Don

Session 1

I walked into Don’s quaint Victorian bungalow on that first day and immediately felt my skin crawl.

The man staring back at me from across the room was a horrid nightmare. His eyes were two stones of obsidian, penetrating and full of malice. A flaccid black mohawk splayed across his head in a mass of hysteria. His face was skeletal and sallow, cheekbones high and prominent. Twisting tattoos crawled from head to toe; assorted piercings studding his nose, lips, and eyebrows. The black vest hanging on his bony shoulders was patterned with flickering flames and serpent-wrapped skulls. It was as if death itself had crawled from a grave and claimed a seat on the kitchen chair across from me.

The sound of his voice was the rattle of a bag of broken glass, “So, you’re the physiotherapist, mother fucker.”

I gulped; it was going to be a long six months. 

Session 2

I survived the first day, barely. After having to dodge a few hurled projectiles — two coffee mugs and a remote control — and feeling as if I had spent a day with the living version of King Lear, I was regretting taking on this case. My heart rate had sky-rocketed when he told me that he had gotten out of prison “three months ago”.

The only thing that kept me coming back was that I learned what happened to him, what really happened to him.

I thought I might be the only one who could help him. In fact, I needed to help him.

Session 3

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called “mother fucker.” Each session, I have to endure the wrath of Don. It feels like I’m in a boiling pot of water, the increasing steam about to collapse my frame in on itself.

After another grueling session working with Don, he asked me just before I left, if I wanted to play poker, Five-Card Draw.

I was utterly confused.

I came up with some lame excuse to get out of it. I think Don knew I was lying.

Session 4

I didn't have an excuse this time. We played Five-Card Draw after our session and I lost the only twenty bucks in cash I had in my wallet. 

As much as I love my job, I didn’t work for the government so I could lose all of my money gambling with an infuriated maniac. My ears hurt from the neurotic profanity spewing from his mouth like hot geysers.

Don seems to hate everything, especially juries, judges, and lawyers. 

Session 5

Trying to release his grip was like trying to pry open a bear’s jowls after it had latched onto its prey. Spasticity, it was called, one of the long-term side effects of having a stroke.

“Looks like you’ve got a claw for a hand,” I joked feebly as I slowly tried to open the fingers of his right hand locked in a fist. After five sessions, I had earned the right to joke without getting assailed by a coffee mug gone airborne.

“Just work on that middle finger. All I gotta do is flip the bird to those mother fuckers that think my neighborhood roads are the Daytona 500.” Don said, his tattooed face stuck in a grimace.

It had been a rocky transition after I got the introduction from hell. Don got pissed at every little thing I said or did. Each session was like trying to navigate a field of land mines.

After a few treatments, I found that you had to rib him a little to build any kind of rapport.

“Easy there killer. Dr. Connelly says you’ve got to keep an eye on your blood pressure. We don’t want you to have another stroke. You know you should really try meditating, manage all that stress better.” I ducked, waiting for the barrage of profanity.

“Meditating’s for pussies. P-U-S-S-I-E-S. Pussies.” He made a spitting motion with his mouth but nothing came out. “Just get me better maggot, get me back on my Harley.”

During our initial visit, Don and I discussed expectations and goals with his in-home therapy. I learned the one thing Don wanted more than anything was to get back on his motorcycle. He hadn’t ridden his bike since before the ten years he had spent in prison. It was a constant obsession for him to get on the road again. 

“We’ll have to do something about all that rage.” I felt like I was trying to move the Great Wall of China wresting his hand to open.

“Fuck you.” He glared at me, the vein on his right temple pulsing as I worked on his fingers.

“One day we’re going to get that hand open,” I said.

“You better maggot. If I’m not riding that Harley down the road by the end of this, I’ll pin you down and tattoo ‘mother fucker’ on your forehead.”

I wondered why I had decided to come back after day one.

Session 10

Things were getting mildly warmer between the two of us. Don was still an impassioned lunatic, but he was using a little less profanity with me each session and his outbursts were becoming more manageable. Or maybe I was just getting used to them.

