Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. When in the presence of Kathy, smiling was what you did. Even if I didn’t feel fully energized, she had begun to shift my way of thinking and I could feel a lessening of the tension in my shoulders.

  When she returned a hop, skip, and sashay later, Kathy presented me with a board about the size of two meal trays. It was adorned with various latches of the kind you would encounter in daily life. There were buttons and zippers, snaps and clasps. She set the base of the board on my bedside table and leaned it back against her chest to keep it upright while she reached around to hook two sections of a bra strap together; the bra strap that was on the board, that is.

  ‘Let’s make this realistic,’ she said as she clasped the undergarment. ‘Now unhook the strap.’ I raised my eyebrows inquisitively at her and she chuckled with devilish laughter.

  ‘Hey, you never know when you’ll get the opportunity.’ I stared; no worthy responses coming to mind. After momentary amazement, I just smiled stiffly and turned to face the new challenge presented to me.

  Who was this woman?

  So Far Yet To Go

  An extended hospital stay does wear on a person. During the weekends, when Kathy wasn’t around to pick me up, the reality of losing my hands and the monotony of rehab would drag me down. Resigned and without bothering to hope for more, I did the one thing I could think to do: I trudged on as I’d done before.

  By the time dinner came knocking, I had satiated myself on self-pity. I forced myself to accept the spaghetti and meatballs in spite of the part of me refusing to care if I lived or died. Amber seemed pleased as she brought the tray of food to my bedside table and it occurred to me that there may have been some conversation about me among the nurses. I wondered if I’d been placed on a ‘Watch Closely’ or ‘Potentially Suicidal’ list.

  She carefully replaced the hooks on the table with my dinner and asked cautiously, ‘Would you like me to help you eat?’

  ‘No,’ I spat in retort, then immediately regretted my harshness. My anger wasn’t meant for her. I amended, ‘Thank you, but no, I need to start using those damn things sometime.’ I gestured with my head towards the prosthetics in her hand.

  ‘Okay,’ she said and gently placed the hooks at my side. After making sure the table was within easy reach, she said, ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Don’t hesitate to use the call button.’

  ‘I will. Thanks, Amber.’

  I wasn’t happy about it, but these hooks were now a part of my life. I couldn’t hide forever. So when she had left, I grimly set about the task of donning the two things I currently hated most in the world.

  I struggled into the harness and then the cylindrical forearms with blatant animosity. More than once during the process I had to stop and take a moment to calm myself down, lest I do something to the heinous things I might regret. When I had finally managed to slide both arms into the defiling contraptions and tested that the cables were working properly, I snagged the bedside table with the left hook and wheeled it over my lap.

  The savory scent of tomato sauce and meat wafted up to me and I became potently aware of just how hungry I was. A little added incentive for you, I sneered at the defiant side of me which wanted to fling the whole tray across the room and hammer the bedrails with the hooks until they broke into a thousand ineffectual pieces. I worked to block out that inner voice with technical thoughts of how exactly one was meant to eat with hooks.

  I studied the right hook and laid it beside the fork on my tray, considering. It had been so long, I couldn’t even picture how you held a fork with fingers. After having eaten so many dishes, the act of spooning a mouthful of spaghetti had become second nature. But my second nature was no longer of any use to me.

  Delicately, I flexed my shoulder to open the hook. With the fork braced by the left hook so it wouldn’t slip away, I slid the stem between the right two hooks then relaxed my shoulder and watched as the hook closed around the utensil. Exhaling the breath I had been holding, I lifted the fork off the tray and watched as the hook held fast.

  Okay, not so bad. . . Yet.

  With the fork hovering above my bowl of spaghetti, I realized simply holding the utensil was just the beginning of what needed to be done. I would have to calculate the appropriate angles of my shoulder, elbow, hook, and fork to get the food from the bowl and into my mouth. The mere thought of all that must now go into doing such an elementary task was debilitating. If my stomach hadn’t been so adamant about my need for food, I may have relinquished control to my mutinous side and thrown the tray in surrender.

