Learning Curve

Sunday April 13th

Scottie

“We love you, Scottie,” Coach Jordan says and leans over my hospital bed at Daytona Regional Medical Facility to give me a big hug. “I’ll be thinking about you. Praying for you. And don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything, okay?” She turns to look over at my dad and sister Wren, who stand in the far corner of the room beside Finn.

As soon as Finn told Ty what had happened, he got my dad and sister down here on the first plane he found.

“Anything she needs, Mr. Bardeaux. You have my number.”

“Thanks, Coach,” my dad responds with a little nod.

Coach Jordan gives me one final hug and presses her forehead to mine. “Love you, girl.”

As she steps away from my bed, every girl on my squad takes turns in her place, giving me hugs and well-wishes. They’re all dressed in our navy Dickson travel sweats, ready to get on the bus to travel back to New York, and I hate that I’m not going with them.

I don’t have all the final news about my injury yet—the doctor is supposed to be meeting with me today now that they have all the scans they needed—but for at least the foreseeable future, not winning Nationals and not getting on the bus to head back home are least of my worries.

I still have no feeling in my legs or feet, and my bowels and bladder aren’t under my control either. I feel like half a person—like the scraps at the end of a magic trick gone wrong. I still feel like I’m going to wake up at some point and this all will have been a nightmare.

Tonya steps up to my bed, tears actively pouring down her cheeks. Her whole face is puffy and red, and I’m not sure she has stopped crying since the minute the whole awful thing happened. “I’m so sorry, Scottie,” she says, and her voice shakes with grief. “I don’t know what happened. I hate—”

“Don’t do that.” I shake my head. “This isn’t your fault. It was a freak thing, Tonya. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that.”

No one really knows what exactly went wrong, but I do know that after the storms rolled through on Friday, there were still slick spots on the mat, no matter how hard the NCA staff tried to clean it up. I think between that and Tonya’s already weak ankle, something just went wrong that no one could’ve seen coming or prevented.

I guess it could be argued they shouldn’t have had us out on the mat if it was still wet, but I saw the NCA staff with my own eyes working their asses off to dry it, and the safety staff checked it comprehensively.

I could easily be angry, but no amount of righteous indignation is going to put feeling back below my waist. I just need to give it time.

Tonya hesitates to hug me, guilt still evident on her face, and I reach forward with both arms to pull her close to me. It’s a little awkward because of my current situation—stuck in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and legs that won’t seem to wake up—but I do my best.

Kayla is the last one to give me a hug, and she squeezes me so tight that my lungs have a hard time accommodating air. “I wish I could stay with you,” she whispers into my ear, and I lean back to meet her eyes. She’s still visibly distraught, her lips quivering as she tries to stay strong for me.

“I’ll be back in New York soon. You need to go with the team.”

“I know. But…I just feel like I’m leaving you behind.”

“No.” I shake my head. “You have to go. End of story.”

She nods and lifts one hand to swipe a lone tear that streams down her cheek. “Love you,” she says and squeezes my hand, and I squeeze her hand back.

“Love you too.”

Once my coach and teammates leave my room, heading for the bus that’s waiting for them outside the hospital, I let out a big exhale and swallow hard against the urge to cry.

Being strong for them, when it feels like my entire world has been flipped upside down, is no easy feat.

Finn notices me fighting and shakes his head, giving me permission to let it all go. As emotion pours out, he steps away from my dad and my sister and takes a seat on the edge of my bed. His fingers rub gently at mine as I gasp at the void of the room, trying to take a breath deep enough to actually breathe.

“That was hard,” I whisper to him shakily. With his free hand, he strokes my hair, tucking it behind my ear as it falls into the wetness of my eyes.

“You did good,” he says. “But you don’t have to be strong, you know? It’s okay to be upset right now.”

“Yeah, Scottie,” Wren says and comes to sit on the other side of my bed. She takes my other hand in hers. “You’re allowed to cry, scream, be mad.”

I shrug, an unavoidable embarrassment making my cheeks heat when I can’t make myself stop shaking. Finn reaches up to wipe the tears away from my face with his hand again and places a soft kiss to the apple of my cheek.

My dad stands at the foot of my bed, holding both of my bare feet in his hands, and I can’t feel a damn thing.

I yank my hands away from Finn and Wren, scrubbing them over my face as I try not to panic. Surely this is just temporary. I’ll start to get feeling back soon, and then it’ll be a lot of rehab and other hard things, but I’ll get better. Everything will get better.

Finn’s phone pings with a text notification and I nod for him to check it when he looks at me in question. He reads it quickly, a sad smile curling the corner of his mouth. “It’s Julia,” he says. “They made it back to New York.”

“Good.” Julia, Ace, and Blake were all at the hospital Friday evening and all day Saturday, but they had to fly back home today. Julia was going to try to delay it, but I told her they needed to get back and not miss any classes.

I’m dealing with a setback, but I’ll be back soon enough. And I don’t want to be in college by myself because everyone else was too worried about me and flunked out.

“She says she’ll try to call you later.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“Do you want anything from downstairs, honey?” my dad asks, digging in his pocket for his visitor’s badge to put it back on. He’s worked a lot of hard hours in his life, been a knight in blue-collar armor dealing with our mom, but I’ve never seen him looking like this. His hair is disheveled and sticking out everywhere, and the rims of his eyes are red with tears and fatigue. I know getting the phone call that I’d been injured while hundreds of miles away was probably the hardest thing he’s ever had to hear.

