I'm more concerned about what happens to you if we stop. She didn't answer that. She looked down at her hands on the arms of the wheelchair, and for the first time since the sessions began, something that wasn't frustration or clinical focus crossed her face. She looked just briefly like someone who wasn't entirely alone. It was a Saturday morning, the 12th week, when Quentyn brought in the standing frame.
It was borrowed from his clinical rotation. He had cleared it with Dr. Carol Meyers and signed it out properly as he had signed out everything he'd used since the first session. He set it up in the center of the office without explaining what it was for. Helena recognized it immediately. No, she said not all your weight, he said.
We're just going to ask your legs to remember what bearing load feels like. I've been in a standing frame before at the hospital. Nothing happened. Your quadricep can now sustain a 4-se secondond voluntary contraction. That wasn't true when you were at the hospital.
He positioned the frame and looked at her. This is different. She wheeled to the frame. She gripped the side rails and let him assist her to a standing position, taking most of her weight on her arms, the way she always had in transfer movements. Now, let your arms do less, he said.
Quentyn, I'm right here. You won't fall. I know I won't fall. That's not She stopped exhaled slowly through her nose. If this doesn't work, "Then we document it and adjust," he said.
"That's all. " She looked at him. He was standing close enough to catch her if something went wrong, but he hadn't touched her. His hands were at his sides. He was waiting, not pushing. The difference mattered to her, though she hadn't told him so.
She let her arms do less. The weight transferred to her legs. Her knees trembled. Her whole body tensed with the effort of maintaining the position. 1 second, 2, 3.
On the fifth second, she made a sound. She immediately tried to suppress something between a breath and a word that didn't become either. And she was crying. She hadn't cried in front of another person since the hospital. She'd been careful about that.
Quentyn didn't move toward her. Didn't hand her anything. Didn't say, "It's okay. " or I knew you could or any of the things that would have required her to manage his feelings about her moment. He simply stood there and his expression was not proud exactly, not celebratory. He looked the way her father had looked the first time she'd closed a major deal and called him afterward like a man watching something he believed in turn out to be real.