Chapter 14: One Girl's Determination

Savannah, Georgia
October 1984

Rebecca's left hand slipped ominously on the bar, her grip caught briefly, and then gave way completely. She fell, again, only to have strong arms wrap her up from behind and hold her off the mat. She had never actually hit the ground when she fell, ever. He was always there, right behind her. This was the end of her fourth week in physical therapy and he'd been there every day, both in the pool and here at the physical therapy center.

"That's it Tony. My legs actually don't feel so bad, but I can't grip these bars strong enough with my hands anymore." She wouldn't stop when she could do more. Tony wouldn't say a word, she knew that. But he might be disappointed in her, and that was enough to keep her going. She was convinced Tony was doing everything he could do to help her. She had to try as hard as she could because he did. And, because she had never hit the ground, ever.

The parallel bars were the closest Rebecca could come to walking on her own. Even then, she had to support a large part of her body weight with her hands. The bars were actually below waist level for whatever reason, though she knew it must have something to do with helping her learn balance. It was a lot tougher than when she could just reach up to something higher.

She could do that now. Given something to reach up to (or Tony to reach up to, which was more often), she could pull herself up and stand pretty much for however long she wanted. Movement, however, was another matter. Two knees would support her. One knee, even for the brief moment it took to move the other leg, wasn't so good. She could do it for a few repetitions, but the imbalance it caused if she wobbled almost always sent her reeling and, it was almost always Tony that caught her. Sometimes it was her dad, and a time or two Tina or her mother, but mostly it was her Tony.

He had sat down on the mat behind him, pulling her with him once she said she'd had enough. His arms were still loosely draped around her midsection as she lay with her sweaty head and back against his chest trying to catch her breath.

They both looked up at Jesse, who was smiling back amusedly at what she thought was about the cutest couple she had ever seen. Rebecca was cute as a button and brave as they come. She might have tears pouring down her face from pain, but she never complained, and never gave less than everything she had when asked. It was no wonder a guy like Tony was with her. She had a spirit about her that was not to be denied. If all her patients were like Rebecca, her job would be a lot easier.

It also wasn't hard to see what Rebecca saw in Tony. He was certainly good looking enough. Jesse herself had to admit that, and she was ten years older than he was. He was here, every day, never missing a minute. He obviously loathed every second of it. Every twinge of pain on Rebecca's face was transferred instantly to his. He choked back every tear she shed, barely. Every failure he felt just as strongly. He couldn't stand watching her go through the therapy; yet he came, every time. Rebecca never saw it though. Whenever she looked his way he was all smiles and encouragement. No doubt about it, he loved that little girl as much as Jesse had ever seen someone love another.

"Earth to Doc Jesse!" she heard Tony say and broke out of her reverie.

She smiled down at the teens. "That's enough for today. Just stretch and cool down and I'll see you on Monday. Good work Rebecca. I know it's slow but you're getting there."

The three were the only ones in the therapy center except for Ron, another therapist who had banished himself into the back office. He did this routinely when Rebecca, or more correctly, when Tony was here with Rebecca for therapy. He had raised his voice to correct Rebecca who was doing an exercise incorrectly on the second day. Jesse thought for sure he and Tony were going to come to blows over it. Jesse became Rebecca's de facto therapist from that point forward, though it was unusual for either of them to be exclusive with patients.

"Hello all!" Marj Harris called from the doorway as she entered. She was still dressed in her white nurse's uniform and had obviously just come from the hospital.

"Hey Mom! What brings you here?" Rebecca called back.

"Progress report, I'm supposed to find out how you're doing today."

"We get up," Tony said, "we fall down. The good news is that you can't fall down unless you were up to start with." He crawled out from behind Rebecca and stood up. He put his right forearm parallel to the ground and offered it to her. Rebecca grabbed onto it with both hands and pulled herself slowly up to a standing position. Tony then scooped her up, his arms behind her back and under her knees, and set her back down on a mat to the side of the parallel bars. Rebecca spread her legs out in front of her and began doing the stretching exercises she had learned as part of her cool-down routine. "Is this strictly a doctor-parent thing or can we join in?" Tony asked.

"I'm not a doctor Tony, I've told you that." Jesse answered.

"You're a person. You're helping fix her, that makes you a doctor in my book."

"Well then, since you are, in effect, Rebecca's aquatic therapist, then how about we do this doctor, doctor, parent, and patient Doctor Tony?"

Rebecca giggled. "She's got you there Tony."

"Bah, she has a paper on the wall from a college. All I have is a swimming pool and a report card from the tenth grade. Let me see if Tina left the notes in the car. I think she ran off to find a snack. She's probably over at Wendy's eating a Frosty while Rebecca can't see her." Tony headed toward the door and his car.

"HEY! She better not be!" Rebecca retorted at Tony's back.

"So, just how are things going, in general anyways?" Marj asked.

"In general? It's certainly going as well as we hoped, probably a bit better. You know we don't really have a lot of case history to go on, so we really don't have a benchmark to compare her progress to. She," Jesse pointed at Rebecca, "works hard. I couldn't ask for more effort."

