Eighteen Months

by Giulia Napoli

  I tried to make light of the experience in my mind, to calm me down when I lay in bed. That was certainly the most expensive pay toilet I’d ever used! I chuckled at that thought, until I thought about going to court and the embarrassment that would be. This wasn’t how I was planning to start my new life. I was all alone and I was hurting – mostly because of my bad luck, and my anger at myself. I shed more than a few tears until I finally fell asleep.

  **********

  As instructed by the ticket, I called the Clerk of the Mayor’s Court the next day and got a court date for the following Tuesday. I asked them if I needed to have a lawyer with me for my appearance in court. Of course, they said that was up to me. I told them I had never faced anything like this, I was new in town, I was alone, and I would appreciate their advice. They said that, to be cautious, I should see an attorney.

  I vaguely remember my dad saying if you ever had to go to a local court for a misdemeanor, get a local lawyer, if you felt you needed one. They have all the community relationships and connections with the DA, the judges, the clerks, and so on. So I went online and found a local law Office, Bennett & Kiefer, and called them. I ended up making an appointment with Avery Kiefer, who turned out to be the son of the Kiefer in Bennett & Kiefer.

  Avery was in his late 20s, thin, nice looking in an angular sort-of way, and had only one finger on each hand, a congenital defect that he said was common in his family. Shaking hands was a bit strange, but he seemed confident and capable enough. How was I supposed to be able to tell?

  I showed him the citations. After looking at each of them in detail, his first words were, “Ouch!”

  This is not what one wants to hear from one’s lawyer. It’s equivalent to a surgeon saying, “Oops,” or a pilot saying, “Oh shit.”

  “How much trouble am I in?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “Well, Natalie, let me be frank. You have two Disabled Citizens Act – DCA - violations in the most disabled-friendly city in the United States, along with a parking violation which indicates that you actually DID block an emergency vehicle. Totaled, you’re looking at a first-degree misdemeanor, with the DCA violations together, and a possible second misdemeanor from blocking the emergency vehicle. That could put you in jail for two, six-month terms that might be sequential or concurrent, depending on the mayor’s mood, I suppose. In addition, you’ve got the fines you’ve already been given, plus court costs.”

  I barely heard his last sentence. I had fixated on “… jail for two, six-month terms!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding! I can’t go to jail! I’m supposed to start my new job!”

  “I can probably get this lowered to six months. Or maybe nine …”

  “No! I can’t believe I may have jail time for these tickets! You’ve got to keep me out of jail!” I was in a panic. After all, I’d watched Orange Is the New Black! I couldn’t survive in jail for a week, let alone a year! “Can’t I pay a huge fine or something? I have a little money saved from my inheritance.”

  “That isn’t done much in River’s Edge or anywhere else. After all, it gives the impression that rich people can buy their way out of anything …”

  “But I’m not rich!”

  “No, but nobody else knows that. Hmm … there is potentially another way, if the DA – the city attorney in this case - will agree. It would keep you out of jail, and the city and state are moving more and more to cutting the prison population by using other rehab and punishment methods.”

  “You mean like wear an ankle bracelet to track me or something?”

  “Uh … not so much that anymore. There’s a program in River’s Edge that’s designed to educate repeat offenders of the Disabled Citizens Act. Increase familiarity, that sort of thing. They make you disabled for a period of time.”

  “How do they do that? Do they put you in a cast or something?”

  “No there’s technology … let me call my paralegal in here, and you’ll see what I mean.” He pushed a button and asked someone to join us. In a minute, a pretty brunette rolled into the office in a wheelchair. She was wearing a short skirt and I could see her legs, which were thin from atrophied muscles.

  “This is my paralegal, Sara Wakeland. Sara, this is Natalie Adams.”

  “Hi, Natalie,” she said. Then she looked expectantly at her boss.

  “I’d like you to tell Natalie about your participation in the DCA sensitivity program. I know you don’t mind talking about it.”

