It was almost like dancing. You stood and held out your arms crossed at the wrists. I did the same, linking hands with you. I walked backward and you forward.

“Head up,” I said. “Chest out.”

You looked into my eyes and smiled. “Okay, Monkey.”

We made slow, careful steps toward the bathroom, both of us executing perfectly in order to avoid disaster.

“Look,” we said, proud of ourselves.

We focused on the next step. The smooth lift. The careful bend.

The choreography complicated. At first, all you’d needed was a hand on your elbow. I made myself strong and steady like a tree. A week later, we dance-walked to the bathroom. Then, the bathroom was too far.

“I want to walk,” you’d say.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe we should save energy.”

We. Our. Us. Soon, walking wasn’t possible at all.

I placed the wheelchair at the correct angle, first removing the leg nearest to where you were in the bed or the chair. If you were in bed, I reached around your head and shoulders in a sort of reverse seatbelt, wrapping my hand as gently as possible around your middle back. We hugged, then. A quick kiss. You moved your legs toward the edge of the bed. Later, when you couldn’t move them, I did that part. I bent my knees low to use the strength of my legs and protect my back.

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

I sent my left arm below your knees and crouched at the edge of the bed. In one motion, I swept 7 your torso up and your legs off the bed and shifted your hips toward me, bringing you to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. I bent low, placed one knee between both of yours and drew my upper body as close to you as possible while crouching. You put your arms around me. Another hug. When you weren’t able to put your arms around me anymore, I helped you do it.

“Chin on my shoulder,” I said.

Our faces close together, I pressed into my feet and up through my calves, thighs, hips, and then we were chest to chest for a moment before rotating and lowering, as slowly as possible, into the wheelchair. Our bodies moved in graceful collaboration. Yours was the harder part. All I really had to do was hang on. Whatever your body needed from mine, I wanted to give.

Therapists came to our home to help.

Occupational therapists. Physical therapists. Speech therapists.

“Hey, how’s your day going?” you asked each one.

I spun circles in our apartment, cleaning, cooking, asking questions, taking notes.

“You might want to apply for a caregiver,” the therapists said.

A man from DSHS came to interview us and find out what kind of care we needed.

“Do you need help eating?” he asked.

“No,” you said.

“Swallowing?”

“No.” You answered all your own questions.

“Taking your medicine?”

Those things were coming.

“What kind of qualities are you looking for in a caregiver?” he said.

“Just someone competent,” I said.

“Someone friendly?”

I pressed my fingers into the knots in my shoulders.

“Honestly, just someone competent.”

Pretty soon, you’d wake up from your nap and want to get out of bed. I moved my hands to my lower back and made small circles there with my fists. Somewhere out in front of me was a limit to what I could do. You were about 50 pounds heavier than me, then. All you wanted was to bear your own weight. The month before, you’d wanted to study orangutans in their natural habitat in Borneo, to be like Jane Goodall with the chimps in Gombe. This month, you wanted to stand. To walk. I measured my uselessness as the world contracted around us.

The very next day, the man from DSHS called.

“I found someone for you,” he said. “He’s very competent. His name is Dwayne. He’ll be there tomorrow at nine a.m.”

I put the phone down and smiled. Dwayne. Dwayne was coming. He was on his way.

All day, I felt lighter. I imagined the tall, strong man who would arrive in the morning. In my imagination, he wore a white uniform, like an old-fashioned orderly. He’d come in, assess the situation, and act. I thought about how easily he would lift you. You could just throw your arms around his neck, and he’d leg press you right out of bed. He could take it. He wouldn’t get tired. He 8 certainly wouldn’t tell you that he was tired, if he did get tired. He’d just do his job, and me? I would kiss you. I would drink extra cups of coffee. I would say, “You good, Babe?” and you would say, “Yeah,” and wink at me. We’d sail back and forth to the hospital with lighter hearts, knowing life had just been made a tiny bit easier for both of us. Dwayne was coming. He was on his way.

Dwayne showed up right on time. He was a foot shorter than the man I’d imagined, with a doughy, slouching frame. He smelled like cigarettes.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Dwayne. It’s my first day.”

“Yes, hi,” I said. “I’m Nicole. Come on in.”

But he’s competent, I thought, chastising myself. I ushered him in and started explaining the day. We had a ten o’clock appointment at the hospital, so we’d be leaving immediately.

“This is Jaylan,” I said. “Jaylan, this is Dwayne.”

“Hey, man,” you said. “How’s it going?”

It was difficult for you to lift your head and look at Dwayne. I motioned for him to stand to your right.

“Hey,” Dwayne said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Let’s go,” I said. We headed for the elevator to the parking garage, where I’d pulled the car around to one of the disabled spots, which were flat. Since you’d started using a wheelchair, getting in and out of the car was the hardest thing we did.

Though Dwayne was there to help, I took the lead. “I’m sure you have your own way of doing this, but I’ll do it this time, just so you can see how it’s working for us.”

“Okay,” he said.

I took the legs off the chair and positioned you at an angle that would allow me to stand between the open car door and you in the chair with enough space to bend to lift you, rotate you, and lower you into the car without hitting your head on the frame. The tricky part was making sure your ankles didn’t get crossed up and trip us, and that I sat you down far enough into the seat that we could get your legs in the car easily, and that I sat you far enough to the back of the seat that you wouldn’t slide down. There were a lot of tricky parts.

I leaned down. “Ready, Love?”

“Ready,” you said.

I took a low squat, alternating our knees, and wrapped my hands around you.

You put your chin on my shoulder.

“One, two, three,” I said. I drove my heels into the floor and lifted.

