A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  I shared my feelings with only a few close friends. This was more than a mere crush, and I wanted to protect myself. I had seen too many people in high school confide their secrets and then have others walk all over them. I thought I’d die if anyone trampled over my precious feelings for Rob. My few close friends encouraged me to ask Rob to the Sadie Hawkins dance my junior year. It took days for me to build up the gumption. A week before the dance, I found him alone near his locker after school. Without a greeting, I just blurted it out. “Rob, will you go to the Sadie Hawkins with me?” He was so excited, he jumped up and down in the hallway. I blushed, smiled, and my heart leapt. Memories of the dance were a blur, but I did remember the electric feeling of his body close to mine as we slow-danced, and I wondered if he felt it, too.

  But he never asked me out on a date after the dance, so I assumed he just wanted to be friends. Though disappointed, I liked him so much I wanted to be his friend, which was enough.

  Rob graduated at the end of my junior year and attended the local community college the next fall. Without him at school, my feelings lay dormant. Occasionally, I saw him at weekend parties, stoking the smoldering fire in my heart. But he never called me, so I eventually stopped fantasizing about him and focused instead on my senior-year activities. The promise of him now was even more remote, but after the accident, he rose in my thoughts again, like crocuses returning in the spring.

  When my friends visited me in the hospital one afternoon soon after my talk with my mom, I wanted to ask if they knew whether or not Rob had heard of the accident. But I was tongue-tied, and simply seeing them made me feel awkward and distant. I noticed how they forced themselves to look at my face, and I could sense their morbid curiosity to look at the remainder of my leg, the small bump hidden under the bedcovers.

  “Did you hear about Jack and Amy?” Brandy asked. Brandy and I had been friends since sophomore year, when we’d met in our first play together. “They broke up!”

  Sarah, whom I also knew from the drama department, chimed in, “I heard Jack is really bummed about it, but Amy acts like she doesn’t care.” Jack and Amy were the golden couple of the senior class. I listened as they reported on the couple’s latest crisis, but high school news now seemed trivial and meaningless. Their words sounded like the schoolteacher in the Charlie Brown comics: “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” I smiled, nodded my head, and laughed when they laughed, but I felt as disconnected from them as my leg was from my body.

  As I lay in my hospital bed the night after my friends’ visit, frustrated and forlorn, I wept, feeling so separate from the people who had become my second family. Gail, a kind nurse, heard me whimpering and came into my room. “I’ll listen,” she said softly.

  “They all feel so far away and in another world. They don’t understand what I’m going through.” She explained they were all too immature for me now and they couldn’t understand. This didn’t help. I didn’t want to be mature. I didn’t want to be in the position where my friends needed to “understand” me. That was for grownups. I just wanted to be a senior in high school.

  My father’s death, which happened while I was in junior high school, had thrown me into the “other” category. “Oh, she’s the one whose dad drowned.” Few students talked to me about his death, and when they did, they asked questions about the accident, not about how I was feeling. I quickly learned that my feelings, precious and deep, had to be kept to myself. Now here I was again, thrown into the “other” category. I knew all too well how to mask my emotions. But I could already tell this wasn’t going to be like Dad’s death. This was too integral to who I was. Masking my feelings while I dealt with what was on the horizon for me was going to take extra effort.

  I turned my gaze to the lit Christmas tree on the top of the Space Needle and said what would be my last prayer for a long time. “You weren’t supposed to do this to me. I have worked so hard to be good, and this is how you treat me. If that’s how you’re going to play, fine. But don’t expect adoration and blind faith any longer. I’ll do everything I can to deal with this, and you do everything you can to help me.” It wasn’t a deal or an ultimatum. It was my last stand. This was cruel. This was unfair. This was like a sinister prank. And God isn’t supposed to be evil. All the rules had changed. I didn’t know how yet, but I’d figure out the new rules and beat this game somehow. I knew I still needed God’s help; I just wasn’t going to ask for it again. He didn’t deserve my respect. Because of what he did to me, he had to take responsibility for helping me handle this.