  “Meaning how I ended up here,” she said, actually smiling, as she swept her hand across her lap, indicating the wheelchair and her emaciated legs.

  “Yes. I’ll step out to make a call while you tell Natalie.”

  “Okay. I’ll try to be concise, Natalie. Feel free to ask me questions if you want.

  “It was my twenty-first birthday and I’d gone out with a bunch of friends - to party, of course. Right here in River’s Edge. Everyone drank too much. When it was time to call it a night, all the other people took a taxi or bus or Metrorail home and left their cars to pick them up the next day. I had an early class uptown and didn’t want to take Metrorail in the morning so I decided to drive home.

  “I had no business driving. I wasn’t that familiar with the area around the pub and, as a result, I got lost. It was after 10:00 at night. I drove up to what I thought was a four-way stop. I remember seeing a black woman standing on the far corner on my side of the street because my lights reflected off of the metal of the brace on her left leg. She was about to cross the street, but couldn’t tell if I were going to stop or not.

  “Since she was standing there waiting, I decided to go on, as I noticed a car approaching from the left, on the cross-street. Since I thought it was a four-way stop, I went on. I must have been too drunk to realize that the oncoming car wasn’t slowing down. I remember thinking, as the car smashed into me, that the driver had failed to yield. Of course, it wasn’t a four-way stop at all, and cross traffic didn’t stop. There had been a sign and everything, but given the state I was in, it didn’t register, I guess.

  “The car that hit me was diverted right toward the partially crippled woman standing on the corner and hit her, knocking her back against a low, concrete wall. Then that car flipped somehow. My car got pushed to the right and my driver’s side front was smashed.”

  “And you injured your back in the accident?” I asked, not understanding what this situation had to do with me, and my predicament. I just wanted to get on with this uncomfortable meeting with the attorney. Legal stuff always makes me nervous.

  “No. I walked away from the accident uninjured, except for a little stiff neck the next day.”

  “Then I don’t understand …”

  “I’ll explain in a moment. The police and ambulances arrived quickly and the cop could see I was DUI. I blew a 0.15, almost twice the legal limit. The people in the car, driven by a leg amputee using hand controls by the way, were hurt but fully recovered in a couple of months. The woman who was standing there couldn’t move out of the way in time because of the leg brace, which she wore because she’d contracted polio as a child in her native Ethiopia. When she hit the edge of the low wall, it severed her spine at T9. Now she’s in a wheelchair, the same as I am.

  “In the end, I was facing twelve years in the state women’s penitentiary, with no possibility of early release. My lawyer got me an alternative punishment deal as part of the DCA sensitivity program, even though technically, I hadn’t actuated violated the DCA, but I had injured two disabled people, and one other car occupant.

  “I was sentenced to eight years disability, to be matched to the permanent injuries that the black woman suffered.”

  “But how?” I still didn’t get it.

  “They took me from the courtroom, across a skywalk, and directly to the sheriff’s infirmary in the basement of the county jail downtown. They had me put on one of those dumb hospital robes, and a pull-up adult diaper.”

  “Wait. A diaper?”

  “Yes
. You’ll see. They laid me down on my stomach on a table in the infirmary and bared my back. A doctor was standing by with a syringe. She pushed the needle into my lower mid-back. That was it. They sat me in a chair to wait, with a nurse in attendance. Over the next hour and a half, I started to feel tingles in my body from about my bellybutton down to the tips of my toes. The tingles got stronger and I could feel a sluggishness in my legs when I tried to move them. About two hours after the injection, I could feel nothing from my navel down, and I couldn’t move anything either, including my lower abdominal muscles.

  “I’ve been wheelchair-bound ever since that moment. Nothing works below my bellybutton – and I do mean nothing.