Your mother pulled the wheelchair away.

I rotated your back toward the car, checked to make sure I hadn’t tangled up your feet, and squatted, lowering you into the seat.

You let out a breath.

“Are you in?” I said.

“Almost.” You held the handle on the inside of the roof while your mother and I adjusted the pad to pull you into the most comfortable position.

I broke down the wheelchair enough to get it in the hatchback of our car. There was just enough room.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We’d repeat the whole thing on the hospital end of things. Getting in and out of the car had become so much work that we started stacking our appointments to limit the number of transfers required.

At the hospital, I turned to Dwayne. “We have an hour. Let’s go get some coffee and I can fill you in.”

At the hospital Starbucks, I explained your condition, stage four brain cancer, also known as glioblastoma multiforme, as well as the meningitis you’d contracted after the most recent surgery.

“He still hallucinates,” I explained. “He can’t see very well. Until recently, he was able to walk, but now he has a hard time supporting his weight at all. Also, with the meningitis came incontinence because the part of the brain that signals the need to urinate is right in front of the ventricles, which are now not functioning, again, due to meningitis, which is why he has a drain in his head . . .”

Dwayne interrupted. “What’s incontinence?” he said.

I stared at him.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“I don’t know what that word means,” he said.

I didn’t want to make him feel bad. “Oh, it means that you don’t know you have to urinate so you can’t control it. I’m sorry, how do you not know that word?”

“I told you this was my first day,” he said.

“Ever?” I said. My mind registered a level of shock that I tried to temper before opening my mouth.

“What did you do before this?”

“I’ve worked in a grocery store for the past twentyseven years,” he said.

I drank my coffee while Dwayne talked about what had drawn him to the caregiver role. He cared about people. He wanted to help. That was all fine, but, as I would explain to his supervisor, I needed someone whom I didn’t have to teach.

“It’s a safety thing,” I said. “Jaylan is essentially a paralyzed person. I need to be able to trust that Dwayne knows how to transfer a body safely, at a bare minimum.” The supervisor was sorry.

“Should I look for someone else?” he asked. “It could take a while.”

Maybe someone was better than no one.

“Does he have any training at all?”

“He completed the five-hour basic training module, which is all that’s required to get started,” he explained.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

The next day, the supervisor called me back to say Dwayne would be late. He’d locked his keys in the car. An hour later he called back with a revised ETA. AAA was on its way. An hour later, I got another call. They were going to have to break in his window.

“Tell him not to come back,” I said. “Please tell him it’s nothing against him.”

I researched the other agencies on the Medicaidapproved list to eliminate the ones whose reviews were so terrible that I couldn’t trust them. One by one, I called the remaining agencies. They promised to try. The wait was long. Qualified candidates were few. One had a very nice young woman who just arrived in America a few months ago and could start right away.

“Has she ever worked with a patient before?” I said.

“She’s completed her five-hour safety training.”

We were on our own.

My Love, I confess, it was too much for me to bear. Your weight, I could hold, 30, 40 times a day if necessary, but even that, I tried to minimize. Were you sure you needed to go to the bathroom? What about the previous six trips we’d made in the last hour, when you hadn’t needed to go after all?

An edge crept into my voice and I hated myself for it. I didn’t want to condescend. I couldn’t seem to help it. I was so tired.

I took to writing myself notes just to keep track of reality.

Sometimes it is useful to describe how things could be worse.

Jaylan wears diapers now, and he gets around by wheelchair, even in the house. His left side is so weak that he can’t blow his nose. He weighs 175 pounds. His ribs are badly bruised from a few serious falls this month, as is the rest of his body. The bruises discolor his arms, abdomen, hips, knees. His most recent fall led to a split lip on the bathroom floor, where he’d landed hard after ringing and ringing a bell that his grandmother, who was caring for him that day, couldn’t hear.

He cannot read. He mistakes common objects for dogs and cats or laundry drying on a line. His own image is a dog, he thinks. He cannot use the phone. He cannot, if asked, put pen to paper and sign his name in a fluid motion on an indicated line.

All day, I walk around imagining deadness into my left side and alternately cataloging all that my left hand, foot, eye will do for me and entirely without my consciously asking. I walk slowly to work on a warm spring day. I hold a cup of coffee. I shower. I turn pages, type lesson plans, check appointment schedules, call government agencies.

I watched your body fail you. Still, we were hopeful. Maybe it was just the meningitis. Maybe you’d get better. I tried to encourage myself, though you had always done a much better job of it than I ever could.

To all this we might add greater pain. Just when it seems that all we need is a floor, I find that I am standing on one. Others, I remind myself, are not so lucky. There are worse things to bear, and people must bear them every day. So, I have a kinfolk. They prove to me what a person can do, if she must. I know it is possible that more will be required of me. Then, too, it will be possible to bear it.

“I would leave your house,” my father said, “and just be amazed at what you were doing. You were superhuman,” he said.

On the first day I did not have to move your body, I knew I couldn’t do it even one more time. I lay next to you in bed and cried. Pain, somehow held off until just that moment, announced itself and began to migrate around my body. From then, there would be no more lifting. No more hugs during transfers. No more of our dancing those steps we’d learned so very well.

I worry that I will never know how much you were alone. We were all there, of course. Your best friend Andy came by and played guitar for you. Your mother lived on our couch, and your grandmother came over every chance she got. My parents were never farther than a stone’s throw away. I was right beside you, in our bed. I made my body like a chair to prop you up, to help you breathe, holding you, singing to you, whispering love. We were all there for you, with you. It was like waiting for someone to be born. In the end, you did it all by yourself.

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