  Like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, I had to re-orient myself in regards to the fork and bowl. After many false starts and a new understanding of how my shoulder now played a leading role in the eating process, I finally managed to get one meager scoop of noodles into my mouth. It became a constant battle to keep from accidentally pulling the hooks open mid-scoop and depositing what should have been in my belly on top of it. Never had eating been such a taxing endeavor; like playing multiple, simultaneous games of chess. With every misstep it became harder to hold back the thwarting rage. Each time, spaghetti landed where it wasn’t supposed to be or I was forced to retrieve my fallen fork, I had to take a moment to quiet the aggravated rant coursing through my mind.

  By the time my mom came in for her usual evening visit to chat and competitively watch Wheel of Fortune together, a throbbing ache had rooted itself in my skull. I tried to greet her, but accidentally turned my shoulders too much and dropped the spaghetti-laden fork onto the tray. Frustrated beyond measure, I gritted my teeth and navigated through the process of retrieving the fork and starting again.

  ‘Have a seat, Mom,’ I said distractedly, my focus back on the spaghetti. Carefully, I opened and closed the hooks around the fork and began scooping up noodles once more. I could feel my mom watching tensely from my side and sensed her poised on the end of her chair, ready to leap into the fray.

  One inch at a time, I raised the forkful of pasta towards my mouth, stretched my neck out like a turtle to make the journey shorter, and wrapped my lips securely around the end of the utensil. Successfully chewing a bite of spaghetti, I leaned back and turned to my mom.

  ‘So the – uh – hooks came today, huh?’ she asked after a flabbergasted pause. I watched as her eyes travelled to the red smears and spaghetti strands clinging to the top half of my t-shirt, up to the right hook with the fork in its clutches, and back to my face. The expression of pain in her eyes caused the food I’d been swallowing to stick in my throat.

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘How are they?’ I could tell she was trying desperately to be casual in her questions, but the tension in her body laced her words with strain.

  ‘About what you’d expect,’ I said, turning back to my meal. I dipped the fork into the pasta and started to lift my arm towards my mouth, but my mind was pre-occupied by thoughts of my mom and I miscalculated my angles. The fork went vertical before reaching my mouth and pasta slopped down the hook and arm.

  ‘Oh!’ Mom exclaimed from beside me. Through my peripheral vision I saw her reach out towards me.

  ‘Don’t!’ I barked and she froze halfway out of her chair. I had become confused and the spill was the result. It wasn’t the first nor the last time missteps would render me covered in sauce.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I added when I saw her cower at my sharp tone. I remedied my angles and tilted my hook and the fork back towards the bowl, ignoring the noodles which slid along and off my arm in the process. This time I was able to bring the fork in the right direction, but halfway to my mouth I misused my shoulder and the damn hook opened. Noodles and fork tumbled onto my lap, adding red spots to the stains already setting in my shirt.

  ‘Rrrg!’ I growled at the maddening mistakes I kept making. My mom stood from her chair to retrieve the fork. I snapped at her before she could reach me.

  ‘Let me feed myself, damn it!’ A whimper escaped her throat and she turned towa
rds the window.

  Damn it all! Hating myself for hurting her more, I started, ‘Aw, Mom –’

  But she shook her head in dismissal.

  ‘Why couldn’t it have happened to me instead?’ she moaned.

  I went still. Where had that come from? She wishes she could take my place? It couldn’t be. No one would wish for this. But that’s what she had said. I watched the quaking in her rounded shoulders and felt sorrow that stretched far deeper than the self-pity I’d been swimming in all day.

  I wanted to say something – anything – to help her stop crying, but what words could fix this? Never – not at any point along this torturous journey had I wished what happened to me upon anyone else. And never had I thought that someone I cared so deeply about, whom clearly cared a great deal for me, would wish to take my place. It was the last thing I would want.

  Does she feel responsible? I wondered. The mere thought agonized me to the core. This was no one’s fault. A fluke, a random occurrence when all the stars had happened to line up against me. I thought everyone had reconciled with that fact at least as much as I had. But clearly not because my mom was sobbing silently by the window.

