by S. Tamanaha
“I’m sorry that you’ll be on your own for long periods of time, Angel, but I’ll try to have Damien and Charlie come by and keep you company as much as possible. Right now, Johnny needs me and I have to be with him. I hope you understand somehow.”
The little dog kissed her as though she had understood.
“I love you, little Angel,” Susan said as she cried. “We both need to be strong for our Johnny, all right? We need to make everything okay for him. This is not how life is going to be for him. The Universe wouldn’t have given me those dreams and made us find each other just to have it end this way. I know it.”
She didn’t wait to hear from the hospital. After playing with Angel for a while so that the little dog would be tired enough to rest while she was gone, Susan returned to the hospital. Johnny was still under observation in the post-anesthesia care unit. While she waited for him to regain consciousness, she received a call from Frank Pierce. She explained what had happened and that she wanted to retain his services for the lawsuit that had to be filed. She wanted someone that she could trust to handle everything properly without too much participation on her part since she would be occupied with helping Johnny. She also insisted that he work with Timothy Goddard, the investigator who had been so thorough in the Tungsten case. He agreed to start working on the case immediately in order to preserve evidence.
When they finally allowed her in to see Johnny, he was conscious but weak and in pain. She took his hand and squeezed it.
“Hi handsome,” she said softly. “Welcome back.”
“What ... ” he asked weakly. His throat hurt.
“Don’t try to talk just yet. You just came out of surgery and they had a tube down your throat.”
She told him as gently as possible about the accident and what had happened to his back and added that he shouldn’t worry because the surgery had gone well. They moved him to a private room instead of to the intensive care unit. Dr. Shah and one of the back surgeons visited him a short while later. They confirmed what she had told him—that the surgery had gone well. The steroids and hypothermia treatment she had insisted on seemed to have reduced the inflammation to the spinal cord early which improved his chances of recovery. They explained that recovery was a progressive process. They wouldn’t know the full extent of his injuries for a while and that his back had to heal from the surgery for approximately two months before they could approve him for therapy.
As soon as Johnny felt up to it, he called his mother. He told her not to worry and that it wasn’t necessary for her to come to L.A. because there wasn’t anything that she could do to make the situation any better. Susan could see him getting increasingly agitated during the conversation.
“Listen, don’t do that, okay? Don’t start blaming the business that I’m in. How is that helping me? It was a freak accident, that’s all. Now please, just stay where you are. What’s the use of disrupting your life and flying all the way over here when there’s nothing you can do? I’ll keep in touch or have Susan call you when the doctors give us more information. All right, I’ll talk to you soon.”
He hung up and let out a loud sigh of irritation. “Just what I need to hear—how something like this was bound to happen because my job makes me travel so much.”
Susan held his hand gently. “She just doesn’t know what to say. She wishes that she could make it better for you but ... she just doesn’t know how.”
If Johnny hadn’t been so upset, he might have seen that Susan wasn’t referring only to his mother. But he was angry at the unfairness of the situation. How could this happen now when everything had been going so well and when he had finally found love and happiness with her? And although he wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself, he was afraid. He knew that even with a favorable prognosis, he was in danger of losing his series and all of the other projects that he had been working on. He would have to start all over again. If the prognosis wasn’t favorable, he would have no future in the business that he had worked so hard to succeed in and, worst of all, no future with her.
Over the next several weeks, the doctors monitored his condition and tested him frequently. His arms and hands were unaffected and he had normal feeling all the way down to his abdominal area. Slowly a little more feeling returned to his hip area, but as the weeks went by, Johnny still could not feel anything below his hips. He felt as though he were in a daze, in someone else’s body, as they tested and retested him. Susan was constantly there—leaving only for short periods of time to go to the hotel to care for Angel. Damien stopped by the hotel as often as he could with his little dog so that Angel wouldn’t be too lonely.
At the end of eight weeks, Dr. Shah and two of the spine specialists came into Johnny’s room to talk to the both of them. His spine had healed sufficiently and they were approving him for rehabilitation therapy. Their prognosis: with therapy, it would be possible for him to walk again but probably not without some sort of assistive device. There had been nerve damage and although some healing in this area could eventually occur, a complete recovery was not to be expected. Johnny didn’t say anything but she saw the light go out of his eyes.
“Johnny, listen to me, please,” she said when the doctors left. “I don’t want you to give up. I don’t want you to listen to the doctors. All they’re stating is their best guess. They have no way of knowing the actual outcome and I believe they’re wrong. I believe that you and I working together can prove them wrong. But no matter what happens, I will always be here for you. I will always love you. Do you understand?”
She kissed him and he held her tightly. He loved her so much but he knew what he had to do. When she left to care for Angel, he made a telephone call.
A few days later, he asked her for some personal items from the house so she picked Angel up from the hotel and drove to their home and gathered up the things that he had requested. It was clear that Angel was happy to be back in familiar surroundings so she let Angel out in the back yard and took her for a walk before taking her back to the hotel and returning to the hospital.
