The novels were all wrong for the job - a Cormac McCarthy on the bottom, then two Penguin Classics I'd never finished, then a water-stained Middlemarch holding the whole thing at an angle. The laptop screen tilted back like it was trying to look at the ceiling. One cable ran to the wall behind the toaster. I had a cold cup of coffee to the left and nothing else, which felt, at the time - like enough.
The Stack of Paperbacks
The faucet handle was cold enough that I grabbed it with my left hand instead. The right one wouldn't close all the way around anything yet - it hung there, fingers bent at the second knuckle like I'd been holding something that wasn't there anymore. Water ran over it and I sat on the tile with my back against the cabinet under the sink, the one that smells like old pipe and the WD-40 I'd used once and never put away. Three-seventeen, according to the clock on the stove visible through the open door, its green numbers the only light in the whole floor. I stayed there until the hand opened flat against my thigh - and I pressed it down hard on the cold tile and held it there, like I was trying to make an impression.
She clipped the X-ray to the board and the bones went white and then gray at the edges, a little map of something ordinary. No circles. She capped the marker without using it. The list came off a printer still warm, four items, a brand name next to each one - the kind of brand names you see on cardboard displays at Costco and walk past. I turned it over to see if there was more on the back - but the back was blank, and the co-pay receipt under my thumb on the counter had more zeroes than anything on the front.
The E sticks a little now, just enough that I hit it twice sometimes without meaning to - eee - and the riser has a scratch along the left hinge from when it came out of the envelope wrong. I don't put either of them away at night. The keyboard sits beside the riser the way a mug sits beside a coaster, not packed, not stored - just there, like the dish soap or the roll of tape that's found its corner on the counter and stayed. I wipe them down sometimes with the edge of my sleeve, the same way I do the stovetop, out of something that isn't quite habit yet but is getting there. Left shoulder level.
What the Wrist Said at 3 A.M.
The PT's office had a model spine on the desk, plastic vertebrae strung on a metal rod - and she spun it to face me and pointed at two discs with a pen that had a rubber duck on the end. I looked at the duck. She said the word *compensation* three times in four sentences, and each time she said it I thought about the Penguin Classics, the angle, the ceiling. On the way home I stopped at the pharmacy for the gel pack she'd written down, and I stood in the aisle so long that the motion-sensor light clicked off above me and I had to wave my arm to bring it back. The gel pack is in the freezer now - behind the edamame I bought in February, and some mornings I don't need it, and some mornings I do, and I've stopped being surprised by which kind of morning it's.
The Costco list came back when I was washing the edamame pot, the paper softened at the fold from riding in my coat for a week. I'd bought three of the four things on it. The fourth - a name I couldn't say correctly the first time - a split keyboard with a hinge down the middle like a book held open - I'd put back on the shelf because the box felt too serious, the kind of thing someone who knew they were hurt would buy. It sits on the counter now, still in the plastic, the receipt curled underneath it next to the roll of tape, and my right hand - when I reach past it for the dish soap, closes all the way around the bottle. Most days.
The split keyboard is still in the plastic on a Tuesday when my sister calls and asks how the hand is, and I say *better* the way I used to say *fine*, and after we hang up I peel back one corner of the shrink wrap and press my thumb into the hinge and feel the two halves pivot apart, maybe an inch - the way a book does when you first crack its spine. I set it on the desk. The old keyboard goes into the cabinet above the sink, the one where I keep the things I'm not throwing away yet - the Compound W gone hard in the cap, a charger for a phone I no longer own, a pen with a bite mark near the clip. I type my name into the search bar with the new one, nothing else - just my name, and my shoulders sit at the same height in the dark window above the desk, two of them, level, a thing I've to look at twice to believe.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional - financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
