Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found

by Rebecca Alexander

  I don’t know how long I lay there, probably only a minute or two, but even my quiet wails were becoming too much for me when, in an extraordinary stroke of luck, a neighbor who lived behind us, a cop just getting home from a very late shift, heard me. He ran across the street to look over the wall behind our house and then raced to me. How my mother heard me I still don’t know, but with the keen sense that only a mother has, she instantly woke up and came into my room. When she didn’t see me she raced frantically through the house, trying to follow my voice, and then ran back to my room in frustration, and this time noticed the gently blowing curtain and the wide-open window. She looked out and saw me splayed across the flagstones. By the time she got to me our neighbor was there, making sure to keep my neck and head still, the ambulance on its way.

  When the EMTs and police got there they were sure that I must have jumped or that my mother had pushed me. I wanted to explain, but my voice wasn’t working, and my body was in total shock. But I knew what they must have been thinking. How on earth could someone fall out a window?

  I still couldn’t feel anything below my neck, but that would come soon enough, an unimaginable pain, every inch of me burning like it was on fire. I was rushed to the trauma center at Highland Hospital in Oakland, which was generally reserved for gunshot wounds from drive-by shootings. I lay on the gurney, croaking out profuse apologies and attempting to assure anyone who would listen that I was sorry to have caused them so much trouble, that I was really okay. They looked at me as though I was insane, because I was not remotely okay. Every limb on my body was broken in some form: My entire left foot was completely shattered, as were my left hand and wrist; my right hand was broken; and one of my vertebrae was fractured and compressed. Ultimately, the only thing left without a cast would be my right leg and foot.

  A nurse came over and introduced herself, explaining that she was clipping off my ring because my body was swelling up so fast. Cody had given it to me, and I was devastated, tears coming for the first time and streaming down my cheeks. I hadn’t yet comprehended what devastating shape I was really in; all I could focus on was that ring, and I was heartbroken. Is Cody still mad at me? I wondered, with the idiocy that only a teenage girl could possess.

  They transferred me as quickly as they could to Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, the same hospital where I had been born, where I would spend the next month.

  The first operation I would have would be reconstructive surgery on my shattered left foot and hand, but it had to wait at least a week, to give the massive swelling time to go down. Those days passed in a miserable opiate haze, the pain so excruciating that when I came up from it even a little I was instantly given more morphine, and it took weeks to wean me from it. The nurses had given me a clicker so that I could administer my own morphine when I felt I needed more. It looked like something you might see on Jeopardy! for contestants to click as soon as they have an answer for Alex Trebek, and I was convinced that it was some kind of psychological prop that they used to keep the patients from screaming at them for more meds, because I would click that button with my thumb over and over again to no avail and have to call them anyway. I guess I was one of the ones in bad enough shape that they always came running when I needed them, which I’m sure was often, as I have been told many times by my mother that the morphine made me behave like a total maniac and rendered me completely incapable of reason or grace.

  I was also unable to move in my hospital bed without the help of several nurses. Since I was completely immobile they would come in every few hours to adjust my body so that I wouldn’t get bedsores, which was a nearly impossible job for them. They couldn’t actually pick me up or move my limbs because of the severity of my injuries, so they had various methods of moving me with the use of pillows. Even the tiniest of movements would make me scream in pain, and the catheter that I had to use left me with the constant, urgent feeling of needing to pee. I cringe now, thinking of how ungrateful I must have seemed, how unreasonable and crazy, between the pain and my drug-induced delirium. I had always prided myself on being polite to a fault, but now I could barely recognize my old self. In a matter of seconds my life had changed completely, from being a babysitter chasing after little kids, so excited to go off to college and be independent and have what felt like my “real life” begin, to a patient stuck in this bed, lucky to be alive but totally incapacitated. I was completely dependent on others and in a kind of pain that I couldn’t escape no matter how many drugs they pumped into me.

  I was only given one task that week, and, strangely enough, it was the only thing that made life bearable. In order to make sure that the morphine wasn’t suppressing my breathing too much, I had to blow into a small tube and make a miniature Ping-Pong ball rise in it with as much breath as I could muster, trying to get it to bob above a little blue line in the tube. It was my first challenge, and even pumped full of morphine I tried to focus everything I had on it. I was determined to make that ball rise all the way to the top, and I lay in my room blowing it as often as I had the strength, surrounded by bouquets of flowers and get-well balloons. At first I could barely get it to move, but I learned right from that first week that the only way to get through this was going to be to look at it as a challenge and give it everything I had. To take my shattered, drugged body and do what I could with it. I was going to blow the shit out of that ball, and everyone was going to be proud. I was going to ace the ball test like no one ever had before. I’d be in the books, the girl who blew the ball sky-high. I had worked hard in school, on the soccer field, in school plays, but this was so far beyond anything I had faced. I had no body, I couldn’t move anything. The ball was it.