“I brought you the things that you wanted from home,” she said, setting the bag that she was carrying on the chair beside his bed. She saw the look on his face and frowned. “Johnny, what’s wrong?”
“You need to sign those papers,” he said coldly. “On the table.” They had been delivered during her absence.
“Papers?” She picked them up and looked at them. It was a Petition for Divorce. It stunned her. “Johnny, what are you doing?”
“Sign the papers and leave,” he said, not looking at her, “and don’t come back.”
“I’m not leaving and I’m not signing these papers. How can you do this?”
“I’ve made sure that you’re taken care of,” he said, ignoring her question. “I told the attorney to revise the pre-nup. You don’t have to worry.”
“Stop it, Johnny. There’s not going to be a divorce.”
“Don’t you understand?” he said furiously. “My future in the business is over and nothing works from the hips down. Even if I improve a little, it’s never going to be the same. You don’t need half a man weighing you down for the rest of your life. You need someone who can make you happy, give you a future, satisfy you.”
“Don’t tell me what I need,” she said angrily, “and don’t you dare reduce what we have to sex. Sex was a way to express love—it wasn’t love. You said forever Johnny. You didn’t say just as long as you could walk or had a future in show business. You said that we were forever. Did you lie to me? Was it all lies?”
“Yeah, I lied.” He said it with such coldness that it crushed her. “I never meant the things I said.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, trying to sound firm but her voice trembled slightly.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not!” he shouted. “Just sign the damn papers and get out! It’s over! I don’t want you here!”
“I’m not signing any papers!” She ripped the documents apart angrily and f
lung the pieces across the room.
She tried to hold his hand but he yanked it away. “Johnny, don’t do this. Don’t push me away because you’re trying to be noble—because you think that you’re doing what’s best for me because you’re not. I gave you my heart and my soul, remember? You have them. If you push me out that door now, you’re making me leave with nothing. That truck that hit you might as well have killed me because I’ll be dead inside.” Her voice broke. “It would be the cruelest thing that you could ever do to me, don’t you understand? Please don’t hurt me that way. You promised that you’d never hurt me like that. You promised, Johnny. You promised.”
She was sobbing now—heartbreaking sobs that shook her entire body. He had tried to prepare himself for it and thought that he would be able to stand against it, but he couldn’t. He didn’t want her burdened with him but he couldn’t stand hurting her this way, and he knew that she was speaking the truth because if she walked out that door, he would have nothing left inside of him either. He reached out and touched her arm gently. She placed her head on his chest, clutched the front of his hospital gown, and cried uncontrollably. She had never cried like this before, as though her heart was actually breaking, and it shredded his heart. He wrapped his arms around her tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, tears overflowing his eyes and streaming down his cheeks. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry baby, please. I didn’t mean what I said before. It wasn’t all lies. I’ve never lied to you. I just wanted you to have a chance at a real life—a normal life.”
“There is no life for me without you Johnny,” she said in ragged breaths between pitiful sobs. “Not one that matters. Please don’t push me away. Please keep on loving me and let me stay.”
“I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried,” he said, his voice breaking into a sob. “I will always love you. Always.”
Three nurses who had been on the verge of stepping into the room to quell the argument now kept their distance. One had tears in her eyes; all of them could not help but be moved by the obvious depth and intensity of the love that existed between this man and this woman.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Susan had been visiting the rehabilitation facilities long before the doctors approved Johnny for therapy—talking to the therapists, watching their techniques, studying their equipment. She became convinced that something more than what they were offering had to be done for Johnny. They weren’t going to help him to strive for a full recovery. How could they when they didn’t believe that a full recovery was possible? They were going to teach him how to live with the injury and that was unacceptable to her.
She began doing extensive research on her own and came upon some information that struck a chord inside of her. She immediately put a plan into action. She called her friends who had been renting her sanctuary and explained to them what had happened. She would need her place back, she told them, but helped them to relocate and even paid several months of rent for them for their new place. She telephoned another friend who was an engineer and made arrangements with him for the purchase and construction of what she needed to help Johnny. She ordered equipment that she needed and arranged to have them delivered to her sanctuary. She called her sister and brother-in-law and asked that they accept delivery of the equipment and set everything up according to her instructions. She also purchased a van with a wheelchair lift and asked her brother-in-law to pick it up and have it ready for her at her sanctuary once she had definite travel plans. She wired them the necessary funds to pay for everything and a little extra to compensate them for their time. Now all she had to do was get Johnny to agree.
One night, after having dinner together in his hospital room, she gauged his mood and decided it was time to present her proposal. She took his hand in both of hers and kissed it.
“Johnny, I want to take you back to Hawaii. To my sanctuary with the pool. I know I’m not a doctor, but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I think that your back is going to heal faster if we use the water to relieve the pressure on your spine. The water will keep you buoyant and counteract the effects of gravity when you’re trying to re-learn how to walk. I’ve seen this method used to treat canine injuries. See?” She showed him the pictures that she had printed from an internet site.
