Moving Forward in Reverse by Martin Scott, Coryanne Hicks Page A

someone at the door
with a welcoming smile spreading across my mouth. After breakfast was always my
first training session with Kathy.
    You’re early, I’d been about to quip. Go away until I’ve finished digesting.
    When my eyes lighted on the same elderly prosthetist who had done
the casting, though, the words froze on my tongue.
    ‘Good morning, Scott,’ he called in greeting, his voice breathy
and bland. I tried to swallow the loathing that was overtaking my mood. It was
unfair to hate the messenger, I knew, but I had to direct my abhorrence
somewhere. And this particular messenger came baring the future bane of my
existence.
    I eyed the mechanical contraptions he toted as he walked to the
right side of my bed and muttered a half-hearted greeting in reply. He laid the
hooks at my feet and I fought the urge to kick them from the bed. Instead, I
stared them down, studying the cylindrical tube which would be my new forearm
and the shining, claw-like hooks which would be my new hands. My heart sank
like a leaden weight, plummeting to the pit of my stomach faster than a hawk in
dive.
    ‘Mind if I move the table away?’ the prosthetist asked, still with
that banally pleasant tone. I nodded once and gestured with my right arm in a
sweeping motion as I turned away from the hooks at my feet.
    He swung the table to the side, wheeling it far enough from the
bed for him to move between it and the side rail.
    ‘Do you have a T-shirt with you?’ he asked next. I motioned to the
closet to my left. As he made his way across the room, all I could think was
how I didn’t want to be there – didn’t want him to be there. Please, just go
away.
    When he returned to my bed he was holding the freshly washed,
royal blue Nike tee I’d been wearing the day I began feeling sick. I could
barely remember the Scott who had worn that shirt anymore; the Scott who had
led such a hopeful, happy life; the Scott who had no reason to fear the
prostheses currently at my feet. What I wouldn’t give to have some of his
blissful ignorance with me now.
    But I was older and wiser than he had been. Circumstances had
rendered me a new man and this Scott couldn’t hide from the consequences of the
hooks.
    ‘Go ahead and remove the hospital gown above your waist and put
this on for me, Scott.’ I nodded glumly and followed his instructions, shrugging
my arms out of the gown and letting the top portion of it fall to my lap. He
held the shirt out for me to take.
    When I didn’t reach for the tee as he’d expected, he saw his error
and a pink blush rose up his throat. He brought the shirt to me and laid it
face down on my lap. It was the first time I had tried to dress without
assistance, but I wasn’t about to share that fact with him.
    I carefully slid my arms into the sleeves, lifted the shirt up to
my head as I sat up and let it fall over my face. On any other day this feat
would have been met with a surge of pride. Today, I simply looked to him with a
blank expression, waiting apathetically to see what would come next.
    He walked back to my right side and grabbed one of the prostheses
by the wrist. Two loops of white straps were strung between the limbs, lacing
through a metal ring at the center. He placed the straps over my shoulders and
across my back so they formed an X with the metal ring situated between my
shoulder blades just below the base of my neck.
    I allowed him to move me with gentle nudges as he needed while I
stared fixedly at the wall before me. As he held each cylinder up for me to
slide my arms into, I felt like a wild Maverick horse being saddled for the
first time. There was a part of me which wanted to rebel against this; to jerk
my arms and shoulders from his grasp and rip the thick straps from my body. I
wanted to lash out at him verbally, yelling for him to get the hell out of my
room and take his damn hooks with him. But a deeper, darker part of me held
fast in the face of my fury. It gradually swelled within me like a