  When people hear the story of my accident, the horror they feel is probably even worse than what it would be for someone else. “Oh my God, with everything else you’ve had to endure, how awful!” But I learned something integral to who I am today, who I’ve been able to become. The perseverance I would need every day of my life really began in that bed, with that little ball. The rest of the long, painful recovery would come, but I had already learned the lesson, that I had to meet it head-on, one day, one hour, one minute at a time. There was just no other way to do it. Every single thing that I have accomplished in my life that means something to me was done with really hard work, and the moment that started was there, in my hospital bed.

  16

  My first surgery lasted twelve hours. Two doctors took bone from my hip, each using some to reconstruct my left hand and foot, one starting as soon as the other had finished working on his respective appendage. I had two screws put into my left hand to hold everything together, and the bones in my left foot were shattered so far beyond recognition that it had to be completely rebuilt.

  Before the surgery my parents had been told that some of the bone in my foot would have to be fused together, and that I would walk with a significant limp for the rest of my life and would probably never be able to run again. They made the wise decision not to mention this to me before my surgery.

  After the surgery, as I lay in casts in the bed, the days passed by endlessly. The things that made me happy were such small ones, but I came to appreciate them so much. I would lie in the dark, generally awake before dawn, smelling the flowers that always filled my room (the nurses referred to my room as “the flower shop”). My grandma Faye gathered them from her garden and from her friends’ gardens to bring to me when she drove up from Santa Cruz. The smell of the flowers masked many of the horrible medicinal smells of the hospital, which were so nauseating to my already heightened sense of smell. I spent hours lying incapacitated in my hospital bed watching the flowers bloom. Each morning I looked forward to seeing how much they had bloomed overnight. Unable to move most of my body on my own, the simple pleasure of watching them open gave me a sense of peace. I first experienced the beauty of stargazer lilies while I was recovering in the hospital, and they became my favorite flowers. Not only because of their brigh
t color and fragrance, but because of how long they lasted and how significantly they changed size, color, and scent as they bloomed. I fell more and more in love with them as I watched the life cycle of each lily that kept me company in my room.

  When that first light started creeping across the window I would be so overjoyed, knowing that someone would be there soon. In the beginning my family would take turns spending time with me, so I had someone there as much as possible. My parents, Polly, and Grandma Faye were frequent visitors and occasionally spent the night. Cody stayed over, but only once. I don’t know if he blamed me for my accident or just didn’t want his summer to be ruined spending it by my bedside when we both knew we’d be going our separate ways in the fall, but we were clearly over the night I fell out the window. Or over for the time being. Lots of friends came, too, but then summer plans and the excitement of getting ready for college came, and as they prepared to start their new lives, the visits and phone calls slowed to a trickle, and still I lay, unmoving, in my hospital bed.

  Then one friend, Lisa D’Orazio, not a close friend but one I had always liked, surprised me by visiting one day. We had gone to high school together, but we weren’t close, though I had always admired her. She was popular, a varsity soccer player hanging out with upperclassmen since freshman year, much cooler than I was. When she heard about the accident, though, she came to visit. Then she showed up again. And again, bringing me mix CDs of music that we both loved: Motown, old-school rap, and hip-hop. She would call, too, just to say hi, and to help to relieve the monotony of lying in my room all day.

  She didn’t act like she felt sorry for me; she really seemed to want to be there, and just having her come and hang out made such a difference. It was so generous, so kind of her, and I knew I wanted to be that person, that if someone I knew was lying immobile in a bed I could be thoughtful enough to do that. Just being there, or knowing that someone else is there for you, makes every difference. Lisa had no idea at the time how much she was doing for me, but it made us lifelong friends. She is one of my favorite people in the world, and I know we’ll be there for one another no matter what.

  I had a favorite nurse, Roberta, and I looked forward to the mornings, when she would be back. She would greet me with her wide smile and brusque kindness, and Roberta was the only nurse that I wanted to bathe me. Well, not bathe precisely. She would use warm washcloths to clean the parts of me that weren’t casted, slowly tilting my head back into a warm basin of water to wash my hair, and then she would gently pat me dry. When Roberta couldn’t do it, I wanted Polly. My stepmother, for the first time, was the person that I wanted most.

  My parents, so loving and caring, were not what I needed right then. I did not want pity. I did not want to see their tears—more heartbreak and more worry, caused by me. Polly was what I needed. If there was anyone who was going to help me make damn sure that I got up and walked, it was my stepmother. She got shit done. She is kind, but she is also as no-nonsense as a person gets. She loved me, but she wasn’t going to look down and see her broken stepdaughter, poor thing, who, in addition to having a devastating syndrome that would someday render her blind and deaf, might very well be left physically disabled. Nope. She was going to see Rebecca, who did not want to stay in this bed, did not want sympathy, and needed to get up as fast as was earthly possible and get to college, where she belonged.

