Wednesday evening, July 2

Today Tommy started out groggy, but he improved a little bit as the day went on. After days of sleeping a lot and being fed in bed, it was a huge change for him to be awakened at 7, dressed, and taken to the dining room in a wheelchair for breakfast--a meal that he's never even eaten as long as I've known him. He had several therapy sessions, which he found difficult; but after a long nap before dinner, he was more alert than he'd been all day. After dinner I read him about 20 pages from My Demon Motor Boat and he listened intently the entire time. I asked him if he remembered reading the story when he was a boy, and he said yes. In the story, the name of the boat is "Imp" and, several times, he said, sort of to himself, "Imp...Imp... Imp" as though he was recalling the boat's name from distant memory.
Before leaving, I told him, Tommy, when you were at the boatyard, you got up every morning at 7, and you went up to the yard at 8 on the dot, and you worked nonstop until 8 at night. It was your job. Now this is your job--to get up at 7, and work on getting your legs to work again. If you do this, everything else will follow. I wasn't sure that he'd heard me, but then he said, very faintly, "That's the name of the game." It was the only sentence he spoke all day but it spoke volumes.