We made Five-Card Draw a ritual at the end of every session. He picked up a love for it during his stint in prison. Don was always the last patient on my schedule. As much as I suffered more verbal abuse in one session with Don than I’ve had in my entire life, I knew he needed me to stay. I didn’t mind sticking around an extra half hour for a few rounds.

They were small bets, one to three dollars a game. He beat me more often than not, he was a good bluffer. I was losing money every time we played, but I kept playing; I knew he needed it.

He could only hold the cards with his left hand, his right was still locked up with spasticity. To play the cards, he would have to place them face-down on the table, remember which was which, and then draw them from the table. He fumbled a lot but was able to manage.

As we gambled, I looked at his right hand and hoped that by the end of this, we could get it to open, together. I wanted to help him.

Session 12

Don was still as enraged as ever, but we were making progress with him physically. He was able to use his legs better, especially the right one affected by the stroke.

I had him up using a walker in his living room — it was difficult with only his left hand on it.

“So when do you think I can get back on the hog?” He said as his legs trembled under him with each step.

“Don, do you know how bad your stroke was?” I was on his right side with my hands extended, strafing sideways, guarding his right knee from buckling.

“It’s going to take a lot more than a brain bleed to keep this mother fucker off his lady.”

I was beginning to think he called everything a ‘mother fucker.’

He stumbled a bit and I reached out to catch him. I grabbed a hold of his right arm, elbow bent and tightly locked to his body, his fist clenched in a vice.

“Just think of it Tim,” he said, sounding exasperated as he regained his balance. “There’s nothing like it. Just imagine, the roar of the road, the wind whipping your hair, that sun hitting your face, you feel alive on that baby.” It was the first time that I saw the faint glimmer of a smile on his face.

“I think I could get my pals to hit up the old roads again, the old joints, it would be a time, just like back in the day.”

He talked about his friends before the incident on occasion. He had reached out to them after he got out of the joint, but so far, no one had contacted him back.

I didn’t want him to get his hopes up. 

Session 17

Don had been steadily improving. His score on the Berg Balance Scale — a test for measuring functional balance — had improved by five points since we had started sessions together. I noticed his walking had gotten smoother, and he was able to complete tasks more successfully by compensating with his left hand.

The one thing I hadn’t been able to put a dent in, was his right hand. I had tried every muscle facilitation technique in my physiotherapist’s toolkit. It was as locked as a bank vault. 

That day, Don had a pair of pliers waiting on the kitchen table when I came in.

“You’re going to get this hand open, mother fucker.”

After prying at his hand with the hunk of metal for twenty minutes and earning myself a few blisters, I didn’t get it open.

Don cleaned me out in poker that night.

Session 20

It was nearing the end of our sessions together and Don was doing well. He wasn’t by any means close to getting back on his Harley, but he needed a walker less and less. His movement had improved significantly, and he was getting close to the point where he no longer needed any physiotherapy.

It was a beautiful day, and we decided it would be a good idea to do Don’s session in the backyard to take advantage of the sunshine and cool breeze.

He was still having difficulties with his hand and arm. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t make any progress on it. The spasticity was intense, one of the worst cases I had seen. But, we were trying to focus on the things that he was improving on, which were his walking and mobility.

We were walking together in the backyard. He had a cane in his left hand — the grass was more unstable for him than the living room floor.  

“You got this Don,” I said as he moved steadily through the yard. He had a faint hint of a smile on his face; it was a rare sight.

I was happy for him; he had come a long way from our first day together. Anger aside, we had bonded; I think he actually liked me.

Suddenly, he stopped.

“Don?”

In his backyard is an impressive oak tree, its thick limbs stretching out to touch the sky. He was staring at it. 

“That’s… that’s where she did it,” he said. His eyes were lost, as if waking from a coma, noticing the world for the first time.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“What hurts the most,” he continued, “is that her last thought was that I could have done something like that. She was thinking I did that.”

All at once, he was as fragile as a child, his Kevlar exterior ripped open, and a boy stood, there on the grass, in the backyard. He was six-year-old Don, innocent and delicate.

He lifted his head and his eyes met mine, there were tears there, rolling down his cheeks, onto his chin.

“I can’t forgive them. The people who put me here. I keep trying, but I can’t. How can you make a mistake like that? How can I move on from this?”

I didn’t say anything, just looked, tried to provide comfort with my eyes.

