by Nancy Adams
The surgery lasted almost seven hours, and by the time it was over, the entire family was frantic. Julie, downstairs with Anna and Linda, was just about ready to pull her own hair, while Aunt Kay kept grabbing every nurse that walked by, demanding news of her nephew and the progress of the operation. Unfortunately, none of those nurses were coming from the OR, so there wasn't anything they could say.
Fortunately, the surgery went exactly the way Dr. Marshall wanted it to. The vertebrae were repositioned and resized, and Robbie's spine was back where it was supposed to be. Dr. Marshall spent an hour explaining to Aunt Kay exactly what was done, and what results he was expecting from it, and by the time they were done talking, he said that Robbie should be awake enough for her to visit him. He showed her to the room, and she was amazed to find Robbie not only awake, but coherent.
Dr. Marshall was also surprised, and his first question was whether Robbie was in pain. “Are you hurting, son?” Dr. Marshall asked him, but Robbie shook his head.
“No, sir,” he said. “I don't really feel anything, but then I haven't felt anything for months now.”
“Well, right now the reason you're not feeling anything,” the doctor said, “is because I pumped you so full of dope that you probably should be floating around the moon right about now. Most people couldn't be this awake right now to save their lives. When it wears off, though, I've got a feeling you're going to be feeling some things, all right. And along about then, you're probably going to be calling me some pretty nasty names. Most people do.”
Robbie just looked at him. “You mean, you really think I'm going to get some feeling back?”
The doctor smiled and nodded his head. “Yes, I'm pretty sure of it,” he said. “I think you'll feel a fair amount of pain in your lower back, where we had to make the incision, but I also think you'll start to feel your legs again. Now, you need to understand that when feeling first returns, it can be pretty intense. Even painful. All of those nerves are suddenly able to send messages they’ve been trying to send all this time, and your brain is suddenly getting lots of them. It's going to be kind of the sensory overload for a little while there, and it's probably going to hurt. Don't worry, though, that's normal. It'll get down to a dull roar pretty quickly, and should stop being painful within a day or two.”
Robbie smiled. “Dr. Marshall, it can hurt all it wants to. Let me tell you, I'd rather have it hurt than feel nothing at all.”
Dr. Marshall grinned. “I think somebody made a hit rock song out of that line,” he said. “All right, I'm leaving you in the capable hands of the nurses of Maxwell General Hospital, but I'll be back to check on you in the morning. You get some sleep, if you can, and I'll see you then.” The doctor turned and walked out of the room, and Robbie turned his face to look at Aunt Kay.
“He really thinks I'm going to have feeling again, doesn't he?”
Aunt Kay smiled and nodded. “Yes,” she said, “he really does. He said everything went exactly the way they wanted it to, and that he's fairly certain they got all of the pressure off your spinal cord. Now, he said you're still looking at more surgeries, that this isn't over yet, but that you're definitely on the way back to normal.”
Robbie slowly let a grin spread over his face, though she could tell he was trying to hold back. Naturally, he'd be afraid of getting his hopes up too far. She could certainly understand that.
“So, when can Anna and Julie and Linda come up? I'd like to see them.”
“The doctor says you shouldn't have any other visitors before tomorrow,” Aunt Kay said. “He doesn't want you moving around a lot just yet, or getting overly excited. I'll bring them all tomorrow morning, so they can come and see you as soon as the doctor says it's okay. To be honest, if I had known they would have to stay downstairs, I probably would've left them all at home. I think Julie is ready to shoot me; she's been stuck with those two wild Indians all day long, with nothing but a snack machine in the hospital cafeteria to try to keep them under control. I think I'd be ready to shoot someone, too.”
Robbie grinned, but even though he said he was feeling okay, it was pretty obvious that he was still a little dopey. He leaned back against his pillow, and was asleep a moment later. Aunt Kay sat there beside him, and when the nurse came in to check on him, she asked whether he should be lying on his back after the surgery he’d just had.
