The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Bauby opens this chapter by recounting the day that his wheelchair arrived in his hospital room. On that day, a bevy of white-coated medical staff, including nurses, orderlies, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a psychologist, a neurologist, interns, and even the department head arrive in his room for the unveiling of the chair. Bauby, however, confesses that he could not make the connection between the wheelchair and himself, and instead thought that he was being ejected from his room to make room for another patient. Because no one had yet clearly articulated his situation to him, he had clung to the belief that he would soon very quickly recover his ability to move and speak.Rather than thinking about such a thing as a wheelchair, his mind was occupied with “a thousand projects: a novel, travel, a play, marketing a fruit cocktail of [his] own invention” (8).

On this day, the members of the medical staff dress him by painfully manipulating his limbs into clothing. Two attendants then lift him from the bed by his shoulders and feet, and dump him “unceremoniously into the wheelchair” (8). It is through these occurrences that Bauby realizes that he has crossed the threshold into being a full-fledged quadriplegic, rather than merely a patient with an uncertain prognosis.