Hero (6 page)

Adelle had no more energy to fight back as she was manhandled out of her nightgown. When Natsinet turned the showerhead on full blast and the cold water struck her, Adelle’s breath once again caught in her throat. The nurse tossed her from one humiliating position to the next as she scrubbed her skin raw with a coarse brush like the kind Adelle’s mother had once scrubbed floors with in the White folk’s houses she cleaned for a living, using it even in areas so tender that they swelled and bled as the rough bristles scoured the delicate flesh and Adelle cried out in anguish. The water quickly went from cold to scalding hot and Natsinet made sure that she exposed every inch of Adelle’s skin to the searing spray.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the water stopped. Adelle could sense Natsinet looking down at her. “There. All clean now. So, can you manage to crawl your lazy ass out of that tub and over to your bed or do I have to drag you again?”

The nurse was standing above her, tapping her orthopedic white shoes impatiently as Adelle pulled herself out of the tub and then inched across the floor on her belly using only one arm and leg to propel herself forward, adding rug burns to the abrasions caused by the scrub brush. By the time she’d made it back to the bed she was sure that she was going to have another stroke or a heart attack. She was also sure that this was exactly what Natsinet was hoping for. No one would question it if an old woman, who had already suffered a stroke, died of another. There would be no coroner’s inquest, no autopsy at all. Adelle closed her eyes and fought like hell to get her breathing and heart rate back under control. She refused to go out that easily.

“I don’t suppose you can make it back into your bed now, can you? That’s okay, we’ll work on that soon. Now go ahead and catch your breath. I’ll be right back.”

Natsinet left, once again leaving Adelle huddled on the floor in misery. This time Adelle had no strength within her to attempt any type of escape. She was so tired and sore. She just wanted to sleep. Her eyes closed and her head began to nod against her chest. She was fast asleep when the nurse returned.

“Wake up! Time for your physical therapy.”

Natsinet knelt down and gathered Adelle in her arms. Adelle’s mouth was inches from the nurse’s neck and she was calculating whether she had the strength to rip out the woman’s carotid artery with her jaw partially paralyzed. She doubted it. In all likelihood it would do nothing but earn her another beating, or worse. Natsinet tossed Adelle down roughly on the bed and eyed her suspiciously, as if she were somehow aware of what Adelle had been thinking.

Natsinet began with some light physiotherapy, lifting Adelle’s limbs and rotating the joints through their full range of motion. Taking her time, and with surprising patience, she guided each limb through several repetitive movements and stretches. She then asked Adelle to wiggle her fingers and toes while she pressed against them providing a counterforce to intensify each muscle contraction.

“These are the therapy techniques your doctor recommended. Conductive Education, a type of physiotherapy where we use repetitive movements to help reeducate your brain on how to use the muscles, hopefully creating new neuropathways in the brain to replace the ones blocked by the stroke. And Muscle Energy techniques utilizing a voluntary contraction of the patient’s muscles, like the one you use to wiggle your fingers and toes, against a controlled counterforce like the resistance of my hand on your fingers. These are all great techniques, and if they work you can expect to see results in as little as two weeks. They say that pretty much whatever movement you recover in the first thirty days is all you will ever recover. That’s why I’ve decided to try a new technique.”

Natsinet reached into her purse and pulled out a small black plastic box with prongs sticking out of the top of it. Adelle recognized it almost immediately. It was one of those stun guns they sold at Army surplus stores and gun shops for self-defense. She’d carried one herself once. Natsinet tapped the trigger on the side of the little box and an arc of electricity crackled between the prongs.

“It’s called electromyographic triggered Neuro-muscular Electrical Stimulation. It’s like Electro Convulsive therapy for the muscles. Usually it’s done with a Stem device and low grade electricity, not the 700,000 volts that this little thing is capable of. But I figure the more electricity the better and quicker the results.

