Final Stroke by Michael Beres Page B

to our waists instead of eating them.” Lydia chewed for a mo ment, then said, “Crazy calling these things guys. Maybe we’ve all had strokes to one degree or another. You said Steve used to call a thing him , or a male nurse she , or even it . How’s that any different than call ing a dumpling a guy?”
    “Steve’s better with pronouns now” said Jan. “Slow as hell, but a lot better than he was back in the hospital. When I first got him the portable computer he was fixated with the idea that the world had changed, not him. Or he’d see news on television about storms and war and earthquakes and look down and shake his head. When he fi nally started typing on the computer, he wrote, ‘It’s official, the world has had a stroke.’ Back then I wasn’t sure if he’d ever talk again.”
    When Lydia did not respond, Jan continued. “But he is getting bet ter. For a while he was fixated on a mystery man from the past, some guy with dark eyes. One of the therapists said since Steve has dark eyes, maybe he was thinking of himself. They run them through the mill at that place. He’s quizzed every day on the names of other patients and people on staff. In one of the hallways on the first floor, they’ve got an employee bulletin board with mug shots and names. And in vocational rehab they’ve got another board without names and they make them put names with the faces.”
    Lydia stopped eating and stared at Jan, a familiar sad smile on her face, a smile that had come to mean, “Go ahead, let it out.”
    “It’s funny, yet not so funny,” said Jan. “During the last couple years we’d really been watching our diets, trying to avoid things that would gum up Steve’s arteries. We started doing it as soon as we found out his cholesterol was high. I guess we were too late for that one damn clot that went into his speech center and shot the place up.
    “But I shouldn’t complain because, despite having to speak slowly to him, he seems to understand most of what I say. He likes to cheer me up when I arrive and usually has a funny story to tell. Did I tell you we made a pact to be cheerful as hell for the rest of our lives? Steve said that since the stroke made him a cheerful son of a bitch, he wants me to be one so he won’t look foolish in public. I suppose saying cheerful things is a lot better than the first few things he got out. A couple days after the stroke, he wrote down that he’d always wanted to die fast, not like this. It was jumbled up, but I managed to decipher it.
    “It’s the old emotional roller coaster. When Steve first called Saint Mel’s Hell in the Woods, I assumed he’d coined the phrase and thought it was a breakthrough. But the next day I found out everyone who works there, and most of the residents, call it Hell in the Woods. A woman in the business office told me about it. When Steve was moved from the hospital I thought I’d see more of him. But they keep him busy. ‘Living the rehab,’ they call it. I guess that’s part of the reason they call it Hell in the Woods. I’ve really gotten to know the place, walking the halls when I’m there and can’t see him because he’s in therapy. In the hospital they were more concerned with the physi cal, like working on using the walker instead of the wheelchair. But here, although they seem reasonably concerned with his physical abili ties, the main focus is on memory and speech.”
    “Don’t stop talking,” said Lydia. “You need rehab, too.”
    “I guess so. But sometimes I feel selfish doing what I’m doing. It’s as though I’m trying to remake Steve into what he was, and I’m not sure if that’s right. Sometimes I think I’m trying to use the stroke to my advantage by ignoring the lousy life I had before I met him. I’ve had difficulty telling him about the years as a stripper and about the massage parlors. I can talk to you about this because it’s something we share. But to not share this part of my past with Steve