  As the doctors and the social worker discussed a possible discharge date for me, my parents decided it was time to tell me that I would not be able to attend college in the fall as I had planned. My injuries were simply too severe, they explained, and it would take me at least a year of physical therapy to become independent again. I was devastated. Though I should have realized that of course I wasn’t going to be able to leave for Michigan anytime soon, I had felt like once I was out of the hospital the hardest part would be over, but that wasn’t even close to true. My twin brother, my high school sweetheart, and all of my friends would be leaving to begin an exciting new chapter of their lives, while I stayed behind relegated to a wheelchair, working harder than I ever had in my life just to relearn the simple tasks that I had always taken for granted.

  My back and all of my other limbs were broken and heavily casted, except for my right leg, and the hospital wouldn’t discharge me until I could successfully sit up in bed, stand up, pivot myself to the side, and transfer myself into my wheelchair, all on my own. I needed to be able to do this with only the use of my right leg and then wheel myself out, propelling myself, again, just using that one leg. Needless to say, my right leg became my rock, and it gave me everything it had. I practiced every day, over and over again, until I was able to transfer myself three times in a row. I have never wanted to get out of anywhere as much as I wanted to leave that hospital room.

  • • • •

  I was so relieved to be going home, knowing that I was one step further in my recovery. We’d decided that I would live in the little guesthouse at Dad and Polly’s, which would be easier because it had no real stairs for me to climb from the driveway. Actually, I’d decided. I wasn’t ready to go back to my mother’s house, the scene of the accident, and I refused to move back and forth between my parents’ houses as I had been doing for so many years. Though it is really hard for me to upset people, and I didn’t want to hurt my mother, this was one of the first times when I had to be firm and clear and put my wishes and needs above other people’s feelings.

  A friend of my family’s who was big into dirt bikes very kindly offered to build a few wooden ramps for me to use, so that I could wheel myself from the driveway into the guesthouse and from the bedroom to the bathroom. He also made an extra ramp for me to use to get into my mom’s house, for the day when I would be ready to return.

  The ramp was my next challenge. It took me a few practice rounds to muster enough strength and force for my right leg to be able to hurtle me up to the top of the ramp in my wheelchair without my rolling backward right to where I’d started. Fortunately, it was challenges just like this one that I loved the most. Nothing made me happier than practicing something I struggled with until I’d mastered it. This would be the ongoing theme of my recovery; hard work was the only way I was going to get there. It was the only way I was going to walk—normally, I was sure, despite what the doctors said—and it was the only way I was going to get back on track and move on to the life I was so desperate for. I knew there was no way I was going to college that fall, but I refused to believe it would take me a whole year to recover, so I set my sights on January. Then, I promised myself, I would be ready.

  17

  My new home consisted of a queen-size bed, with many pillows to help keep parts of my body elevated. In the beginning, Dad or Polly would come in the evenings to help arrange them so that I would be comfortable enough to sleep. On one side of the bed there was room for my wheelchair and enough space so that I could transfer myself in and out. On the other side, up against the bed, was a long table that held everything that I needed. My bed, the table, and my wheelchair became my humble little home for the next five months, everything I needed within grabbing distance.

  Polly had given me a wall calendar filled with photos of puppies so that I could keep track of all of my doctors’ appointments now that I was back at home. Even that small gesture from her, having me be the keeper and organizer of my own schedule, was important to me. So little was in my power, but she treated me like an adult, able to schedule and keep track of everything I needed to do for my recovery.

  That very first night, as I lay there looking around my new home, I saw a red Bic pen lying underneath the table and I decided that I needed it. As I checked out the small collection of items on my table, I decided that the best tool at my disposal would be my wooden back scratcher with the hand at the end that I used to scratch inside my casts. The pain was still terrible sometimes, but even worse was the itch. I already had an overly sensitive sense of touch, and scratching my itches was a fe
eling that verged on the celestial.

  I was able to reach the pen with the scratcher to pull it closer to the bed, but I still had no way of reaching down and actually picking it up off the floor. I didn’t want to have to wait until morning to ask someone to get it for me, so, with the help of my elbows, I scootched my way to the other side of the bed, put my right foot down on the floor, and pivoted my whole body just the way I’d practiced a gazillion times in the hospital before I was released.

  With my right foot I pushed myself in my wheelchair around the bed as close to the table as I could. After I secured the brakes, I braced myself again with my elbows on the armrests of the wheelchair and stuck my right foot out as far under the table as I could. With a little maneuvering, I reached the pen with my foot and pulled it closer to me until I was able to pick it up with my toes and bring it to my hand.

  I felt triumphant that I had found a way to do this all by myself, and I realized right then that this would be vastly different from my time in the hospital. I was not going to be lying around waiting for my broken body to heal, I was going to be the one to heal it. As I made my way back onto the bed, realizing for not the last time how grateful I was for my elbows, which were integral to everything that I could do at that time—not to mention my toes—I took the red pen awkwardly in my casted hand and crossed out the very first day of my recovery with a bold red X on my puppy calendar. This was why I had needed the pen. For the rest of my time in the guesthouse this would be the highlight of my day—crossing off another box on my calendar each night before I went to bed, counting down the days until my next doctor’s appointment, follow-up surgery, or physical therapy appointment arrived.