“See, electromyographic signals are electrical impulses originating in the brain and transported via nerve cells to the muscles. These signals cause the muscles to contract. When you have a stroke, the parts of the brain that send and receive these signals no longer function properly, resulting in paralysis of the muscles. During Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation, an electrical impulse is passed from a device such as this little stun gun placed on the skin over a targeted muscle or muscle group. The stimulation causes the muscles to contract. This type of stroke treatment is used to re-learn which part of the brain to activate and to re-develop spontaneous muscle control. It’s actually quite effective, though undoubtedly painful.”

Adelle shook her head, panicked at the idea of being shocked with a taser gun. Natsinet pressed the trigger on the stun gun again and the blue-white burst of electricity cracked between the electrodes, leaving a burning scent in the air. Adelle tried to scramble away. Adrenalin dumped into her bloodstream, giving her a momentary burst of energy that she quickly wasted trying to scamper away on her two good limbs, leaving her once again exhausted. The nurse smiled at her, watching Adelle’s pathetic attempt to save herself with perverse amusement.

“Now where do you think you’re going? Believe me, this is for your own good.”

Adelle was nearly blind with panic, heart thundering in her chest, short shallow breaths bursting from her lungs as she hyperventilated. She threw her good arm over her head to protect it from any electroshocks.

Natsinet smiled.

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t be sending any shocks through your skull. That’s not how it works. At least, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Then she shoved the two electrodes against the naked skin of the old woman’s left leg, and pulled the trigger.

Perhaps it was worse because she was still wet from the bath. Perhaps it would have felt the same had she been dry. Adelle wasn’t sure. All she knew was that all the muscles in her body suddenly felt as if they had a will of their own.

She began to convulse almost immediately as pain tore through her nervous system, every muscle contracting involuntarily, causing her to thrash and flail like a fish on a hook. It was like having some type of painful orgasm. It felt as if her nerves were on fire.

Adelle’s left leg where Natsinet held the stun gun kicked straight out. Her right leg did the same. Her arms went rigid and her fingers clenched. Her teeth ground against each other and her bowels released a flood of excrement. The pain was too great for Adelle to care.

The nurse was staring at Adelle’s legs. Watching with clinical detachment as the muscles contracted and her legs kicked.

“So, I guess you can move those legs after all.”

Natsinet held the trigger for a mere ten seconds but it felt like a lifetime. When she released the trigger, Adelle was breathing like she’d just run a marathon. Her eyes rolled up in her head and her tongue lolled stupidly from her open mouth, drool running down her chin. It took almost another five minutes for Adelle to regain control of her senses.

“Here’s the good news. Both of your legs moved when the electrical current went through you, which means that there’s nothing wrong with the muscles, but I think we already knew that. It’s the signal from your brain that just isn’t getting to them. But we can retrain the other parts of your brain to take over the job of the parts that are damaged. I know a great technique for that. Here’s the bad news.”

She touched the stun gun to Adelle’s left arm and pulled the trigger.

This time Adelle let out a scream. Nothing long or protracted. It was short, truncated by the electricity, which quickly immobilized her larynx. Her arms shot into the air as the muscles contracted. Her legs kicked out again and once more her bowels voided onto the carpet. Adelle passed out. Each time she awoke, Natsinet was still standing above her with the stun gun to shock her again. Adelle wasn’t certain how long the treatment continued, but when she awoke the last time it was dark and Natsinet was gone.

The nurse must have lifted her when she was unconscious because she was once again in her bed, but the treatment had continued after she’d been lifted. Her sheets were saturated with urine and sweat. The room stank of excrement. Adelle knew that it was her own feces she smelled. She felt utterly humiliated. Her muscles ached as if she’d just been put through some vigorous weight-training program. Still, she was alive. The bitch hadn’t killed her. Not yet.

Adelle’s stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the oatmeal early that morning. She was thirsty as well. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been given anything to drink and knew that with all she’d perspired, and with the urine she’d lost, there was a real danger of dehydration. But she certainly didn’t want to call for any food or water. She didn’t want Natsinet to know she was awake. Instead she sat quietly in the dark trying to find a comfortable position in her urine-soaked bed.