"What about Tony? He's not getting in the way is he?" Marj inquired.

"Mom!" Rebecca protested.

"No, absolutely not," Jesse said quickly. "He's fine, better than fine. With most patients I have to teach them exercises then constantly hover over them to make sure they do every one correctly. With those two, I show them once and just check up from time to time to make sure they don't develop bad habits. Either he keeps her doing them right or, more likely, they just work that well together. I'm not sure I've seen a young couple quite like them. Have they set a date yet?"

"Jesse! I'm fourteen!"

"Yeah, well if you let that boy get away, once you get my age you're going to wish you were fourteen again," Jesse stated flatly.

Marj chuckled at the exchange. "No not yet. Hopefully they'll wait just a few more years for that. As a mother, it's my job to look for something wrong with those two, but it's futile. I just throw up my hands and let them be. I should be concerned, I'm supposed to be concerned, heck I think I secretly want to be concerned, but I can't find a good reason to be."

Tony came back in then with a spiral bound notebook. Tina had volunteered to document the various exercises Rebecca did in the water with Tony. Inside the notebook all of this was recorded in neat columns with dates, exercises, and repetitions, plus any comments the three had, all written in Tina's compact script.

Jesse also got her notes, and the four of them spent the next fifteen minutes discussing them. All was going well as far as anyone could tell. It was only going to take more time and effort.

"So, I need to learn to blow bubbles out of my nose?" Rebecca asked dubiously.

"Yep, that's the way it's done. To start with, you need to practice for a couple of minutes out of the water. Breathe in through your mouth, then out of your nose," Tony instructed. "Now, if you start blowing bubbles out of your nose while you're still outside the water, well that's just gross."

Rebecca slapped Tony's arm for the comment. The two were sitting on the edge of the pool. Rebecca had finished all the exercises related to her aquatic therapy and Tony was, as promised, beginning to teach her to swim. Jesse had given them the go-ahead the day before to begin actual swimming lessons after they had reviewed Rebecca's progress.

"So what's the point of this?" Rebecca asked as she practiced what Tony had shown her.

"It keeps water from getting in your nose. If it hasn't happened to you yet, then it will sometime while you're learning. It is a distinctly bad feeling, you get water in your nasal cavity and it makes you want to cough or sneeze or whatever. That's not something you want happening when you are trying to swim. It can cause you to panic. So, as long as there is air coming out of your nose, no water is going into it."

"Can't I just keep my nose out of the water?"

"Nope, not if you want to swim correctly. It can be done, but it's actually harder that way. You'll see. Come on, let's get in."

Tony spent the next hour doing wall exercises with Rebecca, not unlike one would do when teaching a child to swim. He got her comfortable with immersing her head while holding on to the wall, kicking while holding onto the wall, kicking with her face in the water while, of course, holding onto the wall.

"OK," Tony said finally, "let's try a few strokes before we have to get out. The guys will be here soon for practice." He moved behind her, picked her up, and took her out into the pool a bit.

"Now what?" Rebecca asked.

"We'll start with the breast stroke today. It's the easiest stroke for me to support you and not get tangled up in your arms as you move them. I'm going to turn you over to face the water." He turned her over, still out of the water with one arm supporting her upper body below her breasts and the other across the front of her hips.

They practiced the hand and arm motions first, then put them together with the frog kick Tony had taught her earlier while she was holding onto the wall. Eventually they added in breathing at the appropriate time until Rebecca was doing a pretty good impression of a breast stroke to Tony's slow 'pull, kick, reach, pull, kick, reach' cadence while he supported her in the water.

"Alright," he said finally. "Nothing left but to try it. I'm going to start slowly lowering you down further into the water, keep going."

The result was actually anticlimactic. Tony lowered her into the water and Rebecca just went. In three strokes they were back to the side of the pool. Tony continued to encourage her as they turned around and started for the other side, but by now he was simply wading through the water beside her. Shortly she reached up and grabbed the far side and stood herself up in the water. She turned back to look at Tony, who had stopped 5 feet behind her, with a quizzical look on her face. Tony just shrugged at her.

"That's it?" she asked, not really believing that was all there was to it.

"Well, yeah. That's it. You can swim. We probably could have done this a couple of weeks ago if Jesse had said it was OK. I was just waiting on her. But really, ninety percent of it is just being comfortable in the water. You've had almost a month for that."

"OK, that was way too easy," Rebecca said, grinning at him.

"No one ever said it was hard. What you're doing is pretty basic. I said you could swim, I didn't say you were a good swimmer, and certainly not a strong swimmer. It's really only a matter of practice though. I'll teach you other strokes, and if you practice you'll be pretty good at it in no time."

"Tony, Rebecca! What are you two still doing in the pool?" Tina called as she walked out of the basement into the pool area. "The rest of the band is here."

Tony walked across the pool toward Tina and sat down in the water on one of the steps in the corner. "We're swimming if you must know." He beckoned to Rebecca on the far side. She pushed off the side of the pool with one hand and began slowly swimming toward him. Tony looked up, smiled, and winked at his sister.

"Amazing," Tina said, and then asked rhetorically, "You just taught her that this morning?"