Homecoming (Lesbian) - Chapter 23: Chapter 23

"Riley Brenan?" the nurse asked. I looked up from my book and stood up, "Dr. Carlson will see you now."
I shoved my book back into my backpack and stood up. Dr. Carlson was woman probably on her forties, and I was thankful it was actually a woman. Why, you may ask? How would you feel if a guy were to undress you and touch parts of your body you didn't allow him to for the sake of testing stuff?
I walked in, closed the door behind me and sat in front of her desk.
She was typing on her computer when she said, "Just give me a second, please. This keyboard needs a replacement," she joked.
I smiled and took the time to look around the room. There was a medical table to the left, where I knew I would be laying in a moment; next to it, a medical scales with the addition to measure your height in both inches and centimeters. To my right, an eye chart and a crystal closet that contained instruments that I hoped never to feel close to any part of my body. Then my eyes went back to her. She already had gray hair, some wrinkles around her eyes and her mouth, and a stethoscope around her neck.
"Riley, right?" the doctor said with her attention still on the computer screen, like she was reading my file.
I replied, "Yes, ma'am."
"Twenty five years old, four years of service, three tours, one in Iraq, two in Syria," she turned to me as if she expected me to verify the information.
Again I answered, "Yes, ma'am."
"It says here that you were discharged three months before your time was up because of several injuries."
"It says all of that?" I asked.
"Of course, the army keeps records of every mission you've ever been sent to and how those mission... affected your physical wellbeing. How else am I going to know what treatment to give you if I don't know what caused it, and how damaging the injuries really were when they occurred?"
"Right."
"I'm going to read you the injuries that are listed here and you tell me yes or no. Sometimes there could be mistakes in the files."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Two-inch superficial cut behind the right ear caused by a grenade splinter,"
I pulled my hair backwards to show her the scar. "Yes."
She typed again in her computer and proceeded. She read everything, all of it. Every single scratch I got while I was serving my country, she could see in her computer, including... "Brain injuries caused by concussion," I nodded again, and then... "Partial amp―" she had to stop herself, she looked at my arm and decided not to ask the obvious. "Okay, Riley, everything seems in order. Any other injuries that we don't know of?"
I shook my head and she asked me to get undress, put on a blue coat that didn't even got to my knees and seat on top the table. I did as she wanted while she stood up and took out a small flashlight from her coat's pocket.
She stood next to me and started looking at my scars, "Are you having memory issues?"
"Yes."
"With what kind of memories?" I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so she decided to be a bit more specific about the question "Are you forgetting places, birthdays, names of people you knew your whole life?"
"No, no, most of those I know. I'm having issues with small things. Like going to the store to buy something and then, when I get there, I don't remember what I was supposed to buy. Or things like, I lose my train of thought really easily so... maintaining conversations can be hard."
"I see," she said while nodding. She turned on the flashlight and pointed it directly into my right eye "How often are you having headaches?"
The fact that she asked how often, instead of if I was getting headaches made me feel vulnerable in the most horrible way. As if I were a broken child and everyone around could see it. They could see that there was something wrong with me.
I swallowed as she changed the flashlight to my left eye, "I'm not sure..."
"Are you keeping a journal? It tends to help people with memory issues due to brain injury."
"Does my phone count? The nurse over there told me a journal does help because of rewriting information but I don't know if my phone counts"
She smiled, "Yes, it does. Although I would also recommend and notebook. "
I asked her to hand me my phone, which was inside my jeans. I looked for the information. Every time I got a headache, I would pull out my phone, type in the date and the hour and by the numbers on my phone, I answered, "Uh, maybe two, three days apart?"
"Are you taking pills for that?"
"Yeah."
"Do they help?"
"Most times, yeah."
"If they stop helping, you can give me a call and I will give you something stronger."
She checked at the scar behind my ear as I asked, "Am I going to suffer from headaches my whole life?"
She straightened up, with eyes narrowing, as if she were figuring a way to answer that question that didn't sound damning. "Probably, but not as often. As months go by, the frequency will decrease"
"How much?"
"Can't really say but after years, most people have been shown to get them as spaced out as once every few weeks. If it doesn't decrease in rate, we'll have you checked to make sure you're fine." Alright, once every few weeks doesn't sound too bad. Plus pills do help. "Are you feeling any other type of pain?"
"My arm hurts sometimes, and I notice that when I jog, my headaches get stronger."
"Exercise tends to do that about brain injuries..."
"So I should stop?"
"No, you should do it with precaution, don't push yourself too much."