  I watched her in my own helpless misery. I wanted to reach out to her, but I was still a hostage of this bed. I wanted to console her with words, but none seemed worthy. So I let my arms fall to my sides in defeat, resigned now to be the audience to my mother’s suffering as she had been witness to mine.

  There is still so much healing left to be done.

  Bleeding Out is Cold

  I stared at Amber’s blood-splattered face and she smiled back. How had this happened? The week had been going so well in comparison to the last, what with my dalliances with Kathy and growing dexterity with the hooks. And now this?

  Dazed, I shook my head and tried to remember. Amber had come to change the bandages on my feet – a routine procedure I underwent every few days. We were chatting amicably, swapping hospital gossip and news, and then there was blood. So much blood. It began spraying around the room, gushing from the end of my left foot.

  ‘I’ve got a bleeder!’ she yelled as she clamped her hand over my foot. But the blood wouldn’t stop. It started squirting through the gaps in her fingers. Frantically, she grabbed the gauze she had just removed and bunched it at the top of my foot. Lines of red streaked her face, neck, and clothing. Splatters adorned the wall behind her.

  I stared wide-eyed at the scene before me: blood-washed like the crime scene of a murder mystery, Amber saturated in red like Stephen King’s Carrie. This can’t all be coming from me. The blood was everywhere; seeping through the gauze, staining her hands, clumping in her hair, drooling down her cheek.

  Another nurse came sprinting into my room with Dr. Henrickson, who happened to be in the unit, on her heels. ‘Hey, Doc H!’ I said – or thought, I couldn’t be sure which – in happy surprise. Whatever the case, he paid me no mind as he headed straight for the bathroom.

  Hope he isn’t about to puke, I thought facetiously.

  He had a towel in his hand when he came back out. ‘Get a central line kit, Joanne,’ he said coolly to the second nurse. I realized I was smiling dopily at the scene unfolding before me as if I really were watching a movie. That’s not right, I thought and tried to straighten my expression.

  Dr. Henrickson wrapped the towel around my foot. Amber slid her hands from the gauze to the towel, squeezing so hard the veins on her neck popped out. I probably should have felt fear – my life was on the line, after all – but I wasn’t afraid. I trusted the people who now held my life in their hands (again). Whatever the outcome, I’d know they’d done everything they could and no one could have done more.

  A gasp from the left drew my attention. Kathy stood in the doorway, her expression aghast. She spun on her heels and dashed off, yelling, ‘I’ll call surgery,’ over her shoulder as she went.

  Surgery? I thought in dismay. I hated surgery. They did a lot of cutting in surgery.

  The second nurse was back. She passed a surgical kit off to Dr. Henrickson as if it was a baton and they were in the midst of a relay race. (I hope you’re winning.)

  He strode to my right side. Joanne tugged on the foot of the bed so Dr. H could move behind me. I looked across my body at Amber. She winked and smiled at me. Blood now saturated the towel and was dribbling from the ends. It dawned on me then that I must be in deep shit for Amber to smile like that.

  ‘Scott,’ Dr. Henrickson said from somewhere above me, ‘I need to put in a central line. It’s going to be painful but if I don’t do it you’ll bleed out before we can get you to surgery.’ Bleed out, I silently repeated. Translation: die.

  I blinked at him, which apparently wasn’t enough consent because he prompted, ‘Okay?’

  I didn’t say a word or move a muscle.

  Someone lowered the head of my bed until it was below the level of my feet. Dr. Henrickson wiped something down the right side of my neck. He barked out orders to the second nurse and I felt fingers pressing into my neck. They pressed, paused, then shifted and pressed again. After a moment they found what they were looking for and held fast.

  A sharp pinch at the side of my neck. I wanted to flinch away. Pain or death, those were my options.

  Tears stung my eyes. He had told me it would hurt. I hadn’t understood how much.

  Pure, unadulterated pain washed over me. Suddenly it was all true: this was me; that was my blood on the walls; it was my life they were trying to save. None of it had felt real without the pain – agonizing, brutalizing pain.