  I turned my head away from the window, pushed the button on my call light, and waited for the nurse to arrive with the next injection.

  3

  ATTA GIRL

  Mom was tidying my hospital room in the same way she tidied the living room at home. She called it “putzing.” She stacked all the get-well cards neatly on the bedside table, freshened the water in the many bouquets of flowers, and picked up the stray magazines strewn about the room. I was lying in bed, tired, thinking about my friends living the life I had been living just a week ago. I missed them, but because I couldn’t relate to them anymore, I was so lonely.

  My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by loud clapping coming from the doorway. “Time to get you up!” A stocky, strong-looking woman with short, sandy-blonde hair walked in. She was wearing khaki pants, a white shirt, and a big smile. “Hi! I’m Anne, your physical therapist, and we’re going to get you vertical today.”

  I was baffled. It had only been a week since the accident. I looked at Mom, who was looking in her compact mirror as she applied a fresh coat of lipstick. I could tell from her reassuring smile that she had been apprised of this new development. Anne maneuvered a gurney to the side of my bed. Clearly, I had no choice in the matter, and Anne’s practiced, no-nonsense demeanor assured me she had done this before.

  She and a nurse transferred me to the gurney by sliding me—using the sheet I was lying on—and then wheeled me out into the hall in the direction of what I would soon understand was the physical therapy department. I hadn’t been outside my room yet, and my nose was assaulted by the antiseptic odor, which had been pretty well masked in my room by the fresh bouquets of flowers. “Good luck, Colleen,” I heard from the staff behind the nursing station desk. I glanced at them and attempted a smile as we glided past—and realized I didn’t even recognize all of them. A young nurse I hadn’t seen before waved at me. How do they know my name? As Anne pushed me down the wide hallway and chatted with Mom, I noticed my hands were sweaty. I was starting to get nervous. What was physical therapy going to be like? What was Anne going to expect from me? In an effort to allay my fears, I looked into the patient rooms as we passed. Most of the patients I glimpsed were old, curled in their beds, moaning or sleeping. I felt so sad for them.

  When we reached the physical therapy department, I felt the buzz of activity. The high-ceilinged room was full of patients doing exercises on elevated blue mats. Large picture windows lined one wall, allowing the sun to stream in. Anne pushed me to one side of the room and slid my gurney perpendicular to the wall. She and one of her female aides slid me onto a padded platform about six feet long—called a “tilt table”—and strapped me in across my torso.

  “Okay, time for the ride of your life!” Anne said, smiling. She pushed a button, and the table slowly hummed its way to a forty-five-degree angle. I held on for dear life. I hadn’t been vertical in a week—a week in which each day held an eternity.

  “Okay, how do you feel?” she asked.

  “Nervous,” I said. But actually, I felt great. I felt tall. I felt like I had regained a little of myself by not looking at the world from a bed.

  “Okay, then we’ll go higher.” The table continued its slow rotation to ninety degrees. “How’s this?”

  “Fine?” I said. Anne was clearly pleased, and she and Mom talked about how unusual it was for someone in my situation to do so well at ninety degrees. I knew this was a small thing, but I was proud of mysel
f. “Well, champ, that’s all for now. We don’t want to tax your delicate constitution,” she said with a wink.

  “I’m done?” I was surprised—and relieved nothing more was expected of me.

  “Oh, no, you can’t get rid of me so easily. I’ll see you again this afternoon at three o’clock. That will be our schedule every day: eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon.”

  I was napping and Mom was reading a magazine when Anne strode into my room at three o’clock, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Good afternoon! Are you ready for round two?”

  During this session, instead of sliding me onto a gurney, she talked me through how to sit up, turn my body, and transfer myself into a wheelchair. Her arms were around me, guiding me through each step, her breath warm on my neck. She gave off the clean scent of soap and shampoo. Every movement felt awkward and unsettling. The weight differential between my legs was significant. I just wanted to lie back down and go to sleep. I wanted to escape this reality. But Mom was squealing with delight. “Oh, look, honey, you’re sitting up!”