  “That was two years ago. I’ll be like this for another six. Then they’ll reverse it. I’ll have my sensation back, which will satisfy a huge frustration from my lack of sexual response. In other words, I can’t feel anything so I can’t cum. I’ll also have control over my intimate bodily functions again, which I have no control over now. That’s why I still wear a diaper. All the time.

  “I’ll be out of my twenties before I can ever enjoy sex again. It’ll mean eight years of my youth without meaningful sex. Of course, in prison, there wouldn’t likely be meaningful sex either, only partners of convenience. Oh, I can be fucked as I am without any problem. And I have been – exactly once. I felt nothing, only some tugging on this dead half of my body. I didn’t even know when I was penetrated. After that experience, I didn’t want anything to do with sex.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk again. I used to have these lovely legs – I always thought they were my best feature. Now you can see the muscle atrophy that’s set in, turning my beautiful legs into these stick-like, useless appendages. I’ve done electrical muscle stimulation since I was paralyzed, but it doesn’t work much for me. So I may not recover the ability to walk, but my lower body sensation and potty control will return.”

  “You volunteered for this?”

  “Yes. To keep me from going to prison for twelve years.”

  I wasn’t at all sure about this. “Was it worth it?” I asked timidly. It didn’t sound like it was.

  “Are you kidding? First of all, eight versus twelve years makes it worth it. I’m a paralegal, and I’ve spent plenty of time interviewing people in jails and prisons. You DO NOT want to go there. I think I caught a terrific break. This works better all around. Instead of being locked up at the state’s significant expense, I’m being punished and rehabilitated on my own dime, and I remain a productive member of society. I guarantee you that I am paying my debt. I have to live with my punishment and deal with my disability every hour of every day.

  “They made it my own body that’s punishing me, and I can never get away from it until I’ve served my time.

  “I guarantee, I’ll never drink and drive again. But I live with what happened to that poor woman every day. This is my penance. I deserved it.”

  The attorney returned right then. “I have more information to share when you’re done,” he said to Sara.

  “I’m done unless Natalie has any other questions.”

  “Are you saying I might be able to volunteer to be crippled instead of going to jail?” I asked. I actually thought I might be able to do that. It would be the lesser of two evils by far.

  “I don’t know,” Sara looked up at Avery questioningly.

  “That’s uncertain,” he said. “We might use DCA sensitivity training to mitigate the sentence, but that only will work if the city’s attorney agrees. While you were talking, I called her office and got details on the charges. They are as you described, Natalie, but now there’s an additional charge pending.”

  “WHAT!” I shouted standing up. What else had I done?

  “Don’t get too upset yet. It turns out that the store employee for whom the ambulance was called was disabled …”

  “OH GOD, NOT ANOTHER ONE!” I shouted after hearing that.

  “They had some difficulty getting him into the ambulance because of how it had to park and he was slightly hurt in the process. Nothing serious, but he needed a couple stitches in his hand. The city attorney is contemplating adding a third DCA violation to your list.”

  “I’m completely screwed …” I moaned, sitting back down, my head in my hands. I was starting to cry, and I couldn’t hold it back.

  “Two of your offenses involve people who are crippled and one involves a blind woman. Since that one is a moving violation, it’s actually the most serious. But I think we can make a case for you pleading guilty and asking for a DCA appreciation punishment. You’d forgo jail time in exchange for three to six months in a wheelchair, somewhat like Sara, since two of the three charges involved that kind of disability. That way, you could start your job on time, and do it from a wheelchair for a while.”

  “Ah … Ah … That sounds better than jail time, I suppose,” I said tentatively. Frankly, I was imagining myself wearing diapers and the subsequent many-times-a-day mess. “Do I stand a better chance with a jury? Should we go to trial?” I thought that was a reasonable question, even if it cost me more in legal fees.

  “If we go to trial in River’s Edge, you will lose. I don’t think I could prove you not guilty. There’s little room to develop reasonable doubt. If I ask for a change in venue, they’ll refuse because the crimes aren’t felonies.”

  “Then I don’t really have much choice?”