  My vision wavered between blindingly white light and crisp clarity. Two men raced in with a gurney. I saw them advance on me from the left in spurts of lucidity. I was lifted and shifted. Then we were on the move. I could hear Dr. Henrickson’s cool voice hovering around me, Stay with us, Scott! Stay with us…

  I could see the flash of lights passing overhead and felt a chill settle over me. When we rolled out of the elevator into the familiar pallor of the operating room, my teeth chattered around a gaping yawn.

  So tuh-tired, I thought and shivered as we entered the OR.

  ‘Hi, Scott,’ an unfamiliar male voice said, accompanied by a firm hand on my shoulder. I lifted my eyelids one fraction at a time and struggled to focus on the masked face above me. The impression I got was of round jolliness. He had nice, close-set eyes and dark barely-receding hair.

  ‘I’m Dr. Mixter,’ the jolly doctor said. ‘You don’t remember me, but we spent some time together last month.’ Just behind this unfamiliar doctor someone was tinkering with a tray of tools. Surgical tools, my muddied brain determined.

  Dr. Mixter was replaced by a female assistant as he moved to the other end of the table. The apples of her cheeks bulged and her eyes wrinkled around the edge of her mask.

  ‘Everything’s okay, Scott,’ she said softly, stroking my hair with one hand. ‘Everything’s okay.’ Her cheeks stayed rounded at the edge of her smile, but the expression in her eyes wavered as she watched me.

  Things didn’t look so “okay” in her eyes.

  ~~~

  He stood by my feet, leaning forward slightly. The light blue shirt beneath his white lab coat, dark tie knotted around his neck, and expression of compassionate severity on his face all too familiar.

  Gazing up at Dr. Mixter from my bed, I could see Dr. Henrickson stooping over me to say I was officially another digit in the statistics of the flesh-eating disease. Dr. Henrickson telling me machines were the only things between me and death. Dr. Henrickson telling me my hands and feet were gone and I was lucky to be alive.

  Here I was again: about to receive a similar prognosis from a different doctor on a different day in a different unit of the same hospital. Had I really achieved so much in these past weeks?

  ‘How’re you feeling today, Scott?’ Dr. Mixter asked.

  ‘Alive.’

  He chuckled, but I hadn’t meant it as a joke. Yesterday was very nearly the last day I would have felt anything,
and it had been shrouded in torment, defeat, and terror. I didn’t want to think about the emotional aspects of the day, so I diverted my attention to the technical side of the events.

  ‘What happened yesterday?’ I asked as he began gently unwinding the bandage on my right foot. ‘Why was my foot bleeding?’

  ‘It looked like a staple came loose.’ I nodded. I had figured it was something like that. Unlike my arms, my feet were still healing and held together by surgical staples.

  ‘Not entirely uncommon,’ he continued, and started to chuckle again, ‘but we sure had to close it right quick.’ I wondered what part of that statement was meant to be funny. Perhaps I had missed some inside joke in my severe-blood-loss haze yesterday.

  ‘You lost a lot of blood,’ he said, sobering up. The cause of the chills: I was bleeding to death; draining dry.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Why does the right foot look so different from the left?’ I asked. The dissimilarities had bothered me since my first bandage change. While my left foot was cleanly cut through the middle of the arch with a small flap of extra skin used to sew it up, the right was a mutilated stump that was so short it was hard to tell where the heel ended and what was now the front-end of the foot began. The skin had patches of hair and looked like someone had taken a meat mallet to it.

  He glanced up from his examination then began re-wrapping my foot. ‘Well, the left didn’t have much tissue loss and was a straight, lateral cut and sew. There was great debate about whether there should be a BK on the right.’ He looked at me with a sideways grin. ‘Sorry, Below-The-Knee amputation. Knowing that you were an athlete, I wanted you to have something that you could possibly run on.’

  He thinks I could run on that? I eyed my mutilated foot with skepticism.

  ‘It was a bit of a long shot, but I stripped the tissue and padding from the bottom of your foot then recreated that portion with a four-by-six-inch strip of muscle from your abdomen and skin from your thigh. You’ll probably have hair growth on the sole of your foot now, but at least there’s a bottom to it.’