you as an
ally on their road to recovery.
It
didn’t take long for me to get bored of the physical tasks of the job. But there is one good thing about being
a conversationalist (ok, chatty.) Once
you get people talking, they tell you their life stories. You would have no idea, looking at some
of them, the random and exciting things that have happened to them. Because of HIPAA regulations, I will
never be able to tell actual stories of patients, but I can take bits and
pieces of my interactions with them, their lives, jumble them up, and use them
to create fiction. Here is a piece
that I wrote based on one afternoon at work:
Trudy and Joe
By: Shannon Madden
Gertrude Estrada stumbled on her
crutches to the edge of the workout table.
“You
want me to get on there?” she whimpered.
“Yes,”
I said, sliding a stool to the foot of the table. “We can take it nice and
easy. Just step up here and lean
forward and you’ll just slide right onto the bed.”
“I
can’t I’m scared.”
She looked at me,
her brown eyes watery, underlined with little black scratches of mascara. Her
golden-straw hair was styled in loose, short waves. She looked every bit her seventy years, if not more, but you
could tell that once she was a beauty, though not classically so---more Bette
Davis than Anne Baxter.
“C’mon, Trudy. This is nothing. Get up there.” Her husband Joe coaxed her firmly. He was Filipino, with striking blue
eyes, dressed more for a yacht than a therapy clinic.
Gertrude looked
back and forth at us before solemnly handing off her crutches to Joe. Her right knee was swollen, slashed by a
healing wound from a total reconstruction. She was several weeks post-op, and her leg was far from straight,
needing a lot of work to restore its range of motion. Gertrude took a ginger step onto the
stool and then another.
“No, no, no,” she
cried again, like a little kid on the edge of the high-dive who has had a
terrified change of heart.
Joe rolled his
eyes, “Trudy, you get up on that table.
We’ve worked on this. It’s
nothing new.”
“It’s ok, Trudy. You’re just going to let your legs hang
off so you can stretch out those hamstrings. It’ll help your leg get a little bit straighter. It’s a gentle little stretch.” I said.
Her brow
scrunched, peering at me, not buying it.
I stifled my laughter. If
she had been a pound puppy, I would have adopted her.
In the corner, Ellie,
a sizable teenager, sat with icepacks on her knees. Her mother sat next to her with a baby. They snickered as they watched Gertrude
struggle with the precipice of the exam table.
“Oh, stop being
such a baby, Trudy,” Joe said, giving her a devilish smile. Gertrude stuck her tongue out at him
and continued to stall.
----
Special Agent
Goldstein stared across the hollow body of the plane. The whirr of the motor would have been intolerable to most
civilians, but as a seasoned agent of the CIA, and one of its few women, she
had made dozens, if not hundreds of jumps, and her ears had become accustomed
to the noise.
“Joey. You’ve done this before. The only thing that’s different will be
not having this old monkey strapped to your back.” Her attempt at humor fell short of the young man staring
back at her, his blue eyes and tense neck muscles betraying his fear. He didn’t move.
“Yeah, and we’ll
be dropping into enemy territory.
This isn’t flight school.
Just gimme a minute, will ya?”
“Hey fella, this
is what you signed on for. I
wouldn’t let you jump without me if I didn’t think you could get to the ground
safely.” Agent Goldstein had faced
this moment before with many of her trainees during their first solo jump in
the field. Nothing like a 14,000
foot dive to make a grown man whimper.
“C’mon Joey, stop
being such a baby.”
Nothing like a
blow to a grown man’s ego to get him moving. Joey began to shift, lumbering toward the sliding door as
Agent Goldstein tugged at the massive port. The cold wind of the high altitude rushed into the plane as
the two agents scooted to the edge of the floor.
Side-by-side, they
gave each other a lingering glance, and, all of a sudden, a current of trust
passed between them.
“Will it make you
feel better to hold my hand?”
Agent Goldstein winked, only somewhat in jest. She never would have said that to any of the other agents
she had trained, but she had a soft spot for this one.
“No, I’m fine,”
Joey said, then compromised, “Well, maybe just a squeeze, Sweetheart.”
She smiled, and he
clasped her hand for a brief moment.
Filled with a sudden surge of confidence, he shouted over the motor,
“See you on the
ground!” With that, he was gone,
headed down toward a clearing in the Vietnam jungle below.
Shaking her head,
Agent Goldstein tipped herself out of the plane.
The two of them
tore down through the sub-zero atmosphere as the air became denser and more
humid, until it was time to pull their cords, Joey first and then Goldstein.
When they reached
the ground, Joey gathered his chute and ran over to his trainer.
“Good Golly, Miss
Molly. That was a rush. ” He let
out a howl, making Goldstein laugh.
“See, not so bad,
eh? “
Joey laughed, “Not
so bad. Trudy, I couldn’t have
done it without you. Thanks for
pushing me out of that plane.”
“Hey! I didn’t…” she started to argue, but she
saw the twinkle in his eye and she had to smile.
Doing her best to
remain professional, despite how adorable she found him, Agent Gertrude
Goldstein, rerouted the conversation.
“Ok, Agent Estrada,
enough celebration. Let’s get to
the location.”
----
“No, no, no, I
can’t do it,” Gertrude whispered with dread, tears springing from her eyes. She looked up at her husband Joe, who,
despite the stern look he was giving her, grabbed her hand and gave it a
squeeze.
In that moment,
something clicked. She leaned
forward, tilted herself up to the bed and dropped right into position.
“Oh.” Her whining halted.
“Oh!”
she exclaimed. “This is not that
bad!”
She
wiggled around a little to get into a comfortable position, before declaring,
“Yeah. I like this. This is good.
Why didn’t you tell me it was gonna be like this?”
Joe
and I exchanged looks, and Ellie and her mother laughed. Even Gertrude had to
smile.
“Have
you always been this much of a baby?” I said, giving her a wink.
Gertrude
looked at Joe, and they crinkled their eyes, sharing something secret.
“Not
always, “ she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment