Chapter Four - You're Alright

--Cara

Now that Tris is in rehab, I visit her as much as I can.

Before in the regular section of the hospital, they were watching her much more closely, and they limited the amount of people who could visit her. Now that she's in rehab, it's an open door policy.

It's wonderful that she's in rehab. I know lots of the staff that works in that section of the hospital, and they're good at their jobs.

As my night shift ends, I head to the rehab center, planning visit Tris for an hour or so before I head home to relieve Caleb of his fathering duties for he has to work at noon.

I work three twelve hour shifts a week, two of which start and nine at night and end at nine in the morning. The other is a weekend shift, which starts at seven in the morning and ends at seven at night. It either is a Saturday or a Sunday when I take that shift.

I open the door to the rehab center and go to the large room on the left. Tris is always over by the window at the far corner, but I don't see her in there today.

I know the other place she could be. I head down the hall to the room she shares with other people. Knocking on the door I let myself in.

"Hey." I say, smiling. She doesn't look like she feels right today.

"Hi." She smiles back.

"I got nervous when I didn't see you in the large room. Are you feeling alright?"

She shrugs her shoulders.

I notice she is dressed and in shorts, a blanket covering her bare legs.

"My doctor is coming to check on my leg this morning. I don't know what she plans on doing though." She says, laying back with her head on a pillow and looking at me.

Her eyes are identical to my daughter's; Caleb and my reasoning for naming her after Tris.

"I'll have to bring Beatrice to visit you sometime soon. She's almost starting to talk, babbling all the time. She's getting so big; especially since the last time you saw her."

"I'd love to see her." She smiles, still not looking like she feels right.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

She sighs, stretching her arms out and then behind her head.

"I don't know." She groans quietly.

"You can talk to me about anything, you know." I rest my hand on her arm.

She's quiet for a second, and I see the thought process written all over her face.

"That's my problem," she says after a few seconds. "I don't know."

"I don't think I understand what you mean."

"Me either."

"What?" I feel my eyebrows crease.

"I get these thoughts. My physical therapist started calling them 'blank memories' because that's basically what they are."

"I'm still confused." I say.

"Me too."

We both are quiet for a second, and I just can't wrap my mind around anything she is saying.

"So if a memory is blank, then how do you know it's a memory?"

"That's my problem."

"Explain to me what happens when you see these memories."

"Yesterday my physical therapist, Julie wanted to do an activity with me. She gently tossed me this soft white ball, and my brain saw it as a rock, traveling quickly at my head. I don't remember a rock ever being thrown at my head, but I just know it happened at some point. I just don't know what, when, who, where, or anything. It's like it never happened, but I know it has."

I'm silent, processing everything she said.

It really makes no sense.

"Have they had you see a psychiatrist?"

"I basically argued with the woman. She blew it off saying it was just my Post traumatic stress disorder messing with my brain."

"But how can you have PTSD from something you don't remember?"

"Which is what I argued about."

I'm about to reply, but there is a knock on the door, and in walks a woman whom I assume is Tris's doctor.

"Hello Tris. And hello," she says, turning to me. I stand and shake her hand. "Marie Scott." She says nodding.

"Cara Prior. I'm Tris's sister in-law. I work over in the ER a lot."

"Ah. That's why you look familiar." She gives me a friendly smile, and I feel weird not being able to say she looks familiar to me.

I've never seen this woman in my life.

Marie pushes a cart I immediately recognize as an ultrasound machine with her. She parks it at the foot of Tris's bed.

"So here's my plan for today. You still have stitches on your leg under that cast that should've been taken out probably months ago. What I want to do is take this cast off, and take the stitches off. I also want to look around using an ultrasound to see how everything healed in your leg. From that, I will be able to plan what our next step is from here. Alright?"

Tris hesitantly nods.

"Your cast won't be hard to take off." Marie says, beginning to take apart the cast on Tris's leg. "I didn't use a legit cast on it because I knew it would be painful and difficult to remove if I did so. It's actually two pieces of this stuff that hardens and a lot of bandaging."

Tris stares at her intently as she works, barely blinking.

I can't blame her for being uptight about anyone being near her leg.

"Has your leg been hurting you at all?"

"Sometimes." She says quietly.

"Hm." I see the disappointment in Marie's face as she continues to work.

"When it hurts, Tris," she looks up from her focus on the cast, "Is it a shooting pain, or like throbbing."

"Both." She says in the same quiet tone.

"Is it almost intolerable, or is it kind of dull?"

"Depends."

"Is it all over your leg, or specific spots."

"My ankle a lot, but sometimes other indefinite places."

The amount of bandages that pile up in the trash can is insane. It takes about five minutes for the cast to come off of Tris's leg.

All I feel is pity.

It could've been anyone in that room he treated like this, but it was her.

Don't wince, Cara. It's not your leg, it's hers.

The thought makes me even more unsettling, knowing that this is how her leg will be for the rest of her life.

I can't leave the room, so I do the next best thing.

I hold her hand, tight in mine.

I feel her nervousness radiating into my soul as she holds my hand more than equally as tight.

"You're alright." I tell her.

"You're alright." I say it again, for my own sanity.