Her skin ached from rug burns and abrasions from the scrub brush and her own piss was now stinging her skin. She was afraid that she would get some kind of infection from it, then remembered that her husband Walt had once told her that urine was often used as an antibiotic in the jungles of Vietnam to fight off jungle rot. Still, it felt to her like she was getting the equivalent of a diaper rash, which increased her humiliation. She prayed that her daughter would be there in the morning and have this woman locked up. She fell asleep dreaming of Natsinet strapped to a gurney receiving a lethal injection while she and her daughter watched from the gallery. She had a smile on her face as she slept.

Chapter Nine

The first thing Adelle was aware of when she came awake was the pins and needles feeling in her right arm and shoulder.

Then, the pain.

She came awake suddenly, the sunlight streaming in through the blinds in her bedroom stabbing into her eyes. She tried to move and felt the rough texture of the restraints that bound her right arm to the bed’s armrest. With that came the sensation of dampness settling beneath her buttocks, her lower back, and the back of her upper thighs.

She’d wet herself again.

Natsinet breezed in the room, her features all business.

“Up and at ‘em. We’ve gotta get you out of this bed and get those sheets changed.”

Natsinet released the belts she’d used to bind Adelle’s right arm to the guardrail and set them on a chair. As the nurse helped Adelle out of the bed and into the wheelchair, she felt a flare of burning pain at the small of her back.

“When I’m finished changing the sheets I’ll give you a sponge bath and get you into a fresh gown.”

Adelle allowed herself to be helped into a sitting position in the wheelchair and wheeled out of the room. Now that she had the unrestricted use of her right arm again, she began thinking of a way to use it to get out of here.

Natsinet hummed a tune to herself as she stripped the bed. Adelle cast her eyes around the living room, looking for a heavy, solid object she could use to bash the nurse in the head with. The past five days had been an exercise in physical and mental torture. After using the stun gun, Natsinet had followed up on the so-called physical therapy the following morning by binding Adelle’s right arm to the guard rail and tying both her legs down to the bed to inhibit movement in her right side, which had been relatively unaffected by the stroke. This was called constraint-induced movement therapy, Natsinet said. The key was to limit movement of the unaffected part of a stroke patient’s body, restraining it if necessary, and encourage the patient to move those limbs affected in the stroke. This form of exercise rewired the brain, and Natsinet told her that it was a common therapy to help stroke patients regain the use of the parts of the body rendered partially paralyzed. For the first few hours of the therapy Adelle believed her. Natsinet sat on the edge of the bed and moved her left arm for her through a series of rotations and exercises. Then she encouraged Adelle to lift her arm. Adelle tried; she summoned all her strength, all her energy, and thought she detected a tiny hint of movement in her fingers, but that was it.

When Natsinet pulled out the cigarette lighter and ignited it, making a nice flame with a spin of the wheel, she had that look in her face again. The look she wore that first day. That look of evil.

“How about you move that arm now?” Natsinet asked as she moved the flame close to Adelle’s forearm.

Adelle had felt the heat of the flame as it grew close to her skin and she felt herself panic.
Get that thing away from me!

Despite the fact that she’d lost the power to move her left side, her nerves were still functioning. She could still feel pain.

“Come on, Mrs. Smith,” Natsinet said, bringing the flame of the lighter within kissing distance of her arm. “Move your arm away from the flame.”

Adelle tried to. And as she summoned the strength to move her arm she thought,
you wouldn’t dare burn me, you bitch!

But Natsinet did.

She’d burned Adelle several times throughout the course of the past five days. She also utilized the stun gun. There were faint first-degree burns along her left arm, torso, and down her left leg, each in various stages of healing. Her muscles ached from the electricity that had been pumped into her nervous system from the stun gun. Each time Natsinet came in to her room to begin therapy, Adelle would try to yell for help and get away but she couldn’t. With her right side firmly secured, she couldn’t fight back. All she could do was try to move the stroke-affected part of her body away from the pain. Trying to do so in her condition was physically exhausting. At the end of these so-called therapy sessions she was drenched in sweat and urine, her heart racing with panic.

Natsinet always left her to lie in her sweat and urine sodden clothes. Today was the first day in almost a week she was able to get out of them and get cleaned up.

