Not Alone

I sat in my dining room, the big table piled with paperwork: hospital forms, insurance claims, coverage statements.

All a medical and legal paper trail for my 20-year-old son Danny, leading back to that day when everything about his life and mine changed forever.

One minute he was joyriding with some friends out on a twisty country road. The next, a quadriplegic and brain-damaged, almost every trace of the strong-willed, energetic, even exasperating boy I loved gone. Or almost.

Danny had been out of the hospital a while now. He used a special wheelchair sized for his six-foot-two frame. Our house bustled with caregivers; a nurse’s aide, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, all seemingly trying to resurrect as much of the old Danny as still might exist inside his broken brain and body.

In fact, it was those caregivers who had me going through all that paperwork that afternoon. They had started saying ominous things. Danny, six weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday the day of the accident, was an adult now, off our insurance and covered by Medicaid.

“We’ll have to discontinue our visits if your son doesn’t show more signs of improvement,” the therapists told me. “Insurance just won’t cover it anymore.”

I told them that I would figure something out, like I’d been doing all my life. Lead, follow or get out of the way—that’s what my husband, Denny, said my motto could be.

I’d had a chaotic childhood—alcoholic parents—and I’d basically raised my­self. Who else could I count on to keep everything under control? Denny complained that he couldn’t do a single chore without me following behind him to do it all over again. Well, I liked the beds made a certain way. Given Danny’s condition, wasn’t it obvious that we needed more order and structure around this house?

Now I needed a solution. I’d kept things going so far by quitting my job to coordinate Danny’s team of caregivers. What would we do without them? More than that, what did they mean, “If your son doesn’t show more signs of improvement”? Were they saying that Danny would never improve? I didn’t want to believe that. All of our efforts couldn’t be for nothing. Surely we could bring him back a little. Surely life wouldn’t go on like this forever.

I concentrated harder on the papers. So little money! So many expenses! Denny pastored a small church and worked full-time for the telephone company. No way could we afford to pay caregivers out of our own pocket. I tried to beat back the despair that began to envelop me, beat it back like I had since I was a kid.

The phone rang.

“Ricki?”