ABOUT A w
eek or so after my surgery a nurse was helping me to walk again. It was slow at first, dragging my right leg a little. The nurse was very patient and helpful. The phone rang at the nurse’s desk. Since I was using a four-legged walker, which was very steady, she left me standing in the middle of the hal while she went to answer it. I concentrated hard on walking. I shut my eyes and visualized myself walking.
I began to see inward, the muscle and nerves. I saw them working together in unison, making me walk. I felt the rhythm, a rhythm you don’t think about when you walk. Normal y we take it for granted. The messages were traveling at four hundred miles an hour from brain to muscle, tel ing them to work. My brain was tired and traumatized though, it needed time to think. These things should be involuntary, but now they were voluntary. Concentrate. Concentrate on the nerve impulses to make the muscles contract and relax.
I opened my eyes and glanced towards the nurses’ station. My nurse was deep in conversation, but stil kept a fleeting eye on me every so often. I looked ahead towards the end of the hal . Keeping my eyes centered on that wal , I lifted my walker off the floor and walked as fast as I could to the end of the hal . When I reached the end of the hal I quickly turned around and set my rocker down and looked over at the nurse who promptly set down the phone and ran down the hal after me.
I did other crazy things too. I learned how to pop wheelies in my wheelchair and play jokes on the nurses. After fourteen days they must have had enough of me, they sent me home.
I was sad to leave in a way. I got to know so many people, probably because I got to be a favorite and they al spoiled me. A lot of it was because some of the other kids in there were just holding on to life by a thread. Some incurable disease had chosen them as a victim.
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There was this little boy in the room next to me who was dying of leukemia. He would cry quite often and keep me awake. I would always wonder why he had to go through al of that in this life. He was a good kid. Why did he have to be subjected to al that when most children were happy and healthy? Obviously there was a large part of life that was not meant to be understood. I wonder if he understood something we didn’t. Something that told him he had to go through this so he could move, elevate, to a new place of existence. What other existence could there be? Possibly to a similar place as my white robed visitor had been on? The out-of-body-experience, the angel, was I missing something? Was this a clue to the unknown? Was I meant to keep looking for answers to things I didn’t understand, let alone explain?
Wel , they got their wish.