It was five o’clock in the morning Texas time when Barb found out what hospital I was in. She still didn’t know how badly I was hurt and wanted to hear my voice. Barb was thrilled when the nurse said I was walking down the hall to get the phone.
“I thought, God! She can walk!” Barb later recalled. “I didn’t think Jackie would be able to get out of bed because of the head injuries. It was so good to know she could get around on her own.”
For the first few minutes on the phone, we both just cried. Then there was a long silence. We didn’t need words to communicate our feelings or how much it meant to hear each other’s voices again.
When we finally started talking, I told Barb about my out-of-body experience. I also talked about my vision problems and how I thought they would clear up when I got a new pair of contact lenses.
It was so good to hear Barb’s voice. She and her husband, Wayne, wanted to fly to Germany to visit and support me. But the doctors said I’d be leaving in a few days anyway, so I didn’t think it was worth the expense. Barb told me that she and Wayne, along with my parents, my friend Debbie Reno, and others had held an around-the-clock vigil for me in the hours and days during and after the hijacking.
Simply talking to Barb gave me a big boost. I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. At least not for a while.
After about a week in Germany, doctors thought I was ready to go home. Before leaving the hospital, a woman gave me a scarf to put over my bald head. Scott put some makeup on my face. I couldn’t keep from laughing while he put it on. The makeup looked kind of blotchy, but at that point I really didn’t care.
Scott and I flew back to the United States. The government flew me in a huge, old, dark green army transport plane. The plane carried medical equipment and other sick passengers from the VA hospital in Landstuhl. Again, I was lying flat on my back. A kind serviceman came back to visit and check on me, and snuck me some fruit juices.
It felt good to be going back to the states. But the prospect of living in a new place and making new friends was scary.
Our plan was to return to the United States so that I could get the best possible medical care. We still hoped to return to Cairo to teach, yet we didn’t know if or when that would happen.
In Germany, Scott called one of our friends at CAC. Scott asked him to get the key to our apartment and pick up about two hundred dollars in cash that we had saved up. Scott directed the friend to take the money and give it to the caretakers of our building, the Egyptian family living in the elevator shaft.
CHAPTER 5
SMASHING INTO WALLS
AFTER AN ELEVEN-HOUR FLIGHT from Germany to the United States, we touched down at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, D.C. It was early December 1985, the first time we’d been back on American soil for four months. Reporters were waiting at the airport to accost us. Fortunately, military and airport officials kept them a safe distance away from us, pressed up against a restraining fence.
It was the first time Scott and I started realizing that we were going to be living in the spotlight for a while. Scott did not trust the media, especially after our experience with the reporter in Germany who lied to us. The way Scott saw it, the media was interested in only one thing: exploiting me. “My whole purpose was to shield you from the media,” Scott said, “to be there for you and to keep the media away.” I just agreed. I didn’t care. We were still relatively protected, however, because we were in the U.S. military’s hands.
We spent our first night back home in a Washington, D.C. hospital near the airport. It was the first night since the hijacking that Scott and I laid down on a bed together and just held each other tight.
The next day, we took off again for the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. We landed at about ten o’clock that night. I was immediately whisked from the plane on a stretcher and carried into an ambulance waiting to take me to the University of Minnesota Hospital.
In the ambulance, paramedics started hooking me up to a heart monitoring machine. I thought this was strange, because I hadn’t been hooked up to any machines for two weeks. I told them I didn’t think it was necessary, but they insisted on going by the book. They put an oxygen mask over my face and hooked up the heart monitor.
On the way to the hospital, the song “Penny Lane” by the Beatles came over the radio. It brought a smile to my face. This was the first time I really felt like I was back in the states again.
A hungry pack of reporters lay in wait for us at the airport. They followed us to the University of Minnesota Hospital. Camera crews and reporters with their lights had staked out the building, in anticipation of my arrival. Though security tried to protect us from the unwanted exposure, a clever few managed to sneak into the hospital’s underground parking garage before the doors shut.
On stepping out of the ambulance, Scott found himself looking down the lens of an enormous television camera. Scott was enraged that the hospital’s security staff had done such a poor job of keeping the media away. He told the cameraman to back off, and when he didn’t, Scott gave him a push and he fell to the ground. The media left us alone for the rest of our visit at the hospital.
I was exhausted by the long trip. I thought we’d just stop in to rest at the hospital for a few minutes and then be sent home.
A neurosurgeon came into my room to explain my situation. “I have to do some tests,” he said.
“Can’t we just go home and do the tests tomorrow? I’m really tired.”
“What will it look like if you come in and I send you home right away?” the doctor said.
I was angry that he was more concerned about public relations than how I was feeling. But I was so exhausted that I didn’t have much fight in me. I was ready to agree to anything. Besides, he was the doctor after all. What was one more night after everything we’d been through?
The doctor left to take care of some other business, and Scott and I were alone. “You have the power to tell him what you want to do. He’s going to listen to you,” Scott said.
