COUCHING BRAD

Brad is my PT or physical therapist (temporarily).

Beth Israel prescribed him to me because a PT often comes with home health aides. If you need a home PT, it's likely you'll need someone to cook and clean for you.

At our first meeting, Brad asked me a series of questions, tapped my answers into a thick, computer notebook (like the kind a FED EX guy would use) and within seconds told me I had been denied a home health aide.

But I still see Brad.

Brad is my age, and looks kind of like me (only slightly heavier). Five foot seven, a hundred seventy pounds, curly brown hair and slightly epicene.

Through our sessions, I've learned that Brad made the move to become a PT in his thirties. (He was in publishing, PR, acting?) Brad maintains a professional taciturn countenance.

Yet it's easy to detect a certain malaise. Brad has a slight exasperated look, (the semi circles around the sides of the eyes, the nervous hesitation) of a man who is not exactly sure what he got himself into. Apparently it takes years to become a PT. Much of what Brad and I do on his forty minute is paper shuffle.

Brad takes my pulse, my blood pressure, my temperature.
He asks me if I'm in pain.  He inputs all of this into the notebook machine.

When I describe to him my former (very physical) life, Brad shakes his head and wallows in my disaster for some time and then says "it's not fair."

He walks me to the bedroom, lifts my legs onto the bed and we run through a series of exercises that would be appalling easy for almost anyone else.  But I huff and puff and (concentrate).

He holds my feet down and I lift my head towards my feet. I turn my head slowly to the right and then to the left.  I attempt to raise my hips in the air.  Brad sits me up and I hold on arm up and then the other. (This is exhausting).

We then go back to the living room to take my blood pressure again and fill out more forms.
I bank these receipts in white boxes I never look at.

I watch Brad pack up. He's slow and sad, like we just had a fight and there's nothing more to say but follow through with the inevitable physical act of leaving.

Brad I imagine, if I think hard about it, is disturbed by my illness. I imagine that I rate a few phone conversations with friends.

"You should see this guy"Brad might say relieved that his own ample body is in marvelous working shape) "it's such a tragedy. And he looks so young, He's getting worse and what am I supposed to do with him? Sometimes this job is too demanding, emotionally."

And because I envision these private conversations, I am distant with him.

But today, before he goes, I ask him if he has ever bought a couch.

Brad pauses and I can tell I've hit something.

"I saved for months" he opens up. " I really wanted something different and I didn't want anything fussy. I bought it from a store on Park and 26th. They're not there anymore. I have a small one bedroom on Westend and 95th. The couch is low and clean and Italian. I've had it for years and I still really like it."

I think about Brad patiently saving his money and choosing the perfect couch. I picture the day it was delivered. Friends coming over to approve of his efforts. Brad being exacting and careful not to spill.
Brad is man who has patiently compromised. You can see it in his face.

And I also wonder what the meaning of the sofa purchase is (beyond the its purpose for resting). Buying a couch is a seminal life event, in the same world as changing careers, or moving. It's declarative and grown up. You're marking yourself.

I've never bought a couch.