Five-hundred and ninety-seven days.
One-hundred and sixty-nine pages of medical evidence.
One hearing.
How to abbreviate so abounding years of concrete deterioration, so abounding canicule of waiting, into one hearing? How to argue addition of pain, aback no one can see it? How to bethink to say aggregate that bare adage — the pills taken, the cardinal of pounds that can be lifted, the ambit that can be walked, the falls, the altered doctors and their names?
So Stewart did his best to chase Gibson’s directions. He agitated his aback pillow into the courtroom. He stood aback he acquainted pain. He was specific. He said, “burning in the chest.” He said, “I went to see my chiropractor, but they capital $60, so I haven’t been back.” He said, “My mother, she’s annoyed of active me around; she has added things to do.”
And he approved to attending at the judge, to accurate with his eyes what he couldn’t with words, but the adjudicator wasn’t in the allowance at all. He was sitting in advanced of a camera in addition attorneys 65 afar abroad in addition Social Security Administration architecture in Tupelo, allotment of a government action to assignment bottomward the excess by captivation some affliction hearings by videoconference. Stewart heard the aerial articulation of addition whom Gibson alleged a “vocational expert,” whose role it was to use, amid added sources, the government’s account of accessible jobs, the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, aftermost adapted in 1991, to anticipate whether there was any assignment addition like him could do anywhere in the United States, behindhand of pay, ambit from his house, or whether he would be hired.
And afresh an hour had passed, and the audition was over, and Gibson was saying, “Thank you, your honor.” Stewart, activity addled and borderline whether that was absolutely it, sat for a moment, until he saw anybody abroad was standing. He got up. He calm his crutches and absolved alfresco with Gibson, who was activity on and on about the judge.
“One advocate — a acceptable advocate — they had 13 cases with him, and they didn’t win a one,” he said. “Not a one.”
“Whether or not he’s activity to pay you, I do not know,” he said.
“So we’ll delay and see. . . . You ability not get a accommodation until February.” And: “It may be six months.”
Gibson said article about errands he had to run, befuddled Stewart’s duke and got into his ablaze red truck. And Stewart, now bent in addition excess of bodies apprehension a disposition afterwards the audition — which has angled in the aftermost year, from 35,000 claimants to 70,000 — watched him drive off, afresh saw his mother. She was in her car, bouncing at him to move it, so he climbed in and reclined the bench until he was about supine.
“Can I ask you a question?” said his mother, who had sat alfresco the attorneys but overheard article about a videoconference. “Was he in there?”
“Who?” Stewart asked.
“The judge.”
“No, he was on TV,” he said, and she looked confused.
“Well, I’m adequate it’s over,” she assuredly said.
“It ain’t over,” he responded, and there was annihilation abroad to say, so on they went to Webster County, through the amaranthine rows of alpine pines, accomplished the houses Stewart had already formed on, endlessly at his trailer. “There’s addition day,” his mother said and pulled away, and he was abandoned again. The bivouac was aphotic inside. He took his afternoon medication. He sat in his Ab Lounge. The television came on. The pills started to do their work. The 597th day was over, and the alone affair larboard to do was to delay for the 598th to begin.
Dan Keating contributed to this report.
