Tanja cast aside the wheeled support and walked the halls with no more support than the PT’s guiding hand on her elbow. Epic.

Then she sat down with the occupational therapist and ran through the same exercises she’d done a few days back. These involve resting her arms atop a cloth spread over a flat surface and then making a variety of motions—back and forth like a windshield wiper, forward and back, like a piston, clenching and extending the fingers. The cloth is there to reduce friction, making the motions easier as it slips back and forth.

There were five exercises, ten reps each, on both arms. It was clearly hard work but she did it, going well beyond the benchmarks set last week.

All good news.

But it is hard to watch those fingers dumbly rumple the cloth without suddenly seeing other times: Tanja smoothing linen over her legs before starting a hem, the needle diving and rising, diving and rising. Fabric of all sorts simply behaved for her, draping and folding as if it knew it were in good, understanding hands.

That spirit is not in these fingers. And that is kinda horrifying in the moment.

And yet. The team on rounds came by, and yet another doctor we’d never met before poked his head through the curtain with a tentative “hello?”

Tanja stopped what she was doing and said, “Good morning! Come in! Come in!”

And the doctor, who had seemed on the verge of saying something else, broke into a big smile and just said, “Wow!”

It was a funny thing for a doctor to say but I knew what he meant. That “wow” just kinda hung there. They talked about how she was doing, hit all the familiar notes and after a minute he said, “Anything else on your mind?“

“Well,” Tanja said. “I’m sure you hear this all the time, but you guys are wonderful.”

“We don’t actually—,” the doctor began quietly, before mastering himself to say, “Thank you!”

“I just think everyone is so competent and so even and I just feel well cared for.”

He blinked at her for a second.

“Okay,” he said, as if he simply had nothing else.

Then everyone laughed and they went on with their days.

I get it. He’d walked directly into the beam.

Once upon a time, when I was new to Portland and new to my job, I went wandering through the maze of interconnected buildings the firm inhabited to see if I could find the proofreaders who were making such excellent comments and improvements on my work so that I could thank them. I found them in a dark corner beyond print production. I don’t really remember what I said.

But I do remember retreating to the stairwell after to gather my wits. And I remember saying out loud, for my own benefit, that very same little affirmation our doctor had leaned on: “Okay.”

I guess all I’m saying is, sometimes for all the progress, the path is fairly daunting.

But the spirit is in there. In her, to be accurate. It is abundant and natural and fairly inescapable. And if it hasn’t quite reached her fingertips yet, well let’s be patient and hopeful. Because she is.

Also, just a note if you’re still reading: Tanja is not getting emails or texts or phone calls sent to her addresses or numbers. So if you’ve reached out there, she’s not ignoring you, she’s just not ready to deal with the technology. Feel free to contact me at jed@wearembs.com and I’ll position you in the beam:)