  “How do you feel? Are you dizzy?” Anne’s question and Mom’s delight helped me settle into the chair, into the room, into my body.

  “No, I’m not dizzy. I feel okay.”

  Anne sat down in a chair across from me, and while she focused on cleaning her fingernails, one nail under the other, she asked me where I went to school, what grade I was in, and what I did after school. Mom sat in the background, flipping the pages of a magazine. After I had answered her questions, Anne said, “Okay, then!” and stood up.

  “Your job today is to sit in this chair until you’re tired, hopefully through dinner—if you can eat it,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. I hadn’t eaten solid food in a week so regardless of what dinner tasted like, I would eat it.

  Mom had to go home to tend to my brothers at dinnertime, so I was alone when Gail, the nurse who’d talked to me about my friends, delivered my dinner. She took the warming top off the plate with a flourish, her arm sweeping the air. “Ta-da, steak and potatoes! It’s actually pretty good. Eat as much as you can, but don’t overdo it.”

  “Okay,” I said as she left the room. I suddenly felt so alone, which I was used to, but this was a weird alone. I felt like a stranger to myself. I was used to spending a lot of solitary time out in the woods behind our house, walking the mazelike trails, but now I wasn’t quite sure of who I was—and this made me feel panicky when no one else was in the room with me. I nibbled at the steak. It was juicy but too hard to swallow—though harder to swallow still was the fact that I had to figure out who I was. At least Anne saw me as someone who was trying to heal, but that wasn’t much of an identity. I ate about half my dinner before despair made me too tired to finish.

  The next day, Anne showed me exercises to help me regain my strength. Except for gym class, I had rarely exercised on purpose. My athletic inexperience coupled with my injury made me feel very awkward and self-conscious while I was doing exercises that required me to lift my remaining full leg, which the doctors had saved with some effort, up in the air.

  “Ah, come on, I know you’re stronger than that,” she said, which challenged me to lift my leg higher. “You can do five more, trust me.” I squeezed out five more painful leg lifts. “There. What did I tell you? You’re stronger than my horses at home,” she said with a laugh that echoed throughout the room. I left therapy feeling surprisingly strong and confident.

  On the third day, Anne attached a round metal pylon to the bottom of the cast covering my residual leg. The pylon was about two inches in circumference and looked like a pipe. As she anchored it in place, she explained how I was going to walk. But I was only half listening. I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. I looked away, not wanting to see the replacement for the part of me I hadn’t yet let go of, not wanting her to see the tears well up in my eyes. She gripped my arm and said, “Hey, you’re gonna do great.” Her smile was infectious, and so was her attitude. She hardly knew me and yet was so sure I’d succeed. I felt like I was riding piggyback. So I swallowed my grief, put a smile on my face, and decided to live up to Anne’s confidence in me.

  Anne rolled my wheelchair to the parallel bars and applied the brakes. She used the therapy belt buckled around my waist to lift me from the chair. For the first time since the accident, I was standing. I felt unbalanced, which was disorienting, so I grabbed the parallel bars on either side of me and held on tightly. I didn’t want to look down and see my missing leg, so I raised my head, but at the end of the parallel bars was a full-length mirror. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Was that was actually me? Blue-and-white hospital gown. Straight, greasy hair. Pale, white skin. Big bandage on my right leg. Metal for my left. I wanted to run away and sob until I couldn’t feel anything anymore, but Anne was there, bellowing out orders. “Bear weight on your arms and lift your left leg.” I was disoriented, because the pylon—my left leg—was nearly weightless. I looked around the room for something to concentrate on besides the mirror.

  “Good. Now move that leg forward and set ’er down,” she ordered. I did. “See, you just took your first step!” she said encouragingly. “Now let’s try the right side.”