The burns itched more than hurt now and she refrained from scratching them. She also felt an itching pain along her lower back and buttocks, primarily where her urine had pooled on the bed.
Please God, I hope I’m not getting bedsores,
 Adelle thought. In her condition, infected bedsores could be lethal.

Natsinet gathered the sheets and placed them on the floor. Then she wheeled Adelle into the bathroom, helped her out of her clothes, and gently assisted her out of the wheelchair. Her touch was sensitive, caring; the way a nurse’s touch should be. She guided Adelle to the closed toilet seat and helped her sit down on it. Adelle didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed by her nakedness around the Natsinet. All of her humility had been beaten out of her over the past five days and modesty at this point would have been meaningless.

Natsinet turned the water in the bathtub on and let it run warm.

“I have a fresh change of bed clothes for you,” she said. “First I’ll give you a sponge bath, okay?”

Adelle nodded.

As Natsinet bathed her Adelle listened to the woman talk. She had no idea what was going on in her mind, but she realized the best course of action was to observe her quietly. Let her think she was being submissive, convince her that she had accepted her fate.

Adelle had read about kidnap victims who were held in long periods of captivity that came down with something known as ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, in which the victim came to see the kidnapper as their guardian, somebody they could trust. The kidnapper usually let their guard down around this time. That’s how Patty Hearst had finally escaped from the Symbionese Liberation Army. If Adelle could get Natsinet to let down her guard, maybe she’d be strong enough to do something like knock the bitch upside her head and get the hell out of there.

“You’ll have a nurse come in this weekend, starting this afternoon,” Natsinet said, rubbing the warm sponge down her back. The bathroom floor was damp with soapy water.

“Once we have you cleaned up and refreshed you’ll have your meds and I’ll straighten up around here. I’ll only be gone two days, so—”

Adelle looked at Natsinet, a questioning look in her eye.
Two days? I thought you were going to be gone a whole week?

“Oh yes, only two days,” Natsinet said, smiling. “I arranged it with Hospice Nursing. I don’t want anyone else interfering with our program. We’ve been making such great progress together don’t you think?”

Are you out of your mind?

Adelle could only look at Natsinet with a sense of mind-numbing horror.

Natsinet continued washing Adelle, pausing every so often to rinse out the sponge.

“Do you know what it’s like to grow up as the child of a so-called mixed race marriage, Mrs. Smith? It can be a blessing and a curse, depending on how you deal with it. I admit, sometimes I didn’t deal with it very well. I let those…feelings…that anger…simmer for a long time. My father was a physician in Eritrea. My mother was a missionary, from Philadelphia. Her family came to this country from Scotland two hundred years ago. She met my father while she was in Eritrea and she was enchanted with him. They conceived me before they married, and my father emigrated here. Despite his medical training, he was unable to practice medicine in this country. He found work as a…in a less prestigious position. I was raised in the suburbs and I still remember the look people gave us when we were anywhere in public—the mall, a grocery store, the movie theater. They were subtle, disapproving glances. Even though they didn’t outright say it, I could feel what they were thinking: what was that Black man, that African, doing with a White woman?”

Adelle was stunned. She didn’t know how to react. Of course, she’d heard similar stories from mixed race couples and had always had an answer for them; you followed Malcolm X’s advice:
be polite, be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone lays their hand on you, send them to the cemetery.
 She’d always empathized with the struggles of mixed-race children. But things were different now. She was incapacitated. And she was at the mercy of a woman who was obviously very disturbed. She didn’t care what this bitch had gone through as a child. She just wanted her dead.

“Some of the White kids at school called me nigger and my mother taught me to
never
 take that kind of shit,” Natsinet continued. “I had my share of fights in school. In time, they left me alone.”

Adelle could see herself saying,
good for you
 if she had her speech. Instead she could only nod.

“Needless to say, the adult world is no better. Sometimes, I think it’s worse.”

Natsinet finished with Adelle’s sponge bath. She draped a fresh towel over her, drying her off.

