Where I Used to Be

I am smooth, rounded, beautiful, in a way. The body I belong to has gotten used to me. I was not always this way. I am different and yet, I am still the old me. I reach out for a glass, and then remember I can’t hold it. I have to let my left-hand man get it. You see, this is the irony. I was the right-hand man. I was the right hand.

It was this time last summer; Tom was rushing for the lift. Friday night drinks were beckoning. It had been one of those weeks of all work and no play. He heard the ding of the lift and made a dash for it, getting to the lift as the doors were closing.

I remember reaching my elegant manicured fingers out into the tiny slice of space between the closing doors like I had done on many occasions. And then it all went black.

When Tom came to, he was on a stretcher being frantically wheeled down a hospital corridor into surgery.
“You’ll be alright,” the surgeon was saying to him before he was out again.
Above him were masked faces above surgical green, bright lights and instruments being passed from one person to another.

Tom never recovered his hand. I became a stump and a ghost of my former self. I could still feel where my fingers had splayed out from my wrist and the sensation of clenching a fist when Tom was angry or waving at the receptionist as Tom walked into the building. When he was introduced to clients, I wanted to shake their hands. I had been trained for this you see. Now the left hand had taken over. It was doing well although sometimes those handshakes, those waves and other gestures seemed clumsy and awkward.

Most of all, I missed writing. Tom had to train his left hand and worked hard at it. His handwriting was better now. His signature was not quite the same.

I was relegated to second place, to no place. People did not see me anymore. At first, I wanted to scream, “Look, I’m still here.” But then I got used to the change. So now when Tom has an itch, he scratches it with the left hand but still rubs me where it itches. Sometimes he lets his girlfriend hold my stump instead of the left hand. I am the ghost of the right hand. I am where I used to be.