For two hours, I went through a bunch of neurological tests. I was not discharged until about 1 A.M. I was absolutely exhausted. I couldn’t put out that kind of energy. I was barely awake while he did the tests.
Scott and I went straight from the hospital to his parents’ house. Of course, everyone in the Pflug family wanted to visit. They were gathered around the kitchen table. I could tell they really wanted to talk to us and find out how we were. I wanted to make a good impression on Scott’s family, but I was so tired. It was hard for me to say that I just wanted to go to sleep.
Mr. and Mrs. Pflug showed me the room in their basement that Scott and I were going to be staying in—the same room that Scott grew up in. It felt really good to finally crawl into bed and put my head down on the pillow.
I slept very late the next morning. Scott was already up and dressed when I straggled into the kitchen and sat down at the table with him.
“I don’t know what all this means,” I said. “I don’t know what to do with my life. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
“I don’t know either, honey,” Scott said. He was just as confused as I was. “Maybe we weren’t supposed to be over there. I just don’t know,” he said.
We were looking forward to some quiet time to sort through it all, but newspaper reporters practically had the house surrounded. They wanted to get interviews with me for their papers. They took pictures of us through the windows of the Pflugs’ house. Every two seconds, the phone rang. It was some reporter working on a story about the hijacking. Scott took the calls and sent them away empty-handed, as I instructed him.
I was trying to weed through it all, but it didn’t make any sense.
I had lots of trouble seeing things. Objects in my visual field were floating all over the place: buildings, people, cars, letters and words on a page—everything was floating.
For the first few days, I thought that this problem would be corrected when I got the new pair of contact lenses m
y parents were sending to Minnesota. My old pair was destroyed when the plane caught fire, and I didn’t have a spare pair of glasses. So I was walking around practically blind. My vision is normally 20/400 without correction.
I was excited when my new pair of contacts finally arrived. But when I put them on, I was shocked. I could only see parts of people’s faces and bodies! When I tried to read, I could only see parts of each word in a sentence. And I could only read half the letter in each word. A simple written phrase such as “By the way” looked something like “y e y.”
With my visual problems, navigating around the Pflugs’ house took a major effort. I was always bumping into things around the house—chairs, tables, countertops, walls—because I couldn’t judge how far away these objects were from me. Sometimes, when I got lazy and didn’t bother to move my head to compensate for my vision loss, I’d get into more trouble.
One time when I went to reach for a bar of soap in the bathroom and didn’t look underneath where I was reaching, I hit my curling iron and burned my arm. I had bruises on my left side and shoulder from reaching for something and then smashing into a shelf or other solid object.
Why was I having such problems seeing properly?
I reported my symptoms to my neurologist, hoping he’d be able to tell me what was wrong. He explained that my brain was still swollen from the bullet wound and that this was causing the visual abnormalities.
That Christmas, 1985, my parents flew up from Houston to spend the holidays with Scott and me. It was an emotional reunion. I was tired and worn down, but so glad to see my parents. One of the first things I did was to let my parents feel the soft spot in my head.
Mom was worried that I might bump my exposed head. If anything hit me in the head, it could kill me. It would have gone right into my brain. “You’ve got to get a plate in your head,” she kept telling me.
My problems seemed to build and build. I started to get angry without any obvious reason. My emotions were all over the place: I went from feeling as high as a kite—giggling and laughing uncontrollably—to the depths of despair. And I didn’t understand why.
None of my doctors had prepared me for something this bad. No one ever said that this emotional roller coaster is common among persons with a head injury.
I didn’t know whether my reactions were the result of the head injury or the emotional trauma I’d just gone through—or maybe both.
One of the bright spots in those initial weeks and months in Minnesota was getting to know Scott’s mom and dad. They were sweet and loving people who took me into their arms and treated me as if I were their own daughter. Even though I was far from my family in Houston, I felt adopted by the Pflug family.
June Pflug, Scott’s mom, was the first person I came to know and trust in Minnesota. She was very caring and down-to-earth. June knew how to manage a household too. Her husband was a salesman and was on the road five days a week. She had to raise the couple’s seven children, five boys and two girls, practically on her own.
She knew the pain of grief and loss too. Her son David was killed in a car accident at age twenty-two. Scott never said much about David, but June told me the two of them had been very close. June could deeply empathize with my pain and often held me when I cried.
June and I spent a lot of time together. She helped me get around when I couldn’t drive or do many things for myself. She said things that made me feel better about myself too. “You’re so pretty bald, Jackie,” she said. “No one could pull that off but you.”
I looked in the mirror to see for myself. I do have a pretty head, I thought to myself. It is nicely shaped. There aren’t any bumps.
It took about six months for my hair to grow back; during that time, June offered more compliments. Spiked hairstyles were popular among women that year, and she said I fit right in with my short hair.
It was easy to see the resemblance between Scott and his dad, Greg Pflug, whom we all called “Pops.” Pops was a tall, thin man who liked to express his strong opinions. Like Scott, he had a great sense of humor. Pops could always make me laugh, even on some pretty dark days.