“Oh, yes,” the nurse said. “With the way they do things now, it's perfectly fine.”
“But, they just cut some of his vertebrae and put new pieces of bone into them. Shouldn't he be lying on his belly until it starts to heal?”
“No, really, it's okay,” the nurse said. “When they put his vertebrae back together, they do it with these little screws. That holds everything together while the bone grows into place, but it's strong enough that, unless he got hit really hard or something in the back, he'll be fine.”
Aunt Kay shook her head, but didn't argue. Hopefully the medical staff of the hospital knew what they were doing, and if not, then she knew her lawyer's phone number. She wasn't someone they wanted to make angry, but she was fairly sure that Dr. Marshall knew what he was doing, so she wasn't terribly worried.
After a little while, it became fairly obvious that Robbie wasn't going to wake up anytime soon. She got up and went downstairs, collected Julie and the girls, and took them to a fast food place for dinner. She told them that they wouldn't get to see Robbie until the next morning, so she thought it best that they go on home and get some rest. Surprisingly, it was Linda who raised the biggest fuss about that. She demanded to know why she couldn't go see Robbie, and all but insisted that she be taken back to see him immediately.
Aunt Kay looked at her closely. She wondered for a moment if Linda might somehow be aware that Robbie was her son, but there was just no way to know. Whenever she was asked about that, all she did was stare blankly at whoever asked.
She finally accepted that they had to go home, however, and stopped putting up a fuss. They finished eating their burgers and fries, and went back home. The day had been long and tiring, and it didn't take Julie long to get both of the girls into bed. Once they were both tucked away, Julie and Kay sat down in the living room and relaxed for the first time that day.
“You probably ought to try to get some sleep,” Aunt Kay said. “I had to promise Robbie that I would bring you all up to see him tomorrow morning, so we'll have to get those two up bright and early.”
Julie nodded, but made no effort to get up from where she sat on the couch. “Yeah,” she said. “I was thinking that maybe I could just follow you in my car, so when they get tired, I can bring them back home. Would that be okay this time?”
Laughing, Aunt Kay said, “It's perfectly fine. In fact, I sure wish you had thought of it this morning.”
Julie rolled her eyes until they rested on her employer. “Trust me,” she said tiredly. “So do I.”
Morning came bright and early, as it always does on days when you really wish you could sleep in, and they were all up and ready to go within a short time. Julie fed the girls a breakfast of cereal and orange juice before they left the house, and Aunt Kay went on ahead while they were still eating. Once they were finished, they all piled into Julie's car for the ride to the hospital.
Linda liked riding in Julie's car, because it had a tiny backseat. Since she was actually taller than Julie, she couldn't fit into the back seat as well as little Anna could, so that meant she got to ride up front. That always seemed to make her happy, and no one had really thought about why other than the natural rivalry between children that makes them argue over who gets to sit where. They naturally figured that she liked being up front just because it put her at an advantage over Anna, who she considered her little sister. That seemed to be a perfectly logical explanation, and no one had given it much thought other than that.
That particular morning, though, Julie was startled by an incident she couldn't explain. They had been driving along for several minutes, and Julie had turned onto on
e of the main roads that led to the hospital. Everything seemed to be fine as she approached an intersection with a green light, but at the last second she saw a car coming from the left that was obviously going to fast to stop. Just as she hit her brakes, though, Linda called out, “Roger, look out!”
Julie had brought the car to a stop, and the errant motorist had sailed by safely in front of them, but she didn't take her foot off the brake. She was staring at Linda, who was staring back at her. “Linda?” Julie asked. “Linda, who is Roger?”
Linda just stared at her, and didn't say a word. After a moment, she smiled and looked back at the road in front of her through the windshield.
Roger had been her husband's name. It suddenly dawned on Julie that Linda's excitement at riding up front might actually have something to do with a vague memory of being in the car with her husband. She would've always been in the front passenger seat, of course, so to Julie it made sense that being in that position would feel right to her.
