She said nothing else, but she didn't send him away. The sessions began at 6:00 a. M. And lasted 45 minutes. Quentyn arrived before Helena every morning, moved the coffee table, and set up whatever equipment he'd carried up in his backpack.
Resistance bands, a small wooden dowel for proprioception work, a foam pad. He never used the company's conference rooms. He never asked for anything that wasn't already there. Helena noticed this, though she didn't say so. The 30 days came and went without either of them marking it.
On the 31st morning, Helena was already in the office when he arrived, seated by the window with her coat still on. She said nothing about the deadline. Neither did he. He moved the coffee table. She took off her coat, and they continued.
The early work was unglamorous. He started with sensory stimulation, running the edge of a textured glove along the soles of her feet and asking her to describe what she felt, if she felt anything. Hot and cold differentiation using two small metal cylinders, one chilled, one warmed. Voluntary muscle contraction attempts. He would place her hand on her own thigh and ask her to try to tighten the quadricep while she watched for any response.
Most mornings there was nothing. Some mornings there was the faint suggestion of something, a flicker she couldn't be sure she hadn't imagined. He combined the physical work with motor imagery. Before your body can do it, he told her, "Your brain has to believe it's possible. You have to rehearse the movement in your mind until the neural pathway wakes up. " He had her close her eyes and walk in her imagination from her desk to the window, from her chair to the door, down a hallway, up a single step.
She felt childish doing it. She did it anyway. When she failed, when the contraction didn't come or came too weak to be useful, or when her arm buckled during a weight shift exercise and she slammed her palm against the floor, she did not handle it well. She said sharp things. She directed them at Quentyn because he was there and because she trusted Renee too much to do it to her.
Quentyn absorbed her anger the way a wall absorbs sound. He waited for it to stop and then he said whatever needed to be said next. Pain and frustration are part of the process. He told her one morning after she'd thrown the foam pad across the room. They're not signs you're failing.
They're signs your nervous system is being asked to do something it hasn't done in 8 months. I don't need a speech, she said. I need results. You'll get results when your nervous system is ready, not when you are. Those aren't the same schedule.
She looked at him with open irritation. "Your money can buy better equipment than this," he continued, gesturing at the foam pad where it had landed. "It can't buy a shorter neurological timeline. The work is the work. " She hated him a little for that. She kept coming back at 6:00 a.