“I figured that my mind and my education would help me reach my goals. That the color of my skin would never be a burden to achieving my dreams. I learned the hard way that even a woman with my mixed heritage will still have problems assimilating in society. Hard to believe that this kind of mentality persists in this day and age, doesn’t it? But it does, and I suppose it isn’t as prevalent as it was maybe twenty or thirty years ago, but it’s still there. I was determined that nothing was going to hold me back. And you know what?” She crouched down in front of Adelle, gently drying her arms. The nurse’s demeanor was almost sunny, friendly. “Nothing did because I didn’t let it. Yes, I faced discrimination a few times, but I never let that stop me. I can’t change the mind of the willfully ignorant. But I
can
change
my
world, and choose to associate with those of like minds. I could choose to make something of myself and fight for my rights no matter what. And that’s what I did. I didn’t let anybody stop me. I went to college and got my nursing degree. And then the first job I got was at an inner city hospital, as an ER nurse watching the dregs of society come in after they’d mangled each other in fights and robberies and getting messed up on drugs and then…it just became…all…too…
much
.”

She leaned toward Adelle and there was that fire in her eyes now. That spark that told her the crazy part of Natsinet was about to come out.

“So many great things have taken place because of leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King. So much advancement has been undertaken in race relations. Hell, look at the Asians in this country? They were slaves during and after the Civil War, Mrs. Smith. Now look at them; they own half the businesses in this country. They’re all computer scientists and doctors. Hispanics are the largest growing minority group in this country, and one of them is the Attorney General of this country while another one wants to run for president. Even Black people are doing better. There are more Black-owned business now, more Black people are getting advanced degrees and making something of themselves. Yet
some
people,” she emphasized the word some by glaring at Adelle, “will say we’re selling out to the White man. Some people give those that still may hold a tiny spark of racism and ignorant prejudice in their minds excuse to believe that we never should’ve been given the same rights as everyone else. I mean, look at the shit hole
you’re
living in? You think this is the White man’s fault? You think the White man is keeping these people in this shitty section of town? You think the White man created these living conditions? Bullshit! But that’s all I hear on the news whenever something fucked up happens down here. You yell and scream the loudest, blame it all on the White man. I don’t hear Native Americans complain about the shit holes they live in. You ever been on an Indian reservation, Mrs. Smith? You should sometime. It’s like driving through
this
neighborhood. No, I take that back. It’s
worse
.”

Adelle didn’t know what point Natsinet was trying to make, but she’d been through Indian reservations before. And yes, some of the living conditions were deplorable. That, she agreed with Natsinet on. As to the rest of it, the woman was on some kind of ramble that Adelle could not make heads or tails out of.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is you spend all that time fighting for your rights, downright demanding them, going to jail for them, and then things in society change and what happens? You’re still here, in this filthy neighborhood. The police still run through here kicking down doors and cracking heads. There’s still drugs and prostitution on every corner. And these people,” She gestured around the bathroom, as if indicating the area and the apartments outside, “they choose to stay here. Yeah, some of them can’t afford to leave, but those that can…they stay! Why do they stay? It’s like they like living this way. It’s like they enjoy the crime and the filth. And why do they steal from each other, and sell each other drugs and sell the bodies of their women and daughters to each other? Tell me that? That’s why I get those looks from White people. They are looking at me and seeing you! That’s why my childhood was so fucked up. Because they thought I was just another crying, begging, stealing, lazy-ass nigger like the rest of you.”

If Adelle were on top of herself in mind and body, she would have shot to her feet with an angry retort. Now she could only run her reply over in her head as she sat mute.

 You think they have a choice? Most of these people are struggling just to afford the places they have now! You think they can just up and move to a nicer neighborhood? How the hell are they going to afford the rents? You try scrounging up first, last, and a deposit on minimum wage! These people are trapped! Trapped in the welfare system, trapped in low paying jobs, trapped by inadequate educations. Where the hell are they going to go? Goddammit, the reason I stay here is to provide an inspiration for those that do have a chance to leave! I stay here because I want to help them get out! And I do help them get out! For every goddamn drug dealer out selling crack, I steer five other kids on to college and a life out of the streets. That’s why I stay!