It was certainly not the end of the world. Not that first time. He did in fact heal from the stroke! Although not as simply as one might imagine, because what happens in the brain is just one thing that leads to another, as always. All the surgeries on the brain are accompanied by all the injections of cortisone to reduce the swelling in the brain and then all the cartilage in all the joints just dissolve! Just like that.
So first he would not walk, they said. He could drag himself a bit by his arms only. Then there was the period of rehabilitation. And then finally he did walk, in his way. This was one year long, and during that year we visited him in the center where he shared a room with another sufferer, and on the door was a star with his picture in the center, a polaroid, and his head was still a patchwork, but he was smiling. Now he weighed at least enough to sink in water. He was no longer a switch, a feather, an insect. He was almost again a figure.
Then he could not walk again. The joints were collapsing inside him, the ball of his hip swirling in his socket and the leg would not behave. Now came the surgeries for the missing cartilage. First a hip, then a hip, then a shoulder, then a shoulder, and so forth. Soon he was full of aluminum. Again he must learn to walk, and so the rehab began again. Then he could stand and walk around with a shuddering, staggering gait, lurching between crutches, then between canes, then just between. Between a point and another point. Lurching home.
Back among us. Whatever we were.