Coming In: the wheelchair, six months of blinks, and eating the rock

pivotal · UNDATED (age 32; ~7 years before YDAU)

• When: she Comes In to Ennet House at thirty-two; the first six months wheelchair-bound and communicating by blinks
• What: Pat arrived at Ennet House in an electric wheelchair at thirty-two, able to communicate for the first six months only by something like Morse-code blinks. Even without the use of her arms she demonstrated willingness the House still tells stories about: when the founder — the Guy Who Didn't Even Use His First Name — told her to try to eat a rock, she chopped downward at it with her torso and neck, chipping both incisors (you can still see the caps at the corners). She got sober, and gradually regained an unexpected amount of function. Years later, interviewing a wheelchair-bound applicant, she offers the memory herself: she came in in a chair too, having declared up and down she was too disabled to kneel and pray.