Work Text:
Night 533-540:
With Nick's coordination starting to get pretty good, Zoldrak decided to try to start teaching him how to dress himself.
Nick still couldn’t use his right arm, so Zoldrak started with research on how amputees, stroke survivors, and other people who had only one usable arm dressed. He also looked for advice on how to help people with cognitive impairments dress themselves.
He figured probably the easiest one to start with was getting a sweater or jacket style outfit on. One of the advice things he’d found suggested that it was easiest to start with something that would be big on the person, and then scale down.
Since Zoldrak was bigger than Nick, that was pretty easy. He just took one of his old sweaters, a grey-and-black button-up turtleneck he wore when he was hiding bite marks on his neck. He didn’t think Nick was anywhere close to ready to handle buttons, but putting his arms in the sleeves and pulling the thing on unbuttoned was probably pretty realistic, he figured.
He started with introducing Nick to the steps involved. He let Nick out of his crib and fed and changed him, and then got him seated in a kitchen chair and held out the sweater. “Nick, I want to try something new.”
Nick looked at him attentively, then at the sweater. Zoldrak wasn’t certain how much, if anything, he understood of speech, but at least he seemed to know Zoldrak wanted something from him.
“OK, so, I’m going to put my sweater on, and then you can try, OK?” Zoldrak said. “I’m not going to use my right arm, since you can’t use yours.”
With his left hand, he put his right arm on the armrest, and then bunched up the sleeve and slid it over his wrist, being sure to resist the urge to move his right arm to help. He slid the sleeve on, and then pulled it up his arm, until he had the one side on. Then, shifting in his chair—and accidentally moving his right arm, though probably not in a way that mattered—he reached behind his back to pull the other side of the sweater into alignment. With that done, he slid his left arm in the sleeve. “There. Did you follow that?”
Nick moaned.
“OK.” Zoldrak took his sweater off. “Now, can you get your arm on the armrest?”
Nick stared at him, so he reached over and positioned Nick’s arm in the right spot, then handed him the sweater. Nick held it and looked at it curiously, playing with the buttons.
“OK, put the sleeve on.” Zoldrak said, tapping Nick’s paralyzed wrist. He looked at it, confused. “You don’t know what to do? Will you let me help you?” He put his hand on Nick’s left hand, and when Nick didn’t object, he gently used both hands to get Nick to slide the armhole over his right hand. Nick pulled his left hand away and moaned, and Zoldrak finished getting the sleeve on himself.
“All right, Nick. Can you reach behind your back to grab the sweater?” Nick looked utterly confused, and moved his hand away when Zoldrak reached to do hand-over-hand, so he just reached over himself and pulled the sweater over Nick’s shoulder. “And now I will need your hand.”
He tried to push Nick’s hand into the sleeve, but Nick moaned and pulled away, then decided to get up and leave. Zoldrak slipped the sweater off as he did. “All right, you want a break.”
Over the next few week, Zoldrak tried the sweater lesson every night. Nick got more tolerant of being helped into the sweater, but didn’t seem to be getting any better at actually knowing what to do with the sweater.
Zoldrak was about to give up, when, eight days after he’d started, he saw a glimmer of hope. He got Nick almost dressed in the sweater, slid Nick’s good arm into the sleeve, and Nick pushed it through the rest of the way.
“Good job, Nick!” Zoldrak exclaimed.
Nick smiled, responding to the praise in his facial expression and tone even if he couldn’t understand the words, and then looked down and started fiddling with the buttons again.