  “Sadly, I don’t think you do.”

  “You can handle this,” Sara said in sympathy. “After a few days, it gets easier, and after a couple weeks, it isn’t so bad. You deal with it. I think I felt that this was pretty much normal after a couple months.”

  “How long would I be like that?” I asked the attorney.

  “With your agreement, I’ll shoot for three months and settle for six if I have to. I can have the conversation with the city attorney by this afternoon. Then we can see what she’ll agree to. Remember, of course, that the judge - meaning the mayor - could disagree with the idea, once it’s presented to him. He could forgo the DCA appreciation punishment and send you to jail, or implement the sensitivity training punishment differently.”

  The meeting pretty much concluded at that point. I went home in a deep funk to await his call.

  I felt like a whipped puppy and I hadn’t even been punished yet. Yeah, yeah, I’m an adult, but I’m just out of school and I’d NEVER been in trouble before, unless you count a few detentions in high school, usually for talking in class. I always thought of myself as a basically good person. Careful too. I have no idea what I was thinking to cause all these problems in my first two days in River’s Edge. It made me question if I were really the person I’d always thought I was.

  I felt scared to death about being punished. But I was also very, very upset with myself for not living up to my own standards.

  I was alone and needed someone to talk to. I called back to the attorney’s office, and asked Sara if she would let me buy her lunch. Fortunately, she agreed.

  So a while later I drove back over there. There was a restaurant she suggested a block or so away, and we walked there in the pleasant summer sun. Well, I walked and she rode in her wheelchair.

  By the time lunch was over, I was reassured that I wasn’t a bad person, I was resigned to deal with whatever the punishment was going to be, and determined to put this all behind me once I’d had my court date next Tuesday. Sara was being punished for six years. She was paying her dues and having a life while doing it. She admitted that sex sucked, and admitted to being worried about not ever walking again. However, if I were in a wheelchair for even six months, my legs would recover over time.

  As we were going back towards her office, where my car was parked, she got a text from Avery, asking for me to stop in for a minute. He’d known she was with me.

  I said goodbye to Sara and went to his office, where his secretary let me in. Avery and I shook hands again in his curious way, and I sat to hear what he’d found out.

&nbs
p; “I talked to the city attorney, who serves as the DA for this jurisdiction. We have an agreement to keep you out of jail, with the proviso that the judge accepts it.”

  “That sounds good,” I said, “what’s the agreement?”

  “You plead guilty to the charges, which include …” He started to read from notes at this point. “One: a moving violation of entering a crosswalk already occupied by a blind person. Two: parking in an emergency vehicle zone, and blocking an emergency vehicle. Three: interference with the treatment of a person with an ambulatory disability. Four: expropriation of a handicapped facility by the non-handicapped …”

  He looked up at me at that point. In my mind, I examined everything he’d said. It sounded much worse than how I would have described it, but I couldn’t actually dispute any of it.

  “Yes, that’s basically what happened,” I told him.

  “Then if you plead guilty, the city attorney will recommend six months of DCA sensitivity training in lieu of jail time and/or a fine, though there is a charge for the training that you’ll have to pay. It’s probably a few hundred dollars.”

  “Six months?”

  “She wouldn’t buy anything less. I tried three months and she essentially told me to go pound sand – an expression my grandfather uses. It means …”

  “I get it. And the DCA sensitivity training will put me in a wheelchair?”

  “Most likely, at the discretion of the mayor, but that’s what she’ll recommend.”

  This was a way out with minimal damage. I could still start work as a cripple. Every business in River’s Edge strictly adhered to the handicapped policies of the city. The facilities at my new employer, River’s Edge Biotech, would allow me to get around without difficulty. One of the reasons they’d been successful was because handicapped scientists, who were less comfortable elsewhere, had found a productive home at their facility.

  I could survive this. Jail would be awful.

  “Okay, I’ll take the deal. What happens next?”