It was such a relief to be welcomed into the Pflugs’ home, and to have a place to stay while we regrouped. I thought finished basements were pretty neat—we didn’t have them in Texas. June helped me navigate around the house whenever I took a wrong turn, as I often did. It was easy for me to get lost in the basement. It seemed as though there were a number of long hallways and, if I missed the right one, I’d end up in the laundry room instead of our bedroom.
When I went up the stairs, I’d constantly smash against the wall. I didn’t see it. June couldn’t figure out why this kept happening. I saw the wall but didn’t know where it was in relationship to my body. If I slowly approached the wall and held on to it, I could avoid running into it. But I always forgot to do that.
I often felt as if I had a brain transplant. My adult brain was gone and, in its place, was the brain of a little child.
June was patient when I floundered. For example, in the morning I’d go into the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of cereal. I’d keep pouring and pouring…. Cereal would be spilling out all over the countertop. My vision loss prevented me from seeing how much cereal was in the bowl. Then I’d add the milk, spilling it all over everything. Again, I couldn’t see where the milk was going. The same thing happened with orange juice. When I was finished pouring myself a glass, I’d be surprised to see that I’d made a huge mess and start crying. Why was this happening?
June was so understanding. She didn’t hover over me or get mad when I spilled milk.
And she was wonderful in the kitchen. It freed me from having to cook, which was a big help, too. I was so out of it that I didn’t know that if I wanted to cook something, I had to turn on the stove.
One time, Scott, his parents, and I were all sitting at the dinner table. June passed a bowl of spaghetti around and everyone took some. Then she dished some out for me and we all started eating. I finished my spaghetti and was ready for seconds. “Could I have some more?” I asked.
“But Jackie, you still have some spaghetti on your plate,” June said.
I looked back down at my plate. I’d eaten the middle and the right side of the spaghetti—the only part I could see. June took my hand and guided it to the upper left side of the plate and down to the bottom. The gaps in my visual field were mirrored in the leftover spaghetti. We all had a good laugh over that one. Yet I was also embarrassed.
For the first three months after the hijacking, while my brain was still swollen, I didn’t know if I was full or hungry. My brain wasn’t sending me the right messages. I knew that I had to eat breakfast every morning, because it was part of my routine—not because I was hungry. I knew I was done eating when I’d finished the food in front of me—not because I felt full.
Before dinner one evening, Scott said he needed to go get some gas and asked if I wanted to go with. At the station, Scott started filling the tank.
“I want to pay for the gas,” I said. I wanted to do something to help. I also wanted to start spreading my wings a little bit and getting back into the world.
He took out his wallet and handed me some money. “I don’t really know how much it’s going to be,” he said. He hadn’t finished filling the tank.
I took the money and, just as I opened the glass door to go inside, I heard Scott yell, “Jackie, will you get me a Milky Way bar?”
“Okay,” I hollered back.
As I entered the store, my mind suddenly went blank. I looked down and saw all this money in my hand, but didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. What am I supposed to do with this? I wondered.
Then I looked outside and saw Scott still filling the car, and I remembered the gas. But there was something else that he just yelled at me. What was it?
I opened the door again and yelled out, “What was it you wanted me to get?”
“A Milky Way bar,” he shouted back.
Lik
e a mantra, I kept repeating it over and over—gas-Milky Way bar, gas-Milky Way bar, gas-Milky Way bar—as I walked through the store.
I went over to the rack of candy bars. I didn’t remember what the Milky Way wrapper looked like, so I had to go through and read each label one by one. Meanwhile, I kept repeating, gas-Milky Way bar, gas-Milky Way bar, gas-Milky Way bar.
It was taking me a long time. Scott had no idea what had happened to me. He had just hopped in the truck and waited.
When I finally found the Milky Way bar, I had to think, What do I do next? The answer wasn’t automatic. Then it came to me: Stand in line.
I went over to stand in line to pay for the gas and Milky Way bar. After a few minutes, it was my turn to pay.
“I want to pay for this Milky Way bar and gas,” I announced.
“That will be $10.73,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“$10.73.”
I looked down at the money in my hand, but didn’t know what to do with it. I had a fistful of papers with the numbers “5,” “10,” and “1” on them. This was the first time I’d really looked at money since the hijacking. Whenever we went somewhere, Scott had always paid.
I kept looking at my money, thinking that something was going to click any second and I’d know what to do. But it never did.
In the meantime, people were coming into the store, and it was getting very crowded. A long line had formed behind me and there was only one clerk on duty.
“Oh, just put your money down!” she said with irritation.
I laid my money down on the counter and she counted it for me. She gave me the Milky Way bar and my change and I walked out.
I started sobbing. I felt so humiliated and embarrassed, like a helpless little child. I didn’t even know how to count money anymore.
“What’s the matter, honey? What happened in there?” Scott asked as I got back in the Bronco.
Between sobs, I said, “Scott, I don’t know how to count money. I didn’t know what the money was.”
Miles To Go Before I Sleep Page 9