So, I don’t blame him when he offers up excuses to take breaks like this one.

“Good morning, Scottie,” Dr. Stewart, the lead doctor on my case, greets with a friendly smile, surprising us as he steps through the door. I wasn’t expecting that we’d hear from him until later today. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Hopeful,” I say with a smile as Finn takes my hand. “I can’t feel anything yet, but I’m trying to trust the process, you know?” I mean it as a joke, having used humor with Dr. Stewart as a coping mechanism since my arrival. But his mouth doesn’t curve upward like I’d expect, and the line of his jaw is rigid. It’s an immediate hit to my swagger, and Finn’s thumb stops moving on the back of my hand.

“Scottie, we need to discuss what lies ahead,” he says, and the vibe of the room turns ominous.

I glance at my dad and back to the doctor, and Wren wraps an arm around my shoulders in support.

“Is everything okay? Have you gotten results back?”

All day Saturday, I was in and out of my hospital room for testing. X-rays and MRIs and CT scans and a whole bunch of other random exams were performed to give my medical team a more thorough view of my injury. I don’t know what gave me the notion that everything would check out fine eventually, but right now, Dr. Stewart is scaring me that I might have been way off base.

“I have good news and bad news,” he answers, turning on the light board and putting one of my images on it to show me. “This is an MRI of your spine, Scottie. And if you look right here at your lumbar vertebrae, you can see where your spinal injury is located between L2 to L4.”

“So, she definitely has a spinal cord injury?” my dad questions, and Dr. Stewart nods.

“Sometimes swelling at the trauma site can give a false sense of damage. The inflammation causes pressure, and the pressure causes the paralysis.”

“So, that’s what it was? Just inflammation?” Wren hedges.

An angry impatience inside me wants to snap at my family to shut up and let the doctor talk, but deep down, I know they’re just as upset and worried as me.

“I’m afraid not. Unfortunately, Scottie’s injury is more severe.” Dr. Stewart meets my eyes directly, speaking to me with a quiet kindness I know he’s been practicing for years. “Your injury is what we call an incomplete paraplegia, Scottie. What that means in layman’s terms is that your spinal cord severed but not completely, meaning some of the neural circuits between your brain and your lower body still exist.”

“So, that means it’s going to heal, right?” I ask, looking around the room at Finn and my dad and sister. “I mean, I’m eventually going to get feeling back in my legs, right?”

Dr. Stewart’s eyes turn sympathetic. “While you may regain some sensation or movement in the affected areas, the likelihood of anything more than that is low. Spinal cords don’t heal.”

My vision clouds and my hearing tunnels as he keeps talking, my chest seizing up in panic. “But the good news is the location of her injury is not considered life-threatening. Since it is located in the lumbar region of her spine, only her lower extremities are affected. If it were higher, say in the thoracic or cervical areas, we would be dealing with a lot more areas of risk and concern.”

My mind races with another option of something that’ll change what he’s saying and make it all go away. “But what about surgery? Can’t you fix it with surgery?”

He shakes his head. “The spinal cord is an extremely complicated part of the body. Injuries like these affect too many individual cells that are unable to be repaired or regenerate. But since your injury has only affected part of your lumbar spine, and because you’re so young and physically fit, I am extremely hopeful that rehabilitation and physical therapy will be an amazing tool for you if you take it seriously. I can’t make any promises—it’s a horrible reality of my job that there are many uncertainties—but I believe you will be able to regain some control over things like your bladder and bowels.”

“And I’ll be able to walk again, right? I mean, of course, right? I’ll be able to walk again,” I ramble desperately, ignoring Finn as he tries to hold my hand and soothe me.

“As a rule of thumb, I never say never, Scottie.” I hate the sympathetic frown on his face. “I’ve seen a number of medical miracles over the years that, for the most part, I cannot explain. But the likelihood that you’ll regain the use of your legs is limited by the extent of your spinal trauma.”

He keeps talking, saying something about keeping a positive attitude and working hard in rehab, but beyond that, I hear nothing but white noise. My brain is spiraling.

This isn’t temporary. I’m not going to be back on campus next week, and I’m not going to rehab my way back into cheerleading.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

I’ll probably never walk again. Never feel my fucking legs again.

I’m actually paralyzed.

I fight for air through strangled sobs, gulping and gulping at the whole room around me. I scratch at my face and pull at my chest as the feeling of suffocation overwhelms me, and Dr. Stewart runs to the door to call for help.

Finn, my dad, and my sister all scramble at my bedside to help, but nothing makes me feel less like I’m dying. I sob and cry and wheeze for air, and Dr. Stewart finally pushes his way in to slide an oxygen mask over my nose. I take deep, desperate breaths, and Dr. Stewart nods at me over and over to try to help me find a slower, more oxygenating pace.

My dad cries at the foot of my bed and Wren tries to comfort him, while Finn grabs on to my hand and squeezes.

Dr. Stewart preaches of a new normal and taking time to acclimate while Finn holds tightly to me to try to keep me from spiraling out of control, but it’s no use.

Nothing in the world will ever be the same after this news.