Under the cloudless sky, muffled by the rustle of the leaves of the oak tree, I heard him break down and weep.

Session 21

We took a break this week and just played poker for the hour session that he was allotted.

In our first session, Don told me his story. He had been wrongfully convicted of the murder of Jonas Pauling — a little boy found chopped up in the Okanaw River — and was sentenced to life in prison. 

When new evidence came to light ten years later, he was released from lockup. During his stint in jail, his wife — unable to cope with her husband being a murderer — had hung herself from the oak tree in the backyard of their home.

To make matters worse, the week Don was released from prison, he had a stroke on the left side of his brain. It left him with terrible function on the right side of his face and body. He spent the next three months in the hospital recovering. 

When he was finally out of the hospital and on his own, the government-funded program for in-home physiotherapy had tasked me with rehabilitating him, once a week for twenty-six weeks.

Rightfully so, Don was angry; angry at anyone and everyone for what had happened to him. Angry at the lawyers, angry at the jury, angry at the judge. Every session was like walking into a volcano on the verge of eruption. 

After what happened with the oak tree last week, he was less eruptive. It was still there, but dampened a bit.

Session 26

It was our last day together, Don and me. I got him a parting gift, a little model Harley. When I gave it to him, he looked at it, frowned, and threw it across the room. I could hear the model clatter into pieces as it hit the floor. I didn’t mind.

We decided for our last day to play an extended round of Five-Card Draw. I was supposed to visit a friend, but I called to tell her I was going to be late. I didn’t know when Don would have another visitor.

We had been playing for a good two hours when I looked at my watch, saw it was 7:04 PM, and got up to leave.

“Hey Tim,” Don said. “One more go.”

I looked at him. Deep within those obsidian eyes, I could fully see him: pain, loneliness, and a wish for things to be different. All at once, I felt the full impact of his situation hit me like a wave. As tears welled in my eyes, I blinked them away.

“Sure Don, one more game. I swear all of this gambling and I’m going to have to put myself in an addiction center.”

I sat back down at the table. We both threw a dollar bill into the middle. He dealt the cards, five for me, five for him. 

I looked at them: Ace, king — both in spades, three of hearts, six of clubs, jack of diamonds.

Across from me, Don’s eyes crinkled a bit. He had a slight frown on his eyebrows — probably not a good hand.

Don bet an extra dollar. I matched him.

I discarded the non-spade cards and was dealt three new ones: two of spades, nine of hearts, and nine of clubs.

Don discarded one card and dealt himself a new one.

He looked across at me with steel in his eyes and slid another dollar bill into the middle of the table.

I stared at him. Was he bluffing? If so, it was a good bluff. I pondered for a moment. I didn’t want to lose another dollar on a pair of nines, and I thought Don could use the win. I laid down my cards.

“Fold,” I said.

He smiled a rare smile.

“Got ya mother fucker!” He placed down his cards in front of him: nothing. I would have beat him with the pair of nines.

“Good bluff Don,” I smiled and got up to leave, gathered my therapy bag, and threw it over my shoulder. I started to head for the door. 

At that moment, I wanted to say something; I felt like I had to.

I thought of Don; I didn’t know if he would ever get out of his rut, or if he would ever get over the injustice he was dealt. I felt like he was some casualty of some systemic problem; and I knew that there were more people out there like him, suffering some similar fate.

I felt like the only thing I could do was what any of us can do when faced with someone in a similar circumstance: try and help. And if that fails: hope. Hope for them, for things to be better.

I thought of something sheepish, but I turned back to look at him and said it all the same.

“I guess sometimes you’re dealt a bad hand, and you get to choose how to play it.”

It felt cliché to say, almost awkward, but, I knew it needed to be said. 

He blinked at me.

I headed for the door, opened it, and turned back to look at Don for the last time. He was sitting in the same chair on the first day I had walked in, wearing the same vest, holding the same expression on his face. Only this time, he looked like an old friend, someone you had known for a long time, and knew you weren’t going to see for a while, perhaps forever.

As I closed the door behind me, out of the corner of my eye — maybe I had imagined it, had wanted it to happen, but I was sure I saw it — I saw his right fist loosen, just a little.