The car behind her began honking, so Julie lifted her foot from the brake pedal and drove on. She decided not to say anything just yet, and to bring it up first to Aunt Kay, who was Linda's older sister. It would be better for Aunt Kay to decide when and if Robbie should even be told about it at all.
They got to the hospital, and Julie took them both by the hands to lead them through the lobby and up the elevator. She knew now what room Robbie was in, and had a vague idea of how to get to it. By following the signs on the walls that indicated which rooms were in which direction, she got them there in short order. Robbie was awake, but not nearly as coherent as he had been the evening before.
“Hey, Robbie,” Julie said, as both Anna and Linda hurried to his bedside. Linda helped Anna climb up to give him a kiss on the cheek, then bent down to get in one of her own. He opened his eyes and smiled weakly up at them. “Hi, mommy,” he said, but Linda's grin didn't change. She and Anna both began talking 90 miles an hour, telling Robbie all about the latest SpongeBob episodes and about their trip to the hamburger place the evening before.
Robbie, for his part, happily told them about the trip he was planning to take to the moon. He went into some detail about the magical fairies that would come to visit him in the night who promised to take him. Linda and Anna laughed and asked if they could go along; Aunt Kay and Julie simply looked at each other blankly, and then shrugged.
“Wow,” Aunt Kay said. “That's better drugs than the stuff I used to get when I was a teenager! I wonder if he might get to bring some home.”
Julie laughed. “Somehow, I don't think you want any of those drugs. Anything that makes you see magical fairies, that's stuff you probably want to stay away from, don't you think?”
“Hey, youngster,” Aunt Kay said, “I'm only daydreaming, anyway, don't you mess with my daydreams! At my age, that's about all I got left.”
Julie's eyes went wide, and she stared. “At your age?” Julie asked her. “Oh, come on, what are you, in your very early 40s? Don't think I haven't noticed that the UPS guy spends more time flirting with you than he does with me.”
Aunt Kay grinned. “I think that has something to do with the talk Robbie had with him,” she said. “As I recall, the boy was holding his ball bat in his hands at the time.”
They sat with Robbie for a couple of hours, and he gradually became more awake and alert. Of course, that also meant that he gradually felt more pain, and both women were amazed that the boy was actually happy to report that it hurt. When the doctor came in around ten o'clock in the morning, he slid his hands up under Robbie's blanket and poked at his legs with a sharp pin.
“Ouch!” Robbie said, several times. Dr. Marshall seemed pleased.
“Well, Robbie,” Dr. Marshall said, “guess what? You're going to get your legs back. We got some feeling starting up already, and that's a very good sign, but there's more work to do. Now, when I was poking you, your legs jerked. What that means is that you've got a little bit of control back over them. Since you've been without that control for a while, I'm afraid your body is going to have to learn what to do with it all over again. You're not going to jump up out of the chair and walk, not anytime soon, but it will happen down the road. What we've got to do now is get you started on the path to learning how to use the muscles that have been loafing in your wheelchair for the past few months. I'm going to start you on physical therapy this week, and you've got to put some serious effort into it. There are going to be times when you hate your therapist with a passion, there are going to be times when you feel like it's doing you no good whatsoever, but you can't give up. You have to keep going, you have to keep pushing yourself. Do you understand that?”
Robbie nodded, and though his eyes looked sleepy, the smile on his face was very genuine. “I understand,” he managed to mumble. “I try.”
It was just about time for a whole new phase of Robbie's life to begin.
7
“Hey, Robbie, wait up,” Robbie heard, and he turned his head to see who had called out to him. It was Wally, probably the best buddy he'd ever had. They had met the year before, when Robbie started school in Maxwell. He stopped and turned in his wheelchair, waiting for Wally to catch up with him.
