From tragedy comes empathy

This is the fate Sarah Nickerson wakes up to after she is involved in a severe car accident that occurs when she takes her eyes off the highway to make a business call. A 37-year-old mother of three who works 80 hours a week in a high-powered and high-pressure job, Sarah is the ultimate multitasker who — though claiming she loves her job precisely because it is so demanding — twice a month allows herself to cry for five minutes at her desk, to “reset.’’

Her accident lands her in a rehab facility, where Sarah struggles to come to terms with her new limitations: she cannot dress herself, walk without a cane, make sense of a newspaper article, or trust herself to navigate a trip to the ladies’ room in a restaurant. Driving is out of the question, as is returning to her job any time soon. Her husband has to supervise her when she brushes her teeth, as he does for their three children, because her brain doesn’t register the left side of her mouth. Beyond these physical challenges lies the voice in her head that keeps asking, “What happens if I don’t get better?’’

Sarah’s mother — who essentially checked out of her daughter’s life, and her own, after Sarah’s brother drowned as a child — comes to help Sarah’s husband, Bob, take care of the children. And when the insurance company deems Sarah ready to move home, even though the patient herself does not feel prepared, her mother takes care of Sarah as well. “I try to remember the last time she helped me with anything,’’ Sarah tells us, at a loss to absorb her mother’s sudden competence and generosity. In one of the book’s moments of dark humor, she adds, “I think she poured me a glass of milk in 1984.’’