“They have pool therapy for humans too but you’d have to be transported there and they might only schedule you once or twice a week. You need to be in the water once or twice a day, Johnny, with no other people around distracting you so that you can really focus on your own healing. At my place, it will be peaceful. You said once that you felt more comfortable there than anywhere. And the pool will be there whenever you need it and I’ll hire someone to help with the therapy. It will be just the three of us concentrating only on you. I know it’s the answer. I don’t know why I know but I’m sure of it. You and I have to go back, Johnny. Please. Trust me.”
He looked at the pictures that she showed him and then looked into her eyes that were full of love for him. He wasn’t sure whether what she had planned was going to help him, but he had been undergoing regular rehabilitation therapy sessions for almost a month and they didn’t seem to be doing him much good. Even if her plan didn’t improve his situation, it would at least put her back in her special place. He wanted that for her and so he agreed.
She made all of the necessary travel arrangements. Before they left Los Angeles, she went to meet with Frank Pierce about the personal injury lawsuit. She told him to file the lawsuit right away.
“It would be premature,” Frank advised. “We don’t know the full extent of his injury. From a monetary point of view, a larger settlement would be possible down the road. From the defendants’ point of view, they might want to wait to see the extent of his recovery.”
“Even under the best case scenario, the doctors—the specialists—don’t believe that Johnny will ever be able to walk again without some sort of assistive device. That means that the experts already agree that he can never be what he was before the accident and he’s lost his livelihood. That alone is worth millions. His story ... it’s still news. He’s received thousands of letters from concerned fans. That public sympathy will add to the value of the lawsuit. Did you see this?” She tossed a copy of a local tabloid on his desk. A picture of Johnny in a wheelchair receiving therapy was on the front page with the headlines “America’s biggest sex symbol crippled for life”.
Frank nodded. “I saw it.”
“I’ve demanded that the doctors find out what insensitive jerk took that picture because it had to be someone who works at the hospital. But you know what? That picture and the prognosis by the experts are going to be the framework for the lawsuit. Sue everyone now, Frank, keep his name and this case in the news, let the media know some of the results from the investigator’s report if you have to—about the State’s knowledge of the defective lights on that stretch of the highway, about the company knowing that its drivers consumed alcohol at those truck stops. Force them to settle early by showing them that they can’t escape enormous liability. Make it appear that you’re doing them a favor. Tell them we’re only willing to settle because we just want to be left alone, we don’t want his condition to be exploited by the tabloids, we just want to leave L.A. Start pushing the State first. We met the Attorney General at an event a few months ago and she liked Johnny.”
“Can I ask you why the urgency?”
“Because I’m going to need money to help him,” she said, “and the value of the case might decrease substantially if we do wait.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I intend to prove those doctors wrong. I’m going to help him to walk again—on his own.” She saw the look in his eyes and knew that he thought she was being unrealistic and that her grief was clouding her judgment.
“I don’t care if you believe me, Frank,” she said, “but I am going to do it. Not for me. I would love him even if he was stuck in that wheelchair for the rest of his life. But I have to do it for him.
He knows that I love him and that I won’t leave, and he loves me and wants me to stay, but he also feels that he’s a burden to me. I don’t want him to feel that way for the rest of his life. I don’t want him to feel that kind of guilt. It will break him. It will destroy his spirit and that would destroy me.”
“What if you can’t?” Frank asked quietly.
“I will do it. I’m not being unrealistic. If his spinal cord had been completely severed, I’d probably be trying to find ways to help him cope. But it wasn’t and I know that I can do this. But what I have planned takes money. The disability insurance proceeds and our own savings will help for now, but I’m looking down the road. And it’s going to be a long road. So file the lawsuit, Frank, and get me what I need to help him. As soon as possible. Please.”
“All right,” Frank agreed. He couldn’t help but admire her tenacity and her devotion to Johnny. If anyone could accomplish this, it would be her.
They flew back to Honolulu by private charter. It was expensive but much better for Johnny since he could remain on a gurney with no unnecessary pressure on his spine during the trip. Because the trip would be several hours long, she had the special mattress that she had ordered for Johnny’s hospital bed, which was designed to prevent pressure sores, used on the gurney. Angel was much more comfortable too, not having to be confined in a small carrier.
They arrived in Honolulu after dark and were transported to her place by private care personnel. When they arrived at her sanctuary, Angel immediately ran all over the house, happily sniffing its familiar nooks and crannies. The dining room set had been moved off to the side, and a hospital bed had been set up where the dining room set used to be. A few feet away from the hospital bed was a regular bed where she would be sleeping and screens for privacy. The two male nurses transferred him and the special mattress from the gurney to the bed easily. Jackson Ames, the African-American male nurse who looked like he used to play professional football, would be staying to help her. She had selected him because she needed someone physically strong, and he was a licensed registered nurse in Hawaii but had also been certified as a physical therapist in Florida. His knowledge and experience would be helpful.