“Yo, dude,” Robbie said. “Hurry up, will ya? It's Tuesday, I got a PT appointment.” School had let out just a few minutes before, and like the 400 other students who attended there, Robbie had rushed to his locker to get the books he needed for homework, and was headed out the door to catch his ride home with Julie. He knew she would be waiting not far down the row of cars, because they had to go and pick Anna up at the grade school that got out 20 minutes after the high school.
Wally came running and caught up with him, then grabbed the handles on the back of his chair and started pushing him out the door. That was normal for Wally, because it gave them time to talk while keeping Robbie from getting upset about being late to pick up Anna.
“Okay, you didn't hear this from me, okay? Promise me,” Wally said.
Robbie turned his head to look up at his buddy. “Didn't hear what? Okay, fine, I promise. Now what am I promising about?”
Wally grinned from ear to ear. “My sister Sandy just told me,” Wally said. “In the girls gym class, today, guess who was the main topic of conversation? And guess who was the one to bring you up?”
Robbie grabbed his brakes and stopped the chair, then spun around when Wally let go to look him in the eye. “Do what? What on earth are you talking about?”
Wally leaned down close to Robbie's face, and whispered conspiratorially. “Sandy said that Priscilla, you know Priscilla, right? The cheerleader? Well, Sandy said that Priscilla came to her and said that she knew you and me were friends, and started asking Sandy all kinds of questions about you.”
Robbie narrowed his eyes. “Like, what kind of questions? Did Sandy say?”
Wally nodded. “Oh, boy, did she ever! Priscilla told her that she thinks you're the best-looking guy in school, and she doesn't even care that you're on wheels. Dude, how wild is that? I mean, we're talking Priscilla, here!”
Robbie stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “Okay, I think you're pulling my chain,” he said. He spun his chair around and started rolling down the walk again, but Wally ran to stay beside him.
“No, seriously,” he said, “you can ask Sandy yourself! Just call her tonight and ask her, she'll tell you. She thinks it's really cool, and she thinks that you'd be a great guy for Priscilla.”
Robbie kept rolling without saying a word, but his thoughts were running wild. Priscilla Wilkins was a cheerleader, all right, and probably the prettiest girl in the school. If she really was asking questions like that about him, then maybe he should try to get to know her a little better.
He saw Julie's new car just ahead, and told Wally that he'd call later. Julie saw him coming and hopped out, then opened the passenger door for him. He swung himself out of the wheelchair and into the seat, and she took the wheelchair to stash in the trunk. By the time she
got back behind the steering wheel, he was all buckled in and ready to go.
“So, okay, how was school?” she asked.
Robbie grinned. “Not sure I should tell you,” he said. “Might get you all upset.”
Julie looked at him out of the corner of her eye and grinned. “Oh, really? And how might that be?”
“Well, Wally's sister Sandy claims that Priscilla Wilkins, who just happens to be the hottest girl in the whole school, has got a thing for me. Now, don't get all jealous, we knew this day would come sooner or later, right?” He did all he could to keep a straight face as Julie stared at him.
“Um—I'll try to contain myself. Yes, I'll be devastated, heartbroken, I'll spend the rest of my life pining away for you, but if she makes you happy, it'll be worth it.
They both burst out laughing at the same time, enjoying the silliness of their little act. It had been almost a year and a half since the accident that had put Robbie in the wheelchair, and forced him and his sister to go and live with his aunt. Because his mother, who had suffered severe brain damage in the accident and now had the mentality of a child, was also living there, Aunt Kay had hired Julie, who had been trained in dealing with adults with mental problems. Julie turned out to be a godsend in many ways, not least of which was being a terrific help with Robbie and his sister Anna.
Since that time, Robbie had already undergone three different operations, and was gradually learning to walk again. He could get around on his feet for short periods, but the nerve damage he had suffered would still require years of retraining. Sometimes, while he was walking, his knees would suddenly just give out, or one leg would start kicking uncontrollably. When that happened, he would often fall. He didn't mind so much, because at least he was out of that chair, but Aunt Kay and Julie and the girls often panicked when it happened.