She went on to put the stethoscope on my chest and ask me to breath in and out, then laid me down and pressed down on my chest and stomach, and felt my legs looking for something out of place. She then asked me to stand up and step on the weight. She compared my weight to my height and muscle built and determined it was healthy. And finally, the bad stuff. She asked me to remove my arm sling and take the bandage off.
As soon as she saw my flesh uncovered, she said, "Jesus," in a tone that told me she'd seen this before, but she never gets used to it. "Can you stretch it?"
"Yeah, but it hurts a little."
"That's because you need a physiotherapist."
She stretched my arm and I sucked up the pain. She pushed my wrist up and down to strain the muscles. I hurt as hell.
She let go of my arm and pulled out a pen from her pocket, then lifted my hand and pressing on my thumb asked, "Do you feel this?" I nodded, she went on to my index and asked again, "Do you feel this?" Again, I moved my head up and down. She looked down at my fingers as she pressed the middle one, "Do you feel this."
I licked my lips as I replied "No,"
I already knew, but being confronted with it again, it doesn't make it easy. I had no sense of touch from my middle finger to my pinky.
She moved upwards with the pen until I could feel it again, just below the palm. She put her pen away and I asked "When will I recover sensation in those fingers?"
She sighed, and licked her lips, "Chances are you won't. Over time you could recover some sensation, but not all of it. I'm sorry."
I swallowed to stop myself from crying in front of my doctor, and instead asked another question, "What about mobility?"
"With physiotherapy it will improve in time. You probably feel pain now just to try and form a punch with it, right?" I nodded, "Keep the arm sling for another two weeks, then get in contact with a physiciotherpist, I can recommend a couple. Rehabilitation will be difficult, but you will recover full mobility..."
"Just not feeling in my hand..." I finished her sentence.
Dr. Carlson was right, I never recovered full sensation in my fingers. After years, I can feel things like pressure, intense heat or cold... but that's about it. If you stick a needle in my middle finger, it would have to go deep for me to feel it. It's like having those three fingers under anethesia all the time. At first, it made me angry, sad, frustrated. I wanted to burst crying in that office and curse at the world, but over time, I learned to count my blessings, I still had all my limbs attached to me and that's more than a lot of people can say. And I did recover full mobility, so there is that. I can't count myself as one of the unlucky ones.
That day I went back home at one PM. My mom was waiting for me, ready to ask me every single question she could come up with. The only reason she hadn't come with me, was because I asked her not to, and by asked, I mean forced her not to. I didn't want her there, not because I would feel a little silly having my mommy taking me to the doctor, but because I didn't want her to look at my body. The bullet holes, the cuts, the scratches... my arm. I didn't want to do that to her.
She was writing on her laptop, sitting on the sofa when I closed the front door. She placed the laptop on the coffee table and waited for me to come seat next to her.
"Good news or bad news?" she asked as I sat.
I pulled out my phone. Doctor had helped me write down everything and even though I remember most of it because it was deeply saddening to me, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't forget anything. "Little of both. The headaches will take it easy after a while and she gave me a schedule with the pills I should be taking, nothing out of the ordinary, most of the are the same ones I'm already taking. She added a couple to help me with concentration and memory."
"You... your memory won't improve?"
"She thinks memory exercises could help. I also should start looking for a physician for my arm if I want to be able to use it again."
"That's it?" she asked, a little too hopeful.
"That's it."
"Well those are not bad news, are they? I mean, sure Riley, we knew your memory wasn't going to improve much but apart from that, everything looks promising, right?"
I thought about telling her about my damaged nerves in my arm, but I decided against it, she was happy and watching my mom being so positive about it..., truth is it did help. "Yeah, it could've benn worse, right?"
"Right, we just need to get you a physician and download one of those apps that have memory challenges," she joked.
I shouldn't be spoiling it for you, but to hell with it, this is my story. After years went by my concentration did get better, but my memory didn't. Not too much. I still have issues, a lot, I've just learned to live with them. Losing my train of thought in a conversation, forgetting what I was taking about... leaving someone hanging with a question because I wasn't paying attention and I forgot.
"Oh, by the way darling, you got a call while you were out."
"From whom?"
"A Mr. Green I think, about uh..." my mom looked for the paper where she had written the information down. Picked it up and read it to me, "Yes, Green, he said your offer has been accepted. What does that mean?"
My mouth opened up, I pulled out my phone and wrote what my mom had just told me, and then asked her to hand me his phone number. "It means I got a place to open up my bookstore."