Broken Mind: a Brain Injury recovery story

The Bad News

Today's walking practice with the physiotherapist has already happened by the time you see your mother walk into your room, clutching her swollen handbag tightly to her side. The hot ache in your legs preoccupies you, and you swell with the need to complain to her; to hear sympathies for how hard your rehab is, and how horrible your physio lady is to make you do it.

'How are you feeling, dear?' Mum asks as she approaches you.

That's your opening. 'Awful!' You re-live the painful experience in your mind, as you tell it. 'I'm so sore! She doesn't let me rest enough! She makes me walk too far; until I can't think of anything but how much it hurts!'

Your mother doesn't give you the humouring sympathy you'd expected. She slowly takes her handbag from her shoulder and places it on your bed, following it with her eyes. 'I'm sorry to hear that.' She swallows, then looks at you. 'I've got some news that will make your day even worse.'

You're sceptical, but curious. The world out there doesn't touch you in here, and in here walking practice is the worst thing that happens to you. That's already done for today, so you doubt you can feel worse.

She sits on your bed and clasps her hands in her lap. 'Marie had an accident on the way to her holiday. Her back is broken...' Oh, yes, this is worse. Does this mean Marie is paralysed? You see your mother open her mouth again, and you have a fleeting moment to think with incredulous horror—There's more?—before she continues, '...and her parents were killed.'

There's a burning ball in your throat and a scalding blur in your eyes, which together far surpass the residual ache in your legs. You can't speak.

Your mother tries to make some scant conversation. Tells you more about the accident—injuries to Marie's brothers and sisters, and the hospitals they're going to. None of them are yours.

Then she's absently patting your blankets, and telling you goodbye, that she can see you need time to process the news.

Then she's gone. The fire in your throat and in your eyes is still there. Of all the traitorous times for your developing memory to flex its birthed muscles, it's only now you remember your mother telling you Marie couldn't visit for a week, and it's now you remember that you'd been relieved.

Marie will be gone a lot longer than a week, now. But you don't feel relieved at all.

She's outdone your misfortune. She probably can't walk at all—painful or not—and now she's an orphan too. All you can complain about is the inability to stay awake for more than half a day, and having a physiotherapist who cares more about your recovery than how you feel about it.

Shame and worry and grief twist inside you, and you want to curl into yourself and hide from everything you just heard. Everything you see, and fear, in your imagination. Never has your room at the hospital seemed so open and cavernous. You crave a smaller, protective space. Somewhere you can squeeze yourself into, where other things—stronger things—can hold you together, because without them you just may come flying apart in the winds of a scream you can't control.

Your bathroom isn't as small and tight as the dark cupboard you yearn for right now, but it's better than this yawning space that was originally designed to hold four patients. You need to get to that smaller space, but you'll be damned if you ring a nurse for help. A nurse wouldn't leave you alone. You'll have to do this yourself.

You smear tears from your eyes and push the thin hospital-issue blankets down your legs. The heavy limbs can pull themselves over the edge of the mattress, but you can't control their descent, and you hear your bare feet slap roughly onto the floor. You feel it a moment later, and grit your teeth until the impact coiling up your calves dissipates.

You feel like a teetering tenpin skittle when you move your hand from the mattress to stand. You manage it, though.

Now for the hard part.

You swing one leaden leg in front of you. Just a little. Your torso leans after it, and your foot lands. You teeter. You balance.

You've done it. Your first unaided step.

Your eyes chart a path to the bathroom door, and you take your best guess at how many more steps you'll have to take. Ten? Twelve?

You manage three. Then the hard linoleum floor is rushing at your face. There are no gym mats to catch you, here. You put your hands out in time, and hear the wet-sounding meaty slap a moment before you feel it, an echo of what you'd done to your feet earlier.

The ajar bathroom door looks so far away that for a moment you think about just going back to bed. This was a fool's mission. But when you look back over your shoulder, your bed looks insurmountably high.

Onwards, then.

You army crawl the rest of the way, the cold floor biting into your forearms as they bear you along. You palm the door open and haul yourself inside, twisting back around to pull it closed as far as you can at floor level. A finger-width of space remains, but it's closed enough to keep the cavern of your room at bay.

You heave yourself to the far wall and pull yourself into a sitting position. Then you shuffle backwards to squeeze yourself into the smallest space you can fit—in the corner, pressed against the walls, with the cold hardness of the toilet's U-bend on your other side.

Thus contained, all your broken pieces held inside by hospital infrastructure, you cry. You cry until finally you sleep.

You always sleep, eventually.