Read Me Again for Free Online Page B

preacher curls on a machine devised to develop the biceps, using a pathetically low weight that made me glad I couldn’t understand numbers.
    The woman’s triceps flexed as she held herself up. It was clear she was in the early stages of learning how to walk – she was supporting most of her weight with her arms, awkwardly throwing one leg forward, letting the foot fall where it may, then shifting her weight and repeating the routine with the other leg. The process looked exhausting. Her face glistened with sweat, as did her arms, which were exposed by the tank top she wore. She was in good shape – she certainly wasn’t a withered coma victim like me. I wondered if perhaps her legs had been injured in an auto accident.
    Her physical therapist stood in front of her, a beefy middle-aged man with a buzz cut whose eyes kept drifting to a television mounted high on one wall, where a football team in red and white uniforms battled a team dressed in dark blue. The volume was muted, but every now and then I’d hear the man swear under his breath, or emit a hissing “Yesssss!”
    The woman – I didn’t know her name yet – ignored her trainer, and focused on walking. When she reached one end of the bars, she performed a tricky looking maneuver, placing both hands on one bar, then letting go with one hand and swinging around in an awkward pivot that culminated in her catching the other bar with her free hand, now facing the opposite direction. She pulled it off, but just barely, making me dread the day when I would be expected to execute that move. I hoped my therapist would be paying more attention to me than her guy was.
    My physical therapist, a young, cheerful guy named Leon, noticed me watching her.
    “That’s a fine looking woman, no doubt,” he said. “Shame about what happened to her.”
    “What happened?” I asked. Yes, I had graduated to sentences that contained more than a single syllable.
    “Stroke, same as you. Shit, she can’t even be thirty years old yet, and she’s havin’ a stroke, a fine looking woman like that? That’s fucked up, man. You know what I’m talkin’ about?”
    I nodded, acknowledging one of the rare instances where I did know what somebody was talking about.
    “Shit,” said Leon. “Now I went and lost track of how many reps you’ve done. And I know you sure as hell weren’t keeping track.”
    As Leon had gotten to know me, he often made jokes about the problems I had, and liked to tease me about what he called my “math issues,” a topic that arose frequently, given the amount of counting associated with repetitive physical exercise. But it didn’t bother me – he was one of the only people I’d encountered who would talk to me directly about my problems, instead of trying to sugar-coat or ignore them. I sensed no mean-spiritedness in Leon’s teasing; if anything, he was trying to get me to “lighten up, motherfucker” (another Leonism) in the face of some pretty oppressive circumstances. I liked Leon, and was thankful he’d been assigned to me.
    “Aw, hell,” Leon said. “Go ahead and switch to your left arm. Just don’t make me lose count. You’ll end up with one arm looking like Popeye or somethin’.”
    Then he shot me a look. “Tell me you do remember who Popeye is.”
    Slowly, deliberately, I said, “I yam what I yam.”
    It was possibly my longest sentence to date, and it elicited a howl of laughter from Leon that made me smile.
    Leon’s outburst made the woman’s trainer look away from the TV for a moment, curious as to the cause of the commotion. The woman remained focused on her walking. Her hair was a light brown that faded into blonde, pulled back in a loose ponytail that was now matted with sweat. Her face registered pure determination, with no self-consciousness about her bedraggled appearance. It made her look... wonderful.
    Her therapist looked at his watch. “Okay, hon,” he said, “let’s wrap this up. I’ll get the chair