  I took a step with my right leg. Anne held the belt around my torso, tightly at first, then she slowly loosened her grip. I focused on her hands, strong with short, dirty fingernails. I held on to the bars, bearing more and more of my own weight. She didn’t coo her praise; she barked it. “Good! Take another step. Great! Hey, would you look at this everyone? She’s walking!”

  I heard people clapping. I started to giggle. Sweat dripped into my eyes and down my sides, but I couldn’t take my arms off the bars to wipe it away. Yes, people were looking at me as I hobbled around in a stupid hospital gown with a pylon for a leg. I was sweating like a pig, and my hair looked like crap. But I was walking. For the first time since the accident, I felt hopeful. Perhaps I wouldn’t lie in bed for the rest of my life. Perhaps I would walk again. Perhaps there was an identity to build for myself as someone who could overcome her circumstances. I reached the end of the bars and saw that someone had moved my wheelchair there. Anne helped me sit down, and I rested. I had walked ten feet and was exhausted. Anne slapped me on the back, and I laughed through my tears.

  “You ready to walk back?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, laughing, feeling both elated and exhausted. “But I will.” I liked Anne, and I wanted to please her.

  Anne helped me stand up. I grabbed the parallel bars and slowly walked to the other end. Anne narrated the entire walk. “That’s right, now pick up the right foot. Don’t you wish walking had been this easy when you were a baby? Now the left … Good, good! Just a few more steps and you’re there. Atta girl, you’re an old pro.”

  4

  AT LAST

  Anne’s confidence and commanding spirit held me in place during the rest of my stay in the hospital. When I said goodbye to her and the rest of the staff, I felt ready to go home and resume my life. But that readiness was short-lived.

  Mom pulled up to the hospital door in her small hatchback and I had a new hurdle to cross: getting into a car again. I choked back the tears as I struggled to fit my crutches into the backseat. I was afraid to get in. What if we get hit on the way home? I thought as I plopped myself onto the passenger seat. I could hardly breathe as Mom drove, especially as she navigated through rush-hour traffic. Every time a car passed us, I wrung my hands and closed my eyes, but behind my lids I could see that green Pacer speeding toward me.

  We pulled into our driveway and parked behind an unfamiliar car. My stomach sank. I didn’t want any visitors right then. But then Mary Beth opened the front door and came out of the house, her eyes gleaming with tears. Mary Beth had bought a used car so she could easily commute between college and home to see me on the weekends. She had been to see me at the hospital, but she had classes to attend in Bellingham, so I hadn’t seen her in a week. I was overjoyed to see her, but I also thought I saw g
uilt in her eyes as I hobbled toward her. My heart swelled with love and a desire to comfort her. She has nothing to feel guilty about. It’s all his fault, the guy who was driving the Pacer, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I simply stood in front of her, willing her to be okay and hoping that someday, when we were both ready, we’d have a chance to talk about it.

  After dinner with the family and a TV show with Mary Beth, I was ready for bed. My bedroom was on the second floor, up a flight of thirteen stairs. Standing at the bottom and looking up to the top of the staircase was like looking up to the top of Mt. Rainier.

  “Do you need any help?” Mary Beth asked. The desperate helplessness in her voice made me want to protect her from her own feelings. The quicker I recover, the better everyone else will feel, I thought. Aside from carrying me up the stairs, there was nothing she could do. I was on my own with this task.

  “No thanks, I got it,” I said. I took a deep breath and crutched up the first step. By the time I got to the top, I was sweating from exertion, almost too tired to crutch down the hallway to my bedroom. Mary Beth, who had followed me up, gave me a tight hug good night and then I made my way down to my room. When I opened the door, I couldn’t go in right away. I felt the absence of my leg in a new way. I looked at my bed. The last time I’d crawled into that bed, I had two legs. I gazed at my desk. The last time I studied at that desk, I crossed my now-missing left leg over my right leg.

  I noticed a pair of my jeans folded over my chair. The last time I wore those jeans, I’d slipped both legs into them. I remembered how rushed I had been the morning I last left this bedroom, scurrying on my capable two legs to get